Wagner's Russia rebellion is creating uncertainty some African governments

This is actually a surprise because all this is obviously modeled after the Blackrock scenario.  They clearly meddle anywhere and away we go.  Once again, obvious talent leaves the russian military in order to become consultants at a much different pay scale.

This is a mercenary army with Russian characteristics.  I do not consider any of this a welcome development.  We are certsainly getting far away from true national armies, but we are also getting away from national officer corps.  these have truly shrunk.

We may soon reach the point in which a public militia is actually just obsolete because war itself is long since obsolite.  It just took two centuries to figure this out.

Question?  In what way has war stopped national economic development anywhere?  Recovery has been always quick and even brisk everywhere. Hell - a firm kick in the pants literally created modern Japan.  Was that anyone's intent?

Wagner's Russia rebellion is creating uncertainty some African governments

The Wagner private military group’s abortive mutiny in Russia risks destabilizing African countries where its troops have been deployed.

A number of African nations, including Mali, the Central African Republic (CAR), Libya and Sudan, rely on Wagner to fight insurgents, quell dissent, train local troops, and spread propaganda.

President Vladimir Putin, in a televised address on Monday, declared that Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, will “be brought to justice” after the latter ordered his troops to march to Moscow on Saturday before later calling them off. Putin said Wagner fighters could sign a contract with the Russian military, return to their families, or move to Belarus.

“Wagner is not Russia anymore,” said Rama Yade, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, referring to the view widely held prior to the mutiny that the military force was inextricably linked to the Kremlin.

KNOW MORE

Wagner, founded in 2014, routinely operates in African countries for access to natural resources such as gold and precious stones. Analysts say this has become a crucial part of its business model generating millions of dollars which has helped Russia to evade sanctions imposed over the Ukraine war.

CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra has used Wagner to fight insurgencies since 2018. Mali’s military junta, whose leaders seized power in 2021, have also called on Wagner to fight Islamist rebels.

Wagner has been accused of carrying out human rights abuses in the CAR and Mali. Calls by the United Nations earlier this year for an independent investigation into possible crimes by Malian troops and Wagner fighters in March 2022 soured the UN’s relationship with Mali’s ruling junta. Earlier this month Mali called on the UN to withdraw its 13,000-strong peacekeeping force, Minusma, from the West African country “without delay.”

ALEXIS’ VIEW

Mali and the CAR are now in limbo. Wagner’s structure must change because Putin can’t allow a private force capable of mounting a rebellion to remain in its current form. The move to absorb Wagner fighters into the Russian army is the first stage of that transformation. Mali and CAR rely so heavily on Russian fighters that they will be seriously weakened if troops are redeployed in large numbers as part of that restructuring, which could also destabilize neighboring countries.

Mali’s military rulers formed a close alliance with Russia while growing more hostile to other foreign nations, who reacted by withdrawing peacekeeping troops. Minusma’s seemingly imminent exit will leave around 1,000 Wagner troops to fight militants linked to Islamic State and al Qaeda who have killed thousands of people in the last decade and control huge swathes of central and northern Mali. The use of aircraft, procured from Russia, also helped Mali’s rulers. But events in Russia call into question the extent of the support the junta will receive.

Wagner clearly no longer has the Kremlin’s backing and African leaders who lean on it must wait for power struggles in Russia to play out. They must also realize that Putin will prioritize stabilizing the situation at home and pursuing victory in Ukraine.

The implications could be dire for Mali, CAR, and countries around them. Both nations are fragile and at risk of falling deeper into disorder that could spill across borders. We’ve already seen those problems unfold in the Sahel where Islamist militants have attacked Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger in recent years. And CAR borders Sudan which is mired in a conflict that has spawned a growing humanitarian crisis.

Russia has used Wagner to expand its economic and political footprint in Africa. It’s been particularly effective as a propaganda tool that portrays Moscow as a trustworthy ally and demonizes France in its former colonies. Lagos-based risk analyst Cheta Nwanze, who monitors the Sahel, told me Wagner’s use as a geopolitical weapon that generates funds from African natural resources meant Moscow would find a way to maintain its presence on the continent.

“Russia needs to have a private military company to do its dirty work, so someone else will be found to take over what Prigozhin leaves behind,” said Nwanze, lead partner at SBM Intelligence.

The uncertainty probably means there may be a “brief respite” from the expansion of Wagner operations across the subregion, said Peter Pham, the former U.S. special envoy for Africa's Great Lakes Region. "But nature abhors a vacuum and, inexorably, someone else will fill the void if security and proper governance do not.”

Read more details on this story here.

Finally, a solution to plastic pollution that’s not just recycling

I do suspect that we are all idiots.  All garbage needs to be handled as a matter of course.  Even throw aways need to be gathered and collected.

The next step is to run it all through a robust shredder able to take down steel.  This produces a likely wet but shredded feedstock.  That is now easy to work with.  we can even air dry it all.

Then process with a double lung incinerator at least.  The first stage takes the feed stock to the temperature of 600 C and no more.  all volatiles are cast off into the exhaust stream and all carbon based material breaks down into those volatiles and pure carbon which burns up.

The second stage has added propane and a high temperature kiln which take thetemperature up to 2000 degrees or hot enough to consume the volatiles.  what is left is CO2 and nothing else.  Truth is that most feedstocks ( wood and food ) do not need the second stage although plastic may not be so simple.

The flue gas can then be sent through a wet spray to collapse the heat and flue ash.

And here we are a century later and still talking stupid while safely burning coal which is our worst feed stock way better than ever..

Finally, a solution to plastic pollution that’s not just recycling

Countries are negotiating a new global treaty to drastically reduce the plastic waste that has been poisoning the world.

By Benji Jones@BenjiSJones Jun 7, 2023, 6:30am EDT

Israel Sebastian/Getty Images

Benji Jones is a senior environmental reporter at Vox, covering biodiversity loss and climate change. Before joining Vox, he was a senior energy reporter at Insider. Benji previously worked as a wildlife researcher.

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/6/7/23743640/plastic-pollution-un-treaty-oceans-waste?ref=refind

Plastic recycling doesn’t work, no matter how diligently you wash out your peanut butter container. Only about 15 percent of plastic waste is collected for recycling worldwide, and of that, about half ends up discarded. That means just 9 percent of plastic waste is recycled.

The rest — some 91 percent of all plastic waste — ends up in landfills, incinerators, or as trash in the environment. One report estimated that 11 million metric tons of plastic trash leaked into the ocean in 2016, and that number could triple by 2040 as the global population rises and lower-income countries develop. Plastic is now simply everywhere: at the deepest depths of the ocean, on the tallest mountains, in hundreds of species of wildlife, and even in human placentas.

A man walks on a plastic-covered shore in Mumbai, India, on May 31. Bhushan Koyande/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

It’s hard to imagine meaningful solutions to a problem of such epic proportions. Campaigns to ban things like plastic straws almost seem like a joke when compared to the staggering amounts of waste produced by everything else we use — including the plastic cups those straws go in.

Now, however, there might actually be a reason to feel hopeful. Late last year, world leaders, scientists, and advocates started working on a global, legally binding treaty under the United Nations to end plastic waste. The second round of negotiations concluded last week in Paris with a plan to produce an initial draft of the deal.

This treaty could be huge. Although it will take months of negotiating for any of the details to become clear, the agreement — set to be finalized by the end of 2024 — will require countries to do far more than just fix their recycling systems. Negotiators will discuss a menu of options including a cap on overall plastic production, bans on certain materials and products including many single-use plastics, and incentives to grow an industry around reusable items. This treaty could literally transform entire chunks of the global economy.

As with any global deal, an ambitious agreement will face several roadblocks, some of which have already appeared. Certain countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the US, for example, are pushing for voluntary terms that would allow them to continue investing in their petrochemical industries (plastic is a petrochemical).

Then again, the fact that global talks are happening at all is in itself a big deal and reveals a shift in the politics around waste. “There’s a true willingness to tackle this problem,” said Erin Simon, vice president and head of plastic waste at the World Wildlife Fund, a large environmental group. “We’ve never seen so much progress.”

Here’s what a global plastic treaty could do, and why anti-waste advocates are so hopeful.

A worker at a PVC pipe factory in China’s Sichuan Province on November 30, 2022. Lan Zitao/VCG via Getty Images

The plastic treaty will target the root of the problem

Even if recycling weren't such a failure, it wouldn’t put an end to plastic waste. Many items can’t be — or are not meant to be — recycled.

There’s no real way to fix the plastic problem without simply producing less of it, said Nicky Davies, executive director of the Plastic Solutions Fund, a group that funds projects to end plastic pollution. “The first thing we need to do is turn off the tap,” Davies said.

That’s why this treaty is so significant: By conception, the agreement is meant to focus on the design and production of plastics, not just on what happens to plastic items after we use them. In other words, the treaty targets the full life cycle of plastics.

What does that mean in practice? The agreement could, for example, include an overall cap on plastic. This would be a global target for reducing the production of new, virgin plastic (which has no recycled content).

Such a target could mandate that, by a certain year, total annual plastic production cannot exceed the amount of plastic produced in some baseline year. It’d be kind of like targets to slash fossil fuel production in order to curb climate change — but for plastic polymers.

Bye-bye plastic takeout containers, probably

Regardless of whether or not the treaty includes an explicit limit on plastic production, it will almost certainly contain bans or restrictions on some materials.

Certain chemicals used in plastics are especially problematic and could be targeted by bans. Some flame retardants, for example, are linked to cancers and endocrine disruption; they can also make plastics hard to recycle. A number of other additives and materials are similarly dangerous to humans or ecosystems, or they make recycling difficult, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and various kinds of PFAS (the so-called forever chemicals).

The treaty may also ban or restrict a whole bunch of common, problematic products — namely, packaging and other single-use items, such as cups and cutlery.

These are an enormous part of the plastic problem, said Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, an environmental advocacy group. Roughly 40 percent of all plastic waste comes from packaging alone, and nearly two-thirds of it is from plastics that have a lifespan of fewer than five years, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

“These are materials that come into people’s lives that are often unnoticed, and they have useful lives measured in minutes or moments or at best months,” Muffett told Vox.

A biker in Neihuang, China, carries balloons to sell during a bout of heavy smog. Getty Images

The most immediate bans or restrictions on single-use plastics, researchers say, should apply to products that are most likely to leak into the environment and cause harm and yet are relatively unnecessary. These include takeaway containers, chip bags, balloons, cotton swabs, disposable e-cigarettes, and tea bags. (A number of environmental organizations including WWF have lists of products that the treaty should prioritize.)

Speaking of unnecessary: The treaty may also restrict the use of certain microplastics. These are plastic pieces that are under 5 millimeters in length, which are either deliberately put in some products like face wash or are emitted unintentionally by things like car tires and clothing. Scientists have found them everywhere they look including in our blood and lungs, water bottles, and Antarctic snow.

Restricting these sorts of plastics isn’t a far-fetched idea. Several US states already ban some plastic bags, including New York and California. The US, Canada, the UK, and other countries, meanwhile, prohibit companies from selling shower gels and many other personal care products with plastic “microbeads” in them. And the EU — home to some of the world’s strictest plastic regulations — prohibits a wide number of single-use items from entering the market, including plastic cutlery and straws.

Yet these bans are not global, they’re not always enforced, and they don’t go far enough, experts say. That’s where the treaty could help.

Building out the “reuse economy”

Plastic is widespread for a few obvious reasons. It’s lightweight, durable, and easily shaped, making it useful for a large number of applications. Plastic is also incredibly cheap (even if government subsidies help offset some of the costs).

Should countries try to phase out single-use plastics, whether by a treaty or not, a key question is: What will replace them? In some cases, other materials like paper might be appropriate, although, of course, they can produce waste as well.

A more sustainable solution, Davies said, is to build out what she calls the reuse economy: a system in which many single-use items, like plastic cups, are replaced by containers that are used over and over again.

This model offers clear value where consumers buy and eat food in the same place, such as food courts, movie theaters, or music festivals. In a reuse economy, vendors would give customers a reusable cup, which they would then place in a bin before leaving the venue, not unlike how you return trays at some food courts. There’d be central facilities on site to clean the cups and make them available to the next customer. (That means dishwashing would have to become more widespread.)

A drain in Miami Beach, Florida, clogged with plastic waste. Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Transforming some other parts of the economy is more challenging, including the food delivery industry. Consider, however, that restaurants often use the same kinds of plastic food containers across large cities like New York. Imagine if those containers were meant to be truly reusable; instead of throwing them out or recycling them, consumers could return them (via some kind of bin, for example) to a central system that cleans the containers and restocks them at restaurants.

Obviously, this would require major investments in infrastructure by governments, private funders, and companies — not to mention some changes in behavior among consumers — but there are plenty of examples of these sorts of reuse systems already working successfully. They’ve been around for decades. In Europe and parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, restaurants and other retailers commonly sell beer and soda in refillable glass containers. Customers will typically get a small deposit back when they return those items. (An organization called Upstream maintains a list of reuse policies in the US and abroad.)

The treaty could help fuel this approach by mandating global targets related to reusing containers, some of which already exist at a country level (in France and elsewhere). For example, it could set a minimum percentage of drinks that must be sold in reusable containers. The treaty could also help set standards for what a good reusable system looks like and define what “reuse” actually means — considering that many plastic bags and other disposable items say they’re “reusable” even though most of us throw them out.

Davies says the reuse economy is essential to fixing the plastic problem — as essential as renewable energy is for curbing climate change. “We actually need to build the reuse economy in the same way as we have built the renewable energy economy,” Davies said.

Better recycling will help, but it’s only a small part of the solution

The treaty won’t spell the end of recycling. Plenty of plastics aren’t easily cleaned or reused by other people, such as toothbrushes or plastics used in hospitals, so countries will still need recycling — but it requires major improvements.

Some cities and countries lack sufficient, conveniently located recycling bins or facilities to process plastic. Even where that infrastructure does exist, recycling runs into all kinds of problems. Plastics in a bin of recyclables typically contain a slew of polymers, dyes, and other chemicals that don’t necessarily mix well together or, when combined, form low-quality plastic, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a research organization. Some of those chemicals can also make the recycling process itself unsafe for waste workers, Davies said.

“Today’s plastic recycling system is failing us,” authors of the Pew report wrote.

Beyond eliminating harmful chemicals in plastics, a key solution is to encourage or mandate that companies design for recycling from the beginning. That means phasing out dyes and other additives that make recycled plastic worth less, using fewer types of polymers that can contaminate recycling streams, and so on. Better labeling is important, too: You shouldn’t have to spend time Googling to figure out how to recycle something.

To encourage recycling, cities, and countries can also build out what are called “deposit return systems,” or DRS. In these schemes, customers pay a deposit when they buy a drink in a to-go bottle and get it back if they return the container (you may have seen these return machines by the entrance of some grocery stores). The treaty could mandate that countries require DRS for certain kinds of plastic

 containers.

A customer places bottles in a recycling machine to receive her deposit in a grocery story in Slovakia. Getty Images

The treaty could also set a minimum percentage for the amount of recycled plastic in a given product. That would make recycled plastic more valuable and, in turn, encourage more recycling. Again, such targets are not unprecedented: The EU requires that, by 2025, PET plastic drink bottles are made with at least 25 percent recycled plastic.

(Treaty negotiators will consider a wide range of other ideas, such as eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels, setting standards for landfilling plastic, including those pertaining to the health of workers, and weeding out misleading claims about compostable or biodegradable plastics.)

What countries will fight about

Treaty negotiations have only just begun, yet some issues are already a source of tension. Perhaps the biggest one is whether targets under the treaty should be globally mandated — and apply to all countries — or voluntary and set by each nation individually.

A group of countries including all members of the EU, Japan, and Chile, known as the high ambition coalition, is pushing for global targets, whereas the US, Saudi Arabia, and other big plastic-producing nations are advocating for national voluntary targets. (Those voluntary targets would be similar to those under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which set the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to combat climate change.)

“The number one thing I want is global rules,” said Simon of WWF. “Plastic pollution is so integrated into all of our lives, and through these massive world markets. If we continue to address it in a fragmented way, we will never be successful.”

A blue plastic polymer inside a factory near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Mohd Samsul Mohd Said/Getty Images

A number of other core issues will likely divide countries along similar lines, such as whether the treaty should cap virgin plastic production and what specific materials it should ban. Generally, major oil-producing nations and other petrochemical interests, such as chemical companies, like to talk up the benefits of recycling instead of taking steps to curb plastic production.

Funding will almost certainly be a divisive issue, as well. There’s a common tension during negotiations for global environmental treaties between wealthy and poor nations. In this case, lower-income countries are likely to argue that they should pay less — or be paid — to implement the treaty because they’ve contributed relatively little to the problem of plastic waste (and in some cases suffer most from it).

Could this treaty really work?

Delegates from 175 countries finished up the last round of negotiations in Paris with a clear objective: To develop a draft of the plastic treaty before November, when they’ll meet again, in Nairobi, Kenya, for round three. The idea is to discuss the terms of the treaty in detail then, using the text (which they call a “zero draft”) as a starting point.

While UN treaty processes are often confusing and bogged down by bureaucracy, they’re one of our best defenses against global crises. And plastic pollution is indeed a global crisis. It’s everywhere — in our forests, our mountains, our oceans, our wildlife, our bodies, our children’s bodies. At least 85 percent of all marine waste is plastic. Hundreds of chemicals in plastics pose potential risks to human health.

It remains unclear whether negotiators will be able to craft an ambitious treaty. Then there will be questions about implementation. But the good news is that something similar has been done before, albeit on a smaller scale.

In 1987, nearly 200 countries agreed to a global deal called the Montreal Protocol designed to phase out chemicals called CFCs that were found in all sorts of products, from aerosol cans to refrigerators, which had put a hole in Earth’s ozone layer. The treaty worked. Today, 99 percent of ozone-destroying chemicals have been phased out and the ozone hole is almost fully repaired.

While the plastic problem is much bigger, global rules to phase out harmful materials can work. “This has been done before,” Muffett said. If world leaders take the problem of plastic pollution seriously, he said, “fundamental transformation is very, very possible.”

Antarctica's mysterious Blood Falls aren't made by minerals after all

This is a wake up call. it is super unique only because the souce environment is   even more so on our planet, but readily possible on other planets.

so much of our knowledge and assumptions are tailored to our own living life band.

not so fast and do bring much better gear.  There is too much assuming this and doing a simple test.  It cannot work well.

Antarctica's mysterious Blood Falls aren't made by minerals after all

By Michael Irving

June 26, 2023

Blood Falls in Antarctica, where scientists have finally gotten to the bottom of why the water is so red

Peter Rejcek

https://newatlas.com/science/antarctica-blood-falls-iron-red-water/?

A bright red waterfall isn’t something you’d expect to see on the icy landscape of Antarctica, but that’s exactly what’s pouring out from the foot of Taylor Glacier. A team of scientists now claims to have solved the long-standing mystery behind the crimson waters of Antarctica’s Blood Falls.

The bizarre and apparently grisly sight was first discovered in 1911 by geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor, who attributed it to red algae. It was only half a century later that the crimson color was identified as being caused by iron salts. Most intriguingly, the water starts off clear but turns red soon after it emerges from the ice, as the iron oxidizes on exposure to the air for the first time in millennia.

Now a new study has examined samples of the water and found that the iron appears in an unexpected form. It’s not technically a mineral – instead it takes the form of nanospheres, 100 times smaller than human red blood cells.

“As soon as I looked at the microscope images, I noticed that there were these little nanospheres and they were iron-rich, and they have lots of different elements in them besides iron – silicon, calcium, aluminum, sodium – and they all varied,” said Ken Livi, an author of the study. “In order to be a mineral, atoms must be arranged in a very specific, crystalline, structure. These nanospheres aren't crystalline, so the methods previously used to examine the solids did not detect them.”

This find has implications beyond Antarctica and even beyond Earth. Just a few years ago, scientists managed to trace the water back to its source – an extremely salty subglacial lake under high pressure, with no light or oxygen, and a microbial ecosystem that’s remained isolated for millions of years. Life could exist on other planets under similarly inhospitable conditions, but we might not be sending the right kind of equipment up to spot it.

“Our work has revealed that the analysis conducted by rover vehicles is incomplete in determining the true nature of environmental materials on planet surfaces,” said Livi. “This is especially true for colder planets like Mars, where the materials formed may be nanosized and non-crystalline. Consequently, our methods for identifying these materials are inadequate. To truly understand the nature of rocky planets' surfaces, a transmission electron microscope would be necessary, but it is currently not feasible to place one on Mars.”

How Marxism Broke Down the Nuclear Family

Not quite of course but certainly that has been their intent.  understand that our marriage culture represents thousands of years of applied empirical science to work with our biological economy.  

i have posted often on the natural community which isv typically an economic dispensation and largely avoided the biological economy.  it is certainly there..

a natural community has to sort out both types of economy in order to function from a general consensus that is not simple or just a majority vote. it also needs to avoid the quick fix of big man governance which is only viable in crisis mode.  Marxism as an intellectual mode is way too simplistice to tackle either economy which ultimately needs the Rule of Twelve.

How Marxism Broke Down the Nuclear Family

BY AUGUSTO ZIMMERMANN 

JUNE 20, 2023 

Maria Persic sits with daughters Millie Persic (L) and Sofia Persic during an observation period after the administration of their Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at Sydney Road Family Medical Practice in Balgowlah, Sydney, Australia on Jan. 11, 2022. (Jenny Evans/Getty Images)

https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-marxism-broke-down-the-nuclear-family_5343545.html?

Marriage is an institution uniquely apt for the rearing and nourishing of children, an open-ended task calling parents to assume an attitude of love and commitment toward children. Conversely, divorce undermines the family unit and deprives children of an intact biological family.

Karl Marx recommended the abolition of marriage in his Communist Manifesto, stating it would naturally bring with it the dissolution of the system of free love, which he called public and private prostitution.

In other words, Marx thought that marriage was nothing but a form of “private prostitution.”

Inspired by such teachings, in the 1980s, the Australian Union of Students issued a Policy Statement arguing that “prostitution takes many forms and is not only the exchange of money for sex … Prostitution in marriage is the transaction of sex in return for love, security, and housekeeping.”

This idea that marriage is a form of prostitution is accepted by a number of feminist scholars.

In 2014, on ABC’s program Q+A, British-born feminist Jane Caro stated: “I would argue that traditional marriage is basically selling [women’s] bodies and their reproductive rights to their husbands is a form of prostitution.”

The radical feminist promotion of “sexual liberation” rests on the application of Marxist forms of critical analysis to groups of people who are identified by gender and then urged to overthrow their “oppressors.”

“Patriarchal” is the word often used to describe the traditional conventions observed by respectable members of society, which are dismissed as “oppressive.”

A fan shows a sign reading “Girl Power” during day two of the Unibet Premier League at Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, England, on Feb. 13, 2020. (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

Therefore, Marxism holds that the institution of marriage, within its attendant sexual morals, must die out and be replaced by “free unions of love.”

For a woman to be a housewife is considered shameful, and some feminists will go so far as to suggest that children will be better off by being raised by the state in public facilities rather than at home with their biological parents.

Sexual politics introduced what American feminist Camille Paglia describes as “the Stalinist style of feminist criticism.”

This type of feminism, according to Paglia, “strides into great literature and arts with jackboots on and red pen in hand, checking off ‘racist,’ ‘sexist’ and ‘homophobic,’ peremptorily decreeing what should remain and what should be discarded.”

Breaking a Sacred Vow Without Consequence, but With Reward

With the rise of radical feminism in the late 1960s, a significant slice of popular culture came to associate marriage with oppression and the suppression of freedom.

Another part of the strategy to undermine marriage was the creation of “no-fault” divorce in the early 1970s.

By subjecting marriage to critical Marxist analysis, “no-fault” divorce is advocated as a means to achieve “women’s sexual liberation.”

Of course, the idea was not quite promoted like that, but as a “humanizing effort” to allow “irretrievably broken” marriages to be terminated without any finding of guilt.

Once something is embodied in the law, it also becomes part of the moral reality of human society, thus shaping attitudes and expectations.

The purpose of the law was once to instruct citizens to aspire to a virtuous life.

Take care of your marriage—continue to share and talk—and perhaps your empty nest years will be even more fun. (Westend61/Getty Images)

Prior to the “no-fault” divorce in 1975, an element of “fault” in divorce encompassed adultery, desertion, habitual intoxication, cruelty, and the like. The innocent party, on credible grounds, was able to justify his or her divorce and be compensated for the damage caused by the other party, both morally and financially.

But the “no-fault” revolution changed these compensatory grounds, and it turned marriage into an easily revocable contract. This, of course, naturally reduced—perhaps even removed—the expectation for a permanent lifelong commitment.

It is one thing to allow “no-fault” for a marriage where both spouses agree that divorce is really what they want. But it is quite another when divorce occurs with no mutual consent—when one of the spouses decides to unilaterally leave the marriage contract.

Accordingly, the primary effect of the present laws is to disempower the victimised spouse by depriving him or her of leverage to bargain over the terms of settlement of property and financial matters.

No-fault divorce is part of the phalanx of laws that allows the state to invade our domestic affairs and harass people.

The system involves the intrusive presence of state agents forcibly removing people from their homes, seizing their property, and separating them from their children. It inherently abrogates not only the inviolability of marriage but also the very idea of having a private life.

According to Jennifer Roback Morse, founder of the Ruth Institute, the current “divorce regime is a unilateral divorce regime.”

“Anyone who wants a divorce gets to have one: The State always takes sides with the party who wants the marriage the least. The State incentivizes disloyalty and infidelity between spouses. And when things go wrong, the State empowers itself to clean up the mess,” Roback Morse argues.

Why Should Marriage Be the Only Contract to Be Breached With Impunity?

Under “no-fault,” the deserted spouse is often treated the same way as the unfaithful one who abandoned their family.

For example, a conscientious husband, who is not guilty of any misconduct, is made vulnerable by the prospect of losing access to the biological children he has loved, protected, and helped raise. The husband will also be forced to maintain the “guilty” ex-wife and their now-separated child. He may be forced to pay the mortgage charges but must leave the family home and pay rent for a separate residence.

As can be seen in this hypothetical example, the abandoned spouse is doubly victimised. They have largely lost their children, home and lost a large part of their income. The prospects of mending this shattered and impoverished life, re-partnering and perhaps having more children are negligible.

New homes line a street in the Sydney suburb of Moorebank in Australia on May 26, 2017. (Jason Reed/Reuters)

It is clear that the “no-fault” revolution, in allowing the marriage contract to be breached without any legal consequences (though there are serious and unavoidable consequences), has undermined the value we place on marriage to the detriment of Australian society.

Therefore, at the very least, marriage should always be treated as a normal contract.

The courts routinely award damages for non-economic loss in personal injury claims and damages for loss of reputation in defamation claims.

Accordingly, any “fault” for divorce should be followed by the award of damages and for weighting the division of family property. Why should marriage be the only contract that may be breached with impunity?

Above all, this radical, Marxist feminist approach must be condemned, and it should be a major public policy goal to protect marriage by restoring its full contractual nature.

Omicron’s New Variant Arcturus Rapidly Spreading Worldwide, Causing Pink Eye

understand that the Perps have finished their program and no longer care if doctors finally do the right thing.  And here the first reccomendation is to use ivermectin.

We still do not have a completely clear picture on the final outcome of the JAB, ecxcept to have a larger death  rate, particularly now amoung the young.  The seniors were targeted in order to create a complince panic to maximize uptake of the JAB.

This virus will quickly run out.. 

Omicron’s New Variant Arcturus Rapidly Spreading Worldwide, Causing Pink Eye

FEATUREDCOVID VARIANTS

Ellen Wan

Jun 20 2023

A coronavirus model sits on a table ahead of a Senate hearing in Washington, on July 2, 2020. (Saul Loeb/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

A new COVID-19 variant, Omicron XBB. 1.16, also called Arcturus, was first discovered in January 2023.

One of the characteristics of Arcturus infection is conjunctivitis, otherwise known as pink eye. It is spreading rapidly in many countries, including the United States, the UK, Australia, Singapore, China, and India.

American virology expert Dr. Sean Lin discussed on the program “Health 1+1″ that emerging new COVID-19 variants were inevitable. He said although it would be hard to forecast the trend of a virus and pathogenicity, the public should be concerned but does not need to panic.

Origin and Spread of Arcturus

In November 2021, the SARS-CoV-2 variant B. 1.1.529 strain first appeared in South Africa, which the World Health Organization (WHO) later named Omicron. Omicron quickly spread worldwide.

Since then, the Omicron strain continued to mutate, transforming into Omicron BA. 2, BA. 5, BA. 2.75, BQ. 1.1, and XBB strain.

As of April 2023, the XBB.1.5 strain, a descendant of the Omicron XBB strain, has proliferated worldwide, and the new variant XBB. 1.16 (Arcturus) has been widespread in various countries.

Lin stated Arcturus was 36 times more contagious than B.1.1.

In laboratory studies, Arcturus had an additional mutation in the spike protein, which was more contagious.

Global Risks of Arcturus

On May 3, 2023, Lancet Infectious Diseases published a study conducted at the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Tokyo in Japan.

The study found that XBB.1.16 demonstrates a greater growth advantage in the human population than XBB.1 and XBB.1.5. However, similar to XBB.1 and XBB.1.5, XBB.1.16 exhibits significant immune evasion capabilities.

Japanese medical researchers also discovered that Arcturus had potent resistance to various new COVID-19 antibodies.

On April 20, the Central Epidemic Command Center of the National Health Command Center, Taiwan, held a news conference on the latest mutation.

Lo Yi-chun, a center spokesperson, said the analysis of global variants revealed that the mainstream virus strain was still the XBB strain, accounting for 77 percent of all COVID-19 variants.

Among these variants, XBB. 1.5 variants accounted for 47.9 percent. Arcturus rose from 1 to 4 percent, with an increasing trend in the United States.

The variant was still under observation as of May 21, 2023.

How to Know If You Have Arcturus

Lin stated symptoms of Arcturus include fever, sore throat, runny nose, body aches, diarrhea, fatigue, and shortness of breath.

In severe cases, hypoxic saturation and respiratory distress syndrome were found.

Fever, cough, and conjunctivitis were also observed in children with Arcturus.

Vipin Vashishtha, a pediatric director and consultant at Mangel Hospital and Research Centre and a former official of the Advisory Committee on Vaccine and Immunization Practices at the Indian Academy of Pediatrics, wrote on Twitter on April 2023 about presentations in pediatric cases.

In children, cases of itchy conjunctivitis or sticky discharge in the eyes were on the rise and included symptoms of high fever, cough, and flu.

Some of these symptoms were not seen during the pandemic.

Children Vulnerable to New Mutation

According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), conjunctivitis (pink eye) is a suspected symptom of the Arcturus subvariant, especially in children.

If your child’s eyes are itchy and red, AAO advises parents not to panic, as this is a common eye condition at any age and can also be allergy-related.

However, parents should perform nucleic acid testing on their children to be sure.

How Arcturus Impacts Public Health

A study published in Nature Communications in December 2022 revealed the adverse impact of the COVID-19 virus on the eyes.

Researchers observed infected mice with COVID-19 and found that the mice’s retinal thickness increased significantly by 1.62 times.

In the study, SARS-CoV-2 could spread to the brain and eyes through the trigeminal and optic nerves, resulting in retinal inflammation, pro-inflammatory cytokine production, and reduction in depth perception.

Available Vaccines Versus Variants

Lin reminded viewers that people with long COVID should remain vigilant of the new contagious variant.

Arcturus has a potent resistance to poly antibodies, and these antibodies will be less effective against Arcturus.

Current observation suggests monoclonal antibodies have lost their comprehensive effect on XBB. 1.5 and Arcturus. Hence, it is evident that the development of the new virus has outpaced the progress of current vaccines.

“People who were previously Omicron-infected may have other antibodies that may work against the current variant,” Lin said.

Dr. Lin highlighted that Arcturus, along with XBB.1.5, has shown significant resistance to multiple antibodies. Given the current circumstances, monoclonal antibodies are no longer effective against these variants and have struggled to keep pace with the virus’s evolution.

Furthermore, Dr. Lin mentioned that individuals previously infected with the Omicron variant during its initial stages may possess other antibodies that could still be effective against the current variant.

In light of these findings, Dr. Lin advised individuals with long Covid to exercise caution and take extra measures to protect their health.

How to Prevent Arcturus

Lin recommends ivermectin to prevent Arcturus. He said ivermectin helps reduce the chances of infection, providing more ideal treatment results and benefiting those with mental symptoms. Indian data show ivermectin reduces infection rates among health care workers.

Lin specified ivermectin was not promoted initially due to commercial interests. However, not only is ivermectin affordable, but it is also becoming more recognized in preventing and treating COVID-19.

Satoshi Omura, an honorary professor at Kitasato University, Japan, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for inventing ivermectin.

Lin suggested ivermectin, if available for purchase, would increase immunity tolerance against the virus during the pandemic.

GE resurrects the propfan aircraft engine, cutting fuel burn by 20%

This will likely push airspeed up against the sound barrier and just get folks there sooner.  I would like to see those props on top, but there is likely a sound reason for this config.

Of course elons giant rocket can go supersonic and jump into hte stratosphere to drop down almost anywhere and have it all done under an hour.  That may well be the highest and best use of those big thumpers.

Subsonic is certainly fine, but still takes half a day to get there.  If you atre going to be uncomfortable, you may as well make it quick.

At least all this isvstill evolving forward.

GE resurrects the propfan aircraft engine, cutting fuel burn by 20%

By Loz Blain

June 18, 2023

https://newatlas.com/aircraft/ge-cfm-rise-open-fan/?

CFM's ultra-efficient open-rotor Rise engine will fly aboard an Airbus technology demonstrator within 5 years or so

GE once thought super-efficient propfans were the future of air travel, until low fuel prices in the late 1980s moved fuel consumption down the list of priorities. Now, it's bringing them back with the CFM Rise, promising 20% fuel savings.

Unducted fans (UDFs), also known as propfans or open rotor engines, first popped up in the 1970s. They look a little odd to the modern eye, with smooth nacelles and air intakes at the front, and two sets of fan blades poking out into open air at the back.

Typically, there's a lot of blades, and they're swept back, and heavily twisted. The rear blades are twisted in the opposite direction to the front ones; sometimes they counter-rotate, others don't rotate at all, acting as variable-pitch stator blades to help with flow recovery.

"The history of aviation propulsion," reads a GE whitepaper, "tells us that all previous breakthroughs in efficiency were achieved by new technologies that allowed for a larger fan size and a higher bypass ratio." Propfans do both, in a way that combines the fuel efficiency of a turboprop with the speed and performance of a turbofan.

The history of General Electric, meanwhile, tells us that this company had a propfan engine just about ready to rock back in 1989, capable of cruising at Mach 0.84 and promising a remarkable 30% fuel efficiency advantage over the popular turbofan engines of the day. The GE36 UDF, built in partnership with Snecma, made it to the prototype and flight testing phases, but once OPEC dropped the oil embargo, fuel prices crashed, and the design was shelved.

Fuel prices have very much uncrashed in recent times, and as aviation faces the challenge of decarbonizing a highly energy-intensive business, propulsive efficiency is very much back in vogue. Batteries and hydrogen can't fully replace kerosene as an energy carrier, so any extra mileage you can squeeze out of your electrons has become critical.

So GE is back on the propfan train again, and through CFM International, a 50/50 joint venture with Safran Aircraft Engines (formerly Snecma) that sadly doesn't produce boots, it announced a new UDF airliner engine called the Rise back in 2021.

Open rotor designs place a large number of long, pitch-controllable blades in the air, combining the speed and performance of today's turbofans with the efficiency of a turboprop

CFM

Efficiency may have improved across the industry in the last 30-something years, but GE says the Rise engine should still give you 20% more miles than anything else currently on the market for a given amount of energy.

While noise – both in the cabin and on the ground – has been a problem with some previous propfan designs, the CFM team says the Rise engine is being "validated to meet the most stringent ... noise emission requirements."

“The industry can’t reach its net zero ambition by 2050 with status quo incremental improvements in fuel efficiency," says Mohamed Ali, vice president of engineering for GE Aerospace. "Revolutionary technologies are needed. That’s why we believe the time for open fan is now, an advanced engine architecture that could unlock the single greatest jump in generational engine efficiency that CFM has ever achieved. This is supported by our most comprehensive testing roadmap yet to prove out and mature these technologies for the future of flight.”

The Rise engine can be mounted over the tail wings of an airliner, and it's just as happy under a top-mounted wing as it is on top of a low wing. The team has signed a deal with Airbus, which will lead to an open fan demonstrator of some kind that's expected to fly "in the mid-2020s."

For now, there are prototypes built, and CFM has already performed some 400 tests on the ground. Meanwhile, GE Aerospace has been doing some serious simulation work, announcing in a press release on Friday that it's engaged the world's fastest supercomputer.

The Frontier supercomputer, at the US DoE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, can perform more than one quintillion calculations per second, and as such, it's providing exceptionally detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling on how ambient air will interact with these big propfans at speed and altitude.

Innovation in the airliner business tends to happen at a snail's pace; we wouldn't expect to see anything like this on a commercial airliner until well into the 2030s, if it indeed happens at all.

But between this and other efforts like the Rolls-Royce Ultrafan, there could well be a highly efficient propulsion technology ready by the time companies like ZeroAvia and Universal Hydrogen get their clean aviation powertrains built, tested and certified up to full-scale international airliner size.

Check out a short video below, showing a mockup Rise engine being built, complete with variable-pitch rotor blades.

3D Printing the Innovative CFM RISE Demonstrator

Exceptional volumes of sea ice are a headache for climate alarmists

right on schedule folks.  Recall that in 2007, i looked at the ongoing trend lines and predicted sufficient sea ice collapse to open the Sea passages by 2012.  Shortly after i put out my actual press release, NASA came out and said the same thing which told me they had been sitting on it until someone opened their mouth.

Past cycles told me that we were looking at a decadal event likely abating and visibly reversing just about now and here we are.  If we get many years of this, the sea ice will thicken up until the next break.

Not good for the northwest pasaage.  Maybe we can drive a canal through Banks island although i do think that we need to build nuclear powered hovecraft able to carry container cargo up to 500,000 tons. then merely reducing the obvious bumps on Banks island will allow easy passage over normal sea ice in Davis strait and the Bering sea.

Exceptional volumes of sea ice are a headache for climate alarmists

BY RHODA WILSON ON JUNE 26, 2023 • ( 12 COMMENTS )

https://expose-news.com/2023/06/26/exceptional-volumes-of-sea-ice-are-a-headache/

While corporate media reports that it’s too late to save Arctic Sea ice, it seems the Arctic has other plans. Greenland’s snow and ice gains are proving exceptional and cherry farmers in British Columbia, Canada, are warning record low temperatures could reduce their yields.

As recently as three weeks ago, The Guardian and The New York Times reported ‘Too late now to save Arctic summer ice, climate scientists find – Climate crisis’ and ‘A Summer Without Arctic Sea Ice Could Come a Decade Sooner Than Expected’ respectively. Both articles report on a paper published in Nature Communications which used data from 1979-2019 to “demonstrate the importance of planning for and adapting to a seasonally ice-free Arctic in the near future” due to a future of “ice-free Arctic in September.”

However, as Electroverse points out, corporate media have failed to report the news last week that more snow and ice in Greenland was visibly seen, as was thicker sea ice further out to sea.

Sea Ice “Unusually Close” To Icelandic Coast

As reported in recent days, Greenland snow and ice gains are proving exceptional – particularly for the time of year. And similarly, sea ice around Iceland is “plentiful” and has advanced “unusually close” to the country’s northern coastline.

While corporate media devotes buckets of ink to the pockets of North Atlantic warming – a natural phenomenon tied to El Nino – a North Coast Guard flight yesterday discovered exceptional volumes of sea ice just off Iceland’s coastline, which they say threatens seafarers.

“Ice is coming up to the shore some eight to nine nautical miles from Hornstrandir, which is closer than we’ve seen in recent times,” said sea ice expert Ingibjörg Jónsdóttir, who was on Thursday’s flight.

Thicker sea ice was also present further out to sea, continued Ingibjörg, which could prove dangerous for smaller ships.

These cold waters are a headache for the Anthropogenic Global Warming (“AGW”) Party, which is why news of them won’t reach their lapdog media outlets.

The pockets of warm waters in North Atlantic, on the other hand … “The basic reason is that all the world’s oceans are much warmer than they were, and that is simply the result of global warming,” stated Halldór Björnsson, of the Icelandic Met Office – a claim we’re expected to dutifully and quietly swallow at this point – no evidence or explanation required – The Science is settled!

We see this “selecting” all the time.

We see it regarding Icelandic oceans – as discussed above – and also with the very cold waters off the western U.S. coast which, this spring, were among the coldest ever recorded. Northern San Diego’s Scripps Pier in La Jolla, for example, recorded a water temperature of just 52F in April, a reading just shy of the all-time coldest benchmark of 50F. Temperatures in San Diego itself have also been running below normal every month since November – another fact obscured and ignored (look, WILDFIRES!).

British Columbia’s Cherry Farmers Deploy Helicopters

Western Canada’s growers are warning record-low temperatures could drop their yields by as much as 50% this year.

Okanagan cherry growers are already reeling from a record-cold winter, but now historic late-spring/early-summer lows combined with the recent damaging rains have seen the farmers take exceptionally measures to save their ripening fruit.

With just weeks before harvest, orchards up and down the Okanagan are hiring helicopters to blow away moisture from the sugar-swollen fruit. Pooling rain can cause fruit to swell, breaking or splitting the delicate skin and potentially spoiling the cherry,

“Hiring helicopters is not something we undertake lightly,” said Sukhpaul Bal, cherry grower and president of the B.C. Cherry Association. “They are very expensive, and if there were another way to save our crop, we would.”

The powerful downdraft of a helicopter’s rotors is highly effective at removing rainwater pooling in the stem bowl of cherries. Blowers attached to orchard tractors can also be used but the process takes 40 to 50 minutes an acre, compared to the 5 minutes it takes for a copter. However, the cost is high, says Bal – between $1,000 and $1,600 per hour of flying time.

Fruit growers throughout the Okanagan region are warning that orchards and vineyards hit by winter’s record-low temperatures could see yields drop by as much as 50% this year.

These fears chime with last years, when a sudden freeze again forced B.C. cherry growers to employ the use of helicopters – an increasing phenomenon, it appears.

Blizzards Batter Australian Alps

Thursday was another very cold day across the southern half of Australia.

So cold, in fact, that myriad of weather stations posted their lowest June highs on record.

These include, Munglinup, WA; Port Augusta, SA; Snowtown, SA; Kadina, SA; Murrage Bridge, SA; Yarrawonga, VIC; Shepparton, VIC; Portland, VIC; Cape Nelson, VIC; and Dartmoor, VIC.

Note also with Shepperaton, the Bureau of Meteorology (“BoM”) inexplicably raised yesterday morning’s observed low by 1.1C, and in doing so denied the town a new all-time record, read more: Australia’s BOM Denies Shepparton Its All-Time Record Low, Inexplicably Raises Temp 1.1C; Utah Sets New Avalanche Record; + Greenland’s Summer Snow And Ice Gains Intensify

What the BoM can’t deny, however, are the blizzard conditions currently pounding the Aussie Alps.

Alpine resorts received a healthy dumping last week, with the snow depth at Spencers Creek, for example, measuring almost 60cm (2 ft). And with the forecast pointing to another 50-or-so centimetres (20 inches) hitting by next Tuesday, resorts are expected to receive enough snow to open up extra swaths of terrain.

It even snowed at Western Australia’s Bluff Knoll on Friday, 23 June 23:

All this Aussie snow is painting a similar setup to last year, which wound up being a record-breaking bumper season with snowstorm after snowstorm delivering 1.2m (4ft) of snow in June, culminating in a peak depth of 2.3m (7.5ft) by September.

Despite this real-world data, however, the AGW juggernaut must of course be maintained. Mountainwatch editor Reggae Elliss recently said, “climate change means the ski seasons are starting later and finishing earlier.”

Uh-huh.