As it looks like, Vodafone Ltd is a strategic future access point for US’ data accumulation, and later investigations of individuals.
No fees in Ghana for Vodafone Cash
This ghanian expansion is just a hint to the long game of data control by the western world.

Posted by: Evoli | Jul 8 2021 13:22 utc | 4

Lithuania on Wednesday accused Belarus of flying in migrants from abroad to send to the European Union and said it would build a barrier on the border and deploy troops to prevent them crossing illegally into its territory.
https://reut.rs/2SWMv9Y Lithuania says Belarus is flying in migrants, plans border barrier.
Good thing Afghanistan is winding down. Lithuania can redeploy its troops to protect the border. They probably would be a great help to solve the immigration problem from forever wars.
Maybe they can even get Belarus to pay for their wall…

Posted by: upstater | Jul 8 2021 14:24 utc | 6

Interesting read on NEO

On December 3, Fahmi Hinawi, one of the heads of the Mossad who was involved in killing Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed in his car near Tel Aviv. The scenario for his assassination followed the same pattern that the Israelis had used: Hinawi’s car had stopped at a red traffic light and was then riddled with bullets from automatic weapons.
In late January, a “strange” plane crash in Afghanistan killed a high-ranking American CIA officer, Michael D’Andrea, who was in charge of operations in the Middle East and was involved in setting up the assassination of the Qasem Soleimani, head of the IRGC Quds special forces.
And on June 26 at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, US Air Force officer and Red Horse Squadron commander James Willis was found dead. The Air Force Times reported that the death of the 55-year-old US Air Force lieutenant colonel was not related to any hostilities. Previously, Iranian intelligence services had affirmed that Willis was involved in murdering the IRGC Quds special forces commander Qasem Soleimani on the night of January 3.

Washington is Progressively Losing the “Match” it is Playing with Tehran

Posted by: Down South | Jul 8 2021 14:32 utc | 8

Desperately looking for a clue on Haiti, but this assassination seems to have caught everyone off guard. Jovenel Moïse was supposedly doing Washington’s bidding, so it seems unlikely they would take him out. There were elections upcoming wherein he was not to be a candidate. There is the question of the constitution which I assume was being designed to not rock any boats either. Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (former President Aristide is reportedly in Cuba getting medical treatment) tweeted:

We deeply regret the passing of the President of the Republic of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse. We strongly condemn the violent act that caused his death. We send our condolences to family members and to our brother Haitian people. We call for peace.

Posted by: Maracatu | Jul 8 2021 15:37 utc | 10

Re: US decline in semiconductor manufacturing
This is an interesting article on the history of the financialization of Intel.
It describes reasonably well, in summary, the slow motion decline of Intel as a leading edge semiconductor fabricator such that it is now 2 generations behind TSMC in semiconductor technology, and furthermore ascribes this decline to decades of stock buybacks.
Of course, the shortages impacting “non hi tech goods” like cars are not due to the leading edge processes but rather the gap between 200mm and 300mm wafer production; the older chip like microcontrollers are of the 200mm generation while the 5nm and 3nm chips are all 300mm wafers. It isn’t even economically possible to transition a design from 200mm to 300mm – the underlying economics is such that the same physical chip manufactured in 45nm or larger semiconductor generation tech vs. 22nm or smaller would have multiples in cost difference.
Equally, the progression of technology has cemented the role of the giants in industry. At 0.18um/180nm – you could design and fabricate test chips for $100K meaning a startup could raise $1M and have a chance to produce.
At 45nm – the similar cost is $1M.
at 5nm – I don’t know but I’d imagine the cost is more like $3M to $4M.
here is some data on relative cost vs. performance at different semiconductor technology nodes
Thus the economics I note above are due to the mask costs plus the fact that mature 200mm processes have nearly maximum yields (95%+) vs. the 75% or less yields for a newly migrated chip (between fabs, into new processes etc).
But returning to the article: Biden has proposed a $50B incentive program to kick start the US semiconductor industry. But how much will really be “American”? TSMC has announced a $12B fab in Arizona – so $50B would pay for maybe 3 new chip fabs at best.
TSMC enjoys far greater labor, tax and environmental cost savings in Taiwan but understands the strategic necessity of retaining access to the US market.
Good for them – I worked with TSMC directly for the latter part of my semiconductor career, and was always impressed both with their tactical technical focus and their strategic awareness of what it takes to lead in their industry.

Posted by: c1ue | Jul 8 2021 15:58 utc | 12

COVID-19 vaccination in children – major ethical concerns
“…it is extremely concerning to hear of a possible rollout to children later this year. In so doing, we are entering into very questionable ethical terrain. The main concerns are as follows:
● All the vaccine trials have specifically excluded children. Effects of the vaccine on children are therefore completely unknown.
● The vaccines being rolled out have only limited short-term safety data and no long-term safety data available.
● Known potential, late-onset effects from vaccines that have not yet been ruled out include adverse immune response to infection, neurological disorders, autoimmune disease and pregnancy related problems which could take months or years to become apparent.
● Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna vaccines involve completely new mRNA vaccine technology which has never previously been given to a large population.
● AstraZeneca, while involving a standard delivery method, still involves presenting DNA fragments to the host cell which will then be taken up by the host to programme for spike protein production rather than the more traditional whole virus or viral protein technologies. The recent suspension of this vaccine in over a dozen countries over blood clot fears is cause for concern.
● Children are at extremely low risk from COVID-19 and no previously healthy child under 15 has died. In context, COVID-19 accounted for 0.54% of all childhood deaths in the UK and 6 other countries over the last 12 months. Around 30-50% of children remain asymptomatic and admissions to hospital or intensive care are uncommon.
● A small number of children have been reported with Paediatric Inflammatory Multiorgan Syndrome but the vast majority have made a full recovery.
● It has been suggested that a very small number of children may develop ‘Long Covid’, however given the unknown risks of adverse events from vaccination, this is not a reason to proceed.
● Children are also much less likely than adults to transmit the virus, indeed living or working with young children reduces the risk of severe disease. Therefore the argument of ‘protecting others’ is not applicable.
● Limited UK trials on children are designed to look at the immune response with only 300 participants. This trial cannot assure long term safety.
For all of the reasons cited above, it would be highly unethical to vaccinate children who are at such low risk from COVID-19. Any potentially long-term negative outcomes from vaccination are especially important for children, for whom so many more years lie ahead and whose immune and neurological systems are still developing.”

Posted by: ADKC | Jul 8 2021 16:13 utc | 14

China strikes back at Amerika.
https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/china-to-us-two-can-play-at-technological-war/
This won’t end well for Amerika.

Posted by: jo6pac | Jul 8 2021 16:20 utc | 16

re: Haiti
Clearly the assassinated President had his security removed ahead of the arrival of the “mercenaries”.

Posted by: jayc | Jul 8 2021 16:44 utc | 18

Can Turkey hold Kabul Airport?
Posted by: svaya | Jul 8 2021 16:36 utc | 19
With 500 troops, they will hold it as long as the Taliban wants them to.

Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Jul 8 2021 16:50 utc | 20

Posted by: vk | Jul 8 2021 16:04 utc | 14
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Jul 8 2021 16:46 utc | 21
Lee Camp provides some bio-attack history against the USA by the USA.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/528701-bioweapons-attacks-cia-military/
So, why would they not take a lab leak from the USA that they might want to cover up and transport it to Wuhan to pass the guilt.
I know people here oppose the lab leak because it is a meme used to demonize China, rather than because there is sufficient evidence to dispose of it. There isn’t. We will probably never know because the US labs will not be allowed to be investigated.
Camp concludes:
“In sum, the Military Intelligence Industrial Complex are serial murderers — not just overseas — but of our own citizens. They performed hundreds of experiments on unsuspecting Americans, and yet the organizations responsible still exist and enjoy budgets in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year. No one went to prison for these heinous acts because when you or I do it, it’s called “a horrible crime,” but when the ruling elite do it, it’s called “research.””

Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Jul 8 2021 17:31 utc | 22

@Blue Dotterel #24
Lee Camp makes an assumptive close stating that COVID was created.
I have noted many times that this is extremely poor thinking.
Creating a brand new infection path is extremely difficult – even creating known and well documented genetic fix for a disease takes a long time and a lot of dead test patients, thus the capability to find such a path is highly unlikely.
Multiple leading virologists in the specific field have stated that the infection path used by COVID was unknown to science until it popped up with the actual disease. Not theorized, not known to exist much less known to be a viable way to infect humans to a high degree.
A second part is that even if such research is conducted, you still have to test to see how “new” variants perform. Where are the hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of test subjects – the camps full of “V for Vendetta” undesirables used as test subjects?
Thus what Mr. Camp writes is based on pure supposition: that both steps above were actually done – plus a third one – that nobody would talk about playing a role in a disease which has killed millions of people and has accelerated the decline of the US vs. China to a visible degree. This requires a full creation and distribution chain of sociopaths/psychopaths to boot.
Possible? Certainly but possible does not mean either likely or real and as such requires extraordinary evidence.
Criminal prosecutions requires means, motive and opportunity. All of this talk about NWO or whatever only addresses motive.
There is still missing the means and the opportunity.
Washington State was the first US state to have community transmission – but they suffered far less than New York or other East Coast states, nor did they have a 2nd/later wave like California such that California deaths per 1M are now double that of Washington State (albeit still lower than NY or the tri-state). Note furthermore that the East Coast infections didn’t come from Asia directly or even the West Coast early footholds, but from Europe.
Are these magical conspirators so stupid as the enable transmission in their own backyards, since DC, Detrick, etc are all East Coast?

Posted by: c1ue | Jul 8 2021 17:48 utc | 24

BoJo’s decision to allow Brits to treat the COVIDsafe Rules as discretionary whilst UK opens Everything, amid a background increase in New Infections, could become UK’s most famous Social Engineering Experiment since Lord Balfour recommended the creation of “Israel”.
————–
Oz’s vax roll-out has become a completely opaque bullshit festival due to ScoMo over-exaggerating the forward-order delivery schedule late last year.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jul 8 2021 18:12 utc | 26

@
Posted by: vk | Jul 8 2021 16:04 utc | 14
Is this serious?
America Needs to Break Up Its Biggest States
If this really is serious, then American stupidity is stronger and more widespread than I thought.
It sounds like a wet dream of the Democrats.
If they could break up the coastel states, they would gain relatively.
Like the proposition to make DC a state.

Posted by: Kartoschka | Jul 8 2021 18:21 utc | 28

@Kartoschka (Tater man!) #30
The NYT article is just gerrymandering at a different level.
And it is utterly not credible.
California’s blue votes due to its all-or-nothing electoral vote setup benefits enormously from the 25%-35% of CA’s population that is red. Any breakup of California into multiple states would free up significant numbers of electoral votes from LA/SF domination. The same could be said for states dominated by a large city – like Illinois or New York state.
What these particular gerrymanderers want is to selectively break up red states in which the blue urban areas suffer the same type of problem.
This is nothing more than old school political party block and tackling.

Posted by: c1ue | Jul 8 2021 18:52 utc | 30

28 Hoarse… You must have missed Wembley yesterday. 60,000 ppl in the stadium, probably less than 1 mask per 1,000.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2021/jul/08/england-fans-celebrate-euro-2020-semi-final-victory-in-pictures
co-what?

Posted by: Mina | Jul 8 2021 18:57 utc | 32

France will not allow Russian nor Chinese vaccine……certaimly Russia is not at all happy says Zakharova….says some nice choice words.

Posted by: Jo | Jul 8 2021 19:19 utc | 34

@ Posted by: Mina | Jul 8 2021 17:52 utc | 27
I don’t understand your position. The vaccines work. They’re the nearest thing we have of a “cure” from COVID-19. Children can and do transmit COVID-19, and the concept of herd immunity only works if children are also vaccinated. The governments all around the world are offering to vaccinate their peoples for free at the point of delivery (therefore, they are cheaper to the consumer, as their price is zero).
So, you have something you only have to take once in a year, that has its efficacy scientifically demonstrated and that’s being offered for free to the population. And you’re against it because… people should buy Ivermectin! (some months ago, it was HCQ).
Stop and listen to yourself. You’re propagandizing for a drug that doesn’t work and either way would be much more expensive under the argument it it does work and is less expensive. You’re literally picking the facts and turning them upside down: you’re pretending to live in a parallel universe where vaccines don’t work, have worst collateral effects and is more expensive, while Ivermectin do work, has no collateral effects and is less expensive. You’re the definition of Orwellianism.
At this point, I can come to no other conclusion than that you’re a paid troll hired by Big Pharma (probably through some shell NGO like the FLCCC).

Posted by: vk | Jul 8 2021 19:28 utc | 36

Sorry – “covid” of course.

Posted by: juliania | Jul 8 2021 19:30 utc | 38

vk,
Strangely enough, Japan and South Korea seem to have had envisaged the possibility of targeted vaccination of only the ppl at risk and those who volunteered. And the same in the Netherlands. These three countries are usually pretty advanced in bio-tech.
But that was before the Delta variant.
The EU, out of fear for its airlines industry, and because of its need for the cheap workers it flies here and there when needed, has let the whole vaccination plan that could have been limited to the ppl at risk, fail lamentably.

Posted by: Mina | Jul 8 2021 19:35 utc | 40

And my comment @ the MoA Week in Review below is at 115, pertinent paragraph begins “…I will as well mention the earlier article…”

Posted by: juliania | Jul 8 2021 19:37 utc | 42

article from 2015 inside the article i linked to above –
New SARS-like virus can jump directly from bats to humans, no treatment available

Posted by: james | Jul 8 2021 19:38 utc | 44

@ mina,
So sorry for citizen VK screaming at yoh. Lost in his Xanadu. Eyes wide closed.

“quand le sage montre la Lune, l’imbécile regarde le doigt”

Posted by: Rêver | Jul 8 2021 19:45 utc | 46

Also – Sinopharm is maybe most popular too due to being really safe and without any significant side efects, basically it is go to choice for any risky group (really old/sick people). Which I trust completely cause it uses most proved, traditional way of producing vaccine that is for decades in use.

Posted by: Abe | Jul 8 2021 19:53 utc | 48

Also, regarding vaccinating children for goal of achieving herd immunity – correct me if I am wrong, but NO vaccine prevents people from being contagious when they do catch covid.
So even if you vaccinate children (regardless which vaccine) or anyone for that matter, they still get the virus (with lower risk of serious complications, as they say), but you are STILL contagious for people around you.
So vaccinating children is completely non logical, considering more of them will die due complications of those mrna vaccines than from virus itself. And god only knows what are long term side effects.

Posted by: Abe | Jul 8 2021 20:01 utc | 50

@ Posted by: Mina | Jul 8 2021 19:38 utc | 48
The goal of the vaccines is not to make one completely immune to reinfection by COVID-19. Their goal is to make them transmit much less (close to zero) and immune to grave cases of COVID-19. A vaccinated person may get infected by the SARS-CoV-2, but he/she will only have an very mild case worst case scenario (more likely non-symptomatic) and most likely will not infect other people.
To say vaccines are failing because people are getting reinfected is falsifying the truth.
Those anecdotal cases of random cities and countries having “plummeting cases/deaths after using Ivermectin” hide the fact that there’s a cocktail of more than 20 drugs being used for COVID-19 patients. Ivermectin is far from being the only game in town when things go south for an COVID-19 patient. And that’s when you ignore the fact that there’s no way you can prove Ivermectin is working in those cases, because the claim is Ivermectin only works in the initial and very mild cases – well, most people get better from those cases, so there’s no way to tell those were due to Ivermectin. The only way you can visually infer reduced deaths is from the mortality rate from the grave cases, not the mild ones – and those may well be due to experience gained from the medical staff, better treatments for grave cases, more ventilators available relatively etc. etc.

Posted by: vk | Jul 8 2021 20:10 utc | 52

The Space Race: Technical Facts vs Popular Narrative
A little while ago, commenter Karlof1 asked me about the space race, the Apollo Program, and the role of Nazi scientists recruited under Operation Paperclip.
This is a fascinating subject that has also been severely distorted by the American narrative.
What prompted Karlof’s query was my earlier, and somewhat lengthy technical discussion of today’s state of space technology, where the media narrative is that the US is greatly advanced, due mostly the ‘exploits’ of SpaceX—when in fact the situation is quite the opposite.
The US is far behind important core technologies like advanced rocket engines and space station tech, both of which it acquired from Russia. China has similarly acquired nearly all of its core space technology from Russia, but has built impressively on that technology transfer—including developing its very own space station tech, and its own advanced rocket engines.
During the 1990s, many important Russian industries were on the verge of collapse due to the disintegration of the USSR. Hence there was something of a firesale of Russian space tech, something that would have been considered unthinkable previously. The Chinese acquired their entire manned program, Shenzhou, lock, stock and barrel through direct technology transfer from Russia, resulting in the first Chinese man in space in 2003.
The US similarly bought its way into the Mir2 space station that was already built, but not yet launched, abandoning its own effort to build an indigenous station to rival Mir—the Freedom space station that was killed on the drawing board. Those Mir2 modules, now known as the Russian Orbital Segment, would become the functional core of the ISS.
The US also acquired advanced Russian engines and key engine technologies, mostly the RD180, which is in fact the undisputed workhorse for both high profile Nasa missions [such as the current mars rover mission], and the US Space Force, which launches nearly all of its mission-critical payloads on the Russian engines.
Other Russian engines, including the RD190 and even the 1960s era mothballed NK33s were also bought up and pressed into service by the US. That the Russians possessed this advanced engine technology was completely unknown in the west until the 1990s, which had regarded the ‘closed-cycle’ technology as technically ‘impossible.’
So let’s take a look back to the 1950s, when spaceflight was first achieved. This was an exciting era, and there is much to discuss here, so I will leave the Apollo story for another time.
By the latter stages of Word War 2, the Germans were the undisputed leaders in rocket technology. The V2 rocket, which was used to bombard London, was a hugely impressive piece of engineering for the time.
Russia, whose rocket technology in the 1930s was considered comparable to the Germans, had fallen behind. But the country did develop smaller, albeit usable rocket engines, for instance the experimental Bereznyak-Isayev BI1 interceptor aircraft. The US really had no rocket engine technology to speak of during this era.
But the US would import most of the German rocket engineers, as well as some working copies of the V2 itself. This would provide a strong base to build on, not just for the space race a decade later, but also the far more important race for strategic weapons, namely the intercontinental ballistic missile.
A quick tale of the tape on the V2: It had a mass of 12.5 metric tons, and a thrust of about 25 tons, from a single engine burning alcohol and liquid oxygen. It could reach a speed of 3,500 mph, and a flight range of about 300 km. Incredibly, over 3,000 of these were built during the war!

Von Braun and over 100 key V-2 personnel surrendered to the Americans, and many of the original V-2 team ended up working at the Redstone Arsenal. The US also captured enough V-2 hardware to build approximately 80 of the missiles.

The Soviets captured the V2 manufacturing facilities in Eastern Germany and used some of the remaining German engineers and technicians to build 30 V2s of their own by 1946.
The following year, a group of these engineers were transferred to Russia to work under the direction of Sergei Korolev, on the R1 missile, a copy of the V2, but built using Russian industrial plants.
This was quickly followed by the substantially improved R2, which first flew in 1949, and featured a number of key design improvements. R2 achieved double the V2’s range, and a much higher speed of nearly 5,000 mph.
By 1953, the Russians started on what would become the world’s first ICBM and also the world’s first space launch vehicle—the R7 ‘Semyorka’ rocket.
This was a huge leap forward in rocket technology. The R7 first flew in 1957 and launched Sputnik, the first satellite in earth orbit, later that year. It was also the launch vehicle for the first TWO humans in space, Yuri Gagarin in April, 1961 and Gherman Titov in August of the same year.
In the meantime, the US launched its first ‘astronaut,’ Alan Shepard on a suborbital ‘spaceflight’ atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket that was basically a slightly improved V2, comparable to the Russian R2 of a decade earlier.
In this photo from 1961, we see the Mercury-Redstone rocket that carried Shepard on America’s first ‘spaceflight’ [more on that in a moment]. Joachim Kuettner, the Mercury project manager, and former V2 engineer is seen at left. ‘Astronaut’ Gus Grissom is sixth from left.
The size difference between the Mercury Rocket and the Russian Semyorka is obvious. With a mass of 30 tons, it was barely one tenth the mass of the R7. The latter’s thrust of over one million pounds was more than TWELVE times the power of the single engine Mercury rocket with its 78,000 pounds of thrust!
Crucially, the single-stage Mercury could only reach a speed of about 5,000 mph, less than one third of orbital velocity of 18,000 mph [8 km/s].
A little basic physics to explain what ‘space flight’ really means. In short, it means achieving orbit, which is a function of SPEED, not altitude.
To understand this, a spacecraft must generate enough centrifugal force to overcome the earth’s gravitational pull. When the spacecraft’s centrifugal force is exactly equal to the earth’s gravity, the spacecraft will continue orbiting the earth indefinitely, just as the space station stays aloft [provided it is high enough above the atmosphere that collisions with few and far between air molecules don’t slow down its speed, which will cause it to descend, and require an engine burn to speed back up].
A good way to visualize this equilibrium of forces is with the Olympic hammer throw. As seen here, the athlete swings a metal ball attached to a length of cable he is holding. As he swings it around, the centrifugal force builds up and wants to hurl that ball off into space. But the cable is like the force of gravity keeping it from spinning off. The two forces are in exact equilibrium, until he lets go.
The only difference with an orbiting spacecraft is that the earth’s gravity never lets go! Once equilibrium is reached the two opposing forces are equal and opposite, as per Netwon’s Third Law. And since centrifugal force is a function of speed, it is necessary to reach a speed of about 8 km/s [18,000 mph] to counter the earth’s gravitational acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared.
[Here is the math: centrifugal force = mass x velocity squared, divided by radius of the circular motion. Since the radius of the earth is about 6,400 km, and we assume a unit mass of 1 kg, then it is a simple matter of algebra to solve for speed: square root of (earth’s radius in meters x acceleration of gravity), which gives…square root of (6,400,000 m x 9.8 m/s^2) = 7,900 m/s, or ~8 km/s]
I am dwelling on this because it is important to understand what actual spaceflight means. Simply flying to any given height above the atmosphere is not spaceflight—anymore than a ski jump is ‘flying.’
Similarly, feeling weightlessness also does not require actual spaceflight. Astronauts regularly train on large commercial jets that have had their interiors removed and the pilots fly the airplane in a ballistic arc that provides up to several minutes of zero g flight inside the cabin training space. In fact, you can have several seconds of zero g flight in a little Cessna student training aircraft!
So let’s continue with the relevant stats for the first American ‘spaceflight’ of Alan Shepard. His 1961 flight aboard that Mercury rocket [a souped up V2] covered a total distance of 263 miles over the ground! While staying aloft for a grand total of 15 minutes!
Now compare that to Gagarin and Titov’s real spaceflights, Gagarin making a complete orbit of the earth in about 90 minutes, which is 25,000 miles, almost one hundred times greater than Shepard’s distance flown. Titov Orbited the earth 17 times in 25 hours aloft just a few months after Gagarin—covering a distance of 425,000 miles!
Obviously the US has been willfully deceiving folks about what spaceflight means for all of these decades.
And they have been doing it because they desperately wanted to show they could ‘match’ the Russians by sending a man into ‘space.’
And the reason they could get away with this is because they knew that the majority of folks simply don’t have any knowledge of physics.
It is a cynical charade that plays upon the public’s lack of understanding!
It was only John Glenn’s 1962 flight aboard a much more capable rocket, the Atlas, which put the first American in space. He flew three orbits, covering a distance of 75,000 miles in about four hours aloft.
This was in fact an incredibly daring feat, considering the shortcomings of the early Atlas rockets. This was also the first US ICBM. It was far less capable in both mass and thrust than the Soviet R7, and could only carry a fraction of the latter’s payload. More importantly, it was prone to spectacular explosions.

After watching an Atlas ICBM explode shortly after launch, Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom remarked “Are we really going to get on top of one of those things?”
The numerous failures led to Atlas being dubbed an “Inter County Ballistic Missile” by missile technicians…

An ‘inter-county’ ballistic missile? Why not?…considering the first American ‘astronaut’ Shepard made an inter-county ‘spaceflight.’
But hats off to John Glenn, who showed remarkable grit to fly one of these things at this stage in the game, where the Americans were clearly desperate to keep up. Glenn flew into orbit again at age 77, aboard the Shuttle STS95 mission.
What is clear to this point in time is that both the Russians and US piggybacked off the German V2 technology. The big difference in results was due to the Russians having their own, indigenous rocket capabilities that were not that far behind Germany.
The impressive Soviet buildup of higher education was perhaps the key, which built greatly on top of already world-leading institutions like the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which pioneered the use of deep practical education in concert with industry, alongside the classroom theory. This influence was in fact adopted back in the latter 19’th century by MIT and other American technical universities.
During the Stalin era, ‘Baumanka’ founded more than 70 technical universities in the USSR. Among them some of the more storied names in specialist fields like rocketry, aviation [TSAGI] and many more.
I will leave the story at this point, but perhaps some interesting and hitherto unfamiliar aspects of the early space race have been presented.
There is still much more ground to cover before we get to the moon race, but it is worth noting that the R7 Semyorka evolved into the Soyuz launch vehicles, which have made nearly 2,000 spaceflights to date and are still carrying cosmonauts and astronauts to the space station.
There are many interesting technical details here, as the engines on the Semyorka-Soyuz are remarkably similar to the original V2. The Russians simply refined this basic engine technology and literally perfected it. However, the advanced closed-cycle engines would come along later, for larger and more demanding launches.
By comparison, the US space program was far more discontinuous. Neither the V2 nor the early Atlas technology was ever refined or taken to its logial evolutionary limit. The same was true for the Saturn V of the Apollo program, which was abandoned after just 13 flights. And so on down the line.
There is still lots of very interesting technical discussion engines to explore. And engines are of course the heart of any spacecraft—in the same way a turbojet engine is the beating heart of an aircraft.

Posted by: Gordog | Jul 8 2021 20:39 utc | 54

@ sol..you’ve been on the attack since your first post @ 15…. maybe give it a break and listen to your own words @ 77..

Posted by: james | Jul 8 2021 20:53 utc | 56

Indeed James, you are right….in the heat of things I said some things I shouldn’t have.

Posted by: Sol | Jul 8 2021 20:55 utc | 58

@61 vk
I heard first hand from a doctor in a hospital that the medical doctors had no effective methods of stopping Covid cases which progressed to serious or critical levels in a patient. Basically, at a certain point the patient’s body was on its own.
This was about six months ago and I’ve not heard anything to suggest this has changed.
Therefore I’m inclined to agree with your take on vaccines on the whole, but I do think the vaccine solution is going to lead to Covid vaccines annually for eternity, i.e. the mandatory flu shot that corporations have been pushing aggressively for my entire life.
I’m really torn about the whole mess, but at some point I think this on again/off again soft lockdown should be rejected unless there is a real fiscal policy attached to preserve livelihoods and pay essential workers double.
Wealthy elite must be made to lose money in the crisis and not profit to ensure the response to the problem is honest. Right now the crisis is not going to waste for the elites and I see a very drawn out ending in their favor barring any bonafide political resistance.

Posted by: Rutherford82 | Jul 8 2021 20:55 utc | 60

@ Jen | Jul 8 2021 20:55 utc | 79
Our discussion might very well sound stupid to rational minds and in the sane world, but that is the history of that country.
Despite agreeing with the fact that its super stupid, I dont want it to be deleted…..because for those interested they get a peek into Afghan history and the coming civil war.

Posted by: Afgun | Jul 8 2021 21:10 utc | 62

This racist duet by two allegedly afghans monopolizing the thread in a very displeasant way seems to be a deliberate move to shift our more gentle barflies’ opinion on the characteristics of the habitants of Afghanistan,so as to make us believe it is a very racist society.Like they want us to persuade that some national-felt union between all the tribes and people of this very special country would be impossible.
The retreat-defeat of the USA is in needs of new narrative.Don’t be fooled by the hasbara trolling.

Posted by: willie | Jul 8 2021 21:38 utc | 64

Mandatory vaccinations and the vaccination of children with vaccines that are still in clinical trials are crimes against humanity.
I know I’m repeating myself

Posted by: DG | Jul 8 2021 21:50 utc | 66

perhaps small potatoes in the grand scheme, but the amount of money spent on ngo’s in Afghanistan as part of the PR budget for the “rape Afghanistan” op… what was the last year that an ngo even had an office in Kabul, much less actually doing one damn thing in Afghanistan? 2010? 2008? untold billions have been spent since then.
the same story could be told of Haiti. India. et ubique. the function of a “teacher” is to obfuscate who the enemy is. esp w/their odious “charity”.

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jul 8 2021 22:04 utc | 68

Gordog @72–
BRAVO!!!
Thanks for that very well done yet terse overview of how German tech and technicians were employed at the beginning of the Space Race. The deception practiced by the Outlaw US Empire on its public provides a useful benchmark as a great deal of deception and actual warfare had already been waged by the government on the public as this recap published today reminds us. Rockets are also used as artillery and dubbed missiles when attached to an airplane. Indeed, the terminology seems to deem rockets as peaceful and missiles warlike, which is rather strange. As one might imagine given Russia’s superior ability in rocket design, it’s also ahead of the game when it comes to military applications.
Thanks to Gordog, we can appreciate the huge bind JFK placed NASA and the entire engineering complex within the Outlaw US Empire when he issued the challenge to land a man on the moon before the 1960s decade was over since it was so far behind. But pressure was also put on the USSR. I’ll let Gordog take the story from here, but I will say that both sides had their triumphs and tragedies. Yet, the big issue that was in play at the beginning–the Outlaw US Empire’s lack of engineers and proper university facilities and lack of scientific ethos–remains the same today as Russia takes higher technical and scientific education extremely seriously as Putin’s involvement with this years Bolshaya Peremena contest attests–Big Change:
“The key goal of the competition is to enable each teenager to reveal their unique abilities. The main criterion of selection will not be the assessment of academic performance, but the availability of skills that will be useful to schoolchildren in the modern world, including the ability to communicate and find non-standard solutions in difficult situations.”
IMO, it’s very instructive for our understanding as to why this big difference in educational outcomes to read what Putin said to Russia’s schoolkids this year:
“Today, we will definitely talk about your projects and achievements, but, first of all, I believe it is necessary to greet, in your person, schoolchildren of all ages, as well as college students who have made an important adult decision for themselves, which is to participate in the Bolshaya Peremena contest, and that is 2.5 million young Russians from all regions of our country, large cities and small towns alike.
“Bolshaya Peremena is there to help you show what you are made of, your abilities and talents, which I am sure every child and every teenager has. The contest motto very accurately conveys its unparalleled nature and its special attitude towards children: here, they do not assess, but appreciate your outside-the-box ideas that occasionally catch people off guard.
“It is not accidental that you were asked to design the school of the future as part of the contest, to describe what it should look like 10 years from now or even in the middle of the 21st century. Our country needs these groundbreaking proposals in order to be able to move forward, so that really big changes could take place in technology, scientific research and our cities and towns.
“Russia offers a vast number of opportunities for you. And I am confident that the contest allowed you to get to know your homeland better as you went on virtual tours of our famous museums and cities with their monuments and achievements. The children with the most outstanding projects, the winners of the finals of the Bolshaya Peremena contest, will take a trip across our country by train from Moscow to Vladivostok. They will see the Ural Mountains, Lake Baikal and the Vostochny Cosmodrome, which is part of our plans for studying and exploring outer space, including deep space.
“Of course, we must move forward relying on the most important human values. That is why it is so important that many of you, from a very young age, work as volunteers and, of your own accord, without any prompting from anyone, help the elderly, take care of animals, preserve nature, and study the history and culture of your native land. Your responsibility and good deeds improve our country’s well-being. Who, if not you, already at school will create and develop Russia, in which you dream to live, work and study?”
IMO, the Outlaw US Empire has no hope of eclipsing those nations soon to pass it because it cannot provide a large suite of basics to its children–not just education, but childcare, healthcare, decent housing, nutritious foods, and stability for their parents, to name some of the most important.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 8 2021 22:13 utc | 70

@ James (#85),
Which money is controlled by the country? If you have read the book thoroughly then one can see what Michael and Radhika have been hiding or ignoring. It has been brought to their attention but they continue to ignore. In fact, one of them acknowledge that reality about suzerainties!
The fact that majority (90+%) of the U$ dollar are created by private banks, it is private money. Our nation (U$A) never cared about the UN’s international laws and neither does it care about the IMF rules. It violated all those rules when it ended the Breton Woods system. Its historical conduct clearly exposes reality and it can’t be masked. The good news is that the system is out of luck and is being exposed!
It was good to see Vladimir Putin being candid and acknowledge in his press conference that Russia is working towards its “economic sovereignty.” The Monetary FRAUD has been exposed and the Empire & U$A’s administration has zero CREDIBILITY.
People can waste their time in trivial issues to obfuscate global reality. Time will tell…

Posted by: Max | Jul 8 2021 22:17 utc | 72

jo6pac #18

China strikes back at Amerika.
https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/china-to-us-two-can-play-at-technological-war/
This won’t end well for Amerika.

And C1ue #13

… Biden has proposed a $50B incentive program to kick start the US semiconductor industry. But how much will really be “American”? TSMC has announced a $12B fab in Arizona – so $50B would pay for maybe 3 new chip fabs at best.

The Asia Times report that jo6pac links has an ending that should exercise the mind of small men like Biden:

Starting in late 2019, China started hiring chip fabrication engineers from Taiwan, now the world’s leader in semiconductor manufacturing. By some accounts, the mainland lured away between 10% and 20% of Taiwan’s engineering force with exorbitant salaries.
Earlier this month, President Xi appointed his Harvard-educated Vice Premier Liu He to head an “all-country” effort to achieve semiconductor independence. China’s high-tech investment program has a budget of about $1 trillion.

It is only a question of time and misdirected capital. I get the impression that the thieving jackals are more active in the USAi than in China and so more of China’s investment will be applied to the intended chip development industry.
Biden $50 Billion
China $1 Trillion
qed

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 8 2021 22:44 utc | 74

karlof1 #93

Max @83–
You just libeled one of the most outstanding research political-economists on the planet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He’s condemned the guilty longer than you’ve been living!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Time for you to be ignored!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you karlof1, I’ll drink to that and shout you one too to settle the blood pressure ;))

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 8 2021 22:54 utc | 76

Posted by: Mina | Jul 8 2021 17:52 utc | 27
*yawn* Get some interference RNA, problem solved. Let’s not act like we can’t biohack them back.

Posted by: Krungle | Jul 8 2021 23:06 utc | 78

A damn interesting interview with Adam Curtis (latest doc “Can’t Get You Out of
My Head”) in counterpunch here Yeah, yeah I know we hate CP cos it
publishes a few articles by dems to pay the rent, nevertheless it is a site that
publishes enervating stuff as well.
Coupla quotes from Curtis i/v:

RN: Your new film series – Can’t Get You Out of My Head – seems to contradict
some of the arguments you made in previous series, for example, the notion that
computers and the internet have taken over our lives.
AC: I think the problem you have with me is that there isn’t any consistency. I’m
a journalist who changes responses on the stuff I find out. You see my point.
Whereas, if I were a political writer or a polemicist, I’d be arguing one point.
snip
AC: Yeah. The problem with a lot of liberal thought at the moment is that it’s
desperately trying to stay consistent in the face of a change in reality out
there, above all, a changing attitude among working-class people. And they can’t
deal with that. And in that sense they are trying to enforce a very brittle
consistency in their thinking.
RN: Wouldn’t you attribute that to this enormous class divide? Here, in America,
we elide any notion of class. We don’t talk about social class in this country.
You do a little more in England. We don’t talk about class in America. We don’t
say working-class, we always say middle-class.
AC: But, hang on, if you read The New York Times between the years 2016 to 2020,
they’re continually talking about class. They’re continually talking about class;
they’re talking about the class that voted for Trump and that class tended to be
working-class people. But it’s quite obvious by the way they write that’s what
they’re talking about: that these people are stupid – which is very reminiscent
of the way the middle-class used to talk about the working-class in the 19th
century. Very similar.
RN: Yes, that condescension and incomprehension.
snip
RN: Do you think we’re at the end of the Enlightenment era, that the
Enlightenment has failed?
AC: No. You’ve got a class who believed they were part of the Enlightenment – the
liberal middle classes – who have been shocked in my country and your country by
Brexit and by Trump and still haven’t recovered from it. And instead of actually
turning around and facing themselves, they’re making great claims about the end
of democracy and the end of Enlightenment. I mean, talk about narcissism. The
idea, that at this very moment, when things are going a little bad for them – and
the working-classes whom they thought loved them – have turned around and bitten
them in the ass. The idea that that’s the end of the Enlightenment and the end of
democracy is sheer narcissistic arrogance. It’s what you’re feeling at the moment
and it’s a class that’s losing power. It’s losing its grip and no one really
cares about them any longer. No one cares about The New York Review of Books,
they really don’t. A lot of people don’t read novels any longer. Shock! But that
doesn’t mean it’s the end of the Enlightenment. It really doesn’t. There’s a
hysteria around it now.

For those of us who prefer a good cogitate the i/v provokes pretty much the same
response as Curtis’ docos, much to consider.
Suprisingly he is not exactly dissmissive, but deprecating about his work – says
it’s dependence on taking samples of times past, isn’t great. Curtis said “And
maybe part of the problem is this endless cycling of the past. People like me do
or the band I’ve worked with, Massive Attack: they came up with what’s called
sampling. It was good in its time because it was a way of reconfiguring what we
lived through. But maybe it has become a terrible throttle hold instead of
actually going out and finding out what’s new.”
A more interesting and reflective chap than I imagined he was.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Jul 8 2021 23:14 utc | 80

Karlof, thanks so much for your comment!
About Max and Michael Hudson…yeah that is pretty bizarre. I can’t get enough of the man, and thank the good lord he exists and is still so energetic at age 80 [or perhaps beyond].
He’s all over youtube, accepting the invitation of just about every little outfit to come and talk. Bless this man!
And btw, thanks for your heads-up about the Valdai paper as well as Prof Hudson’s new chapter for his book on previous threads. I read absolutely everything from him!
Yes, Max’s comment here is shocking to say the least. But I have been reading his comments, and he does seem to have the basics correct—although he probably doesn’t yet realize that there may still be a lot more to learn. As Alexander Pope said so memorably, a little learning is a dangerous thing.
I’m cutting him some slack on the MH comment since I want to see what interesting things he may come up with going forward. The salt shaker is standing by, lol!
Yes, I read the Lee Camp piece too—the man is very funny, and has a very well-working conscience. to me it’s obvious that the US is by far the very biggest LIAR in the history of the world. The Nazis didn’t even come close!

Posted by: Gordog | Jul 8 2021 23:52 utc | 82

Posted by: Afgun | Jul 8 2021 23:48 utc | 104

Pashtuns killed 87 little Hazara girls by blowing up their school, they attacked (a first for humanity) a maternity ward and killed new borns as young as few minutes and mothers in the process of giving birth….

Is there any evidence for this?
The Taliban denied responsibility.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Jul 9 2021 0:13 utc | 84

karlof1 and Gardog
I can’t see what is so objectionable about Max’s statement with regard to Michael Hudson. Hudson is able to call out the “guilty” because he worked with them, designing and enabling their system of fraud.
I find much of what Hudson says to be very interesting and enlightening and while I can cut him a bit of slack because of his revelations he is also one of the “guilty”, is he not?
Hudson’s only defence is that he was employed and doing what he was told to do, he was “following orders”. Well, that’s the defence nearly every one of the “guilty” can claim. And surely it’s long been established that doing what you’re told, “following orders”, is no defence at all.

Posted by: ADKC | Jul 9 2021 0:57 utc | 86

I misspoke, senior moment — John Glenn of course, who later went into politics. Neil Armstrong was the moon guy.

Posted by: juliania | Jul 9 2021 1:03 utc | 88

jayc @20
Clearly the assassinated President had his security removed ahead of the arrival of the “mercenaries”.
No firefight as they approached his residence so that is what it looks like. An American has been arrested in the plot. They reportedly spoke English and Spanish. They used DEA uniforms for cover.
What were they tying to hide? Nothing. The message was clearly sent to the rest of the leadership on the island and the whole Caribbean region for that matter.

Posted by: circumspect | Jul 9 2021 1:27 utc | 90

Gordog @ 72
The US is far behind important core technologies like advanced rocket engines and space station tech, both of which it acquired from Russia. China has similarly acquired nearly all of its core space technology from Russia, but has built impressively on that technology transfer—including developing its very own space station tech, and its own advanced rocket engines.
All I can offer is my eyewitness account. At a military base in the South early in the morning in the ’70’s I saw a black teardrop shaped craft with no wings or engine nozzles come in at tree top height completely silent.
The craft had a bubble canopy and in the canopy was a pilot. He was wearing a US flight suit and headgear. I was eyeball to eyeball with him. He turned and look at me and I was looking at him. I could not see his eyeballs per se because of his visor but he was looking at me.
There were no pylons for weapons. I would say is was about the size of a fighter jet in that era. We got some stuff going in the background and have had it for a long time.

Posted by: circumspect | Jul 9 2021 2:05 utc | 92

Posted by: Afgun | Jul 9 2021 1:43 utc | 115

All suicide bombers that were caught alive or death in the area have been Pashtuns

Fine. But where’s the evidence? Investigation?

…because no one else does such things in Afg.

Really …?

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Jul 9 2021 3:08 utc | 94

Hi Robert.
Yes, the Iranians have actually demonstrated some very serious missile capabilities. This would indeed be worth looking into!
One thing off the top, they are as serious about hard science education as the Soviets were. Iran graduates as many engineers as the US, with one quarter the population, according to Forbes/Statista data.
They are industrializing at a rapid pace, despite all the financial pressure from the US and Europe. Compared to say Turkey, they are light years ahead in serious trchnical capability.
Thanks for your suggedtion!

Posted by: Gordog | Jul 9 2021 3:42 utc | 96

Or maybe there were some mushrooms involved? 😁
Maybe a few tabs. I do fear our that we have fallen so far behind our adversaries in war technology. All that technology is centered around the elimination of MAD. I do not like the idea of going to a weenie roast when I am the weenie being roasted by a nuclear oven.

Posted by: circumspect | Jul 9 2021 3:59 utc | 98

@95 still watching Corrie since 1976 when I used to come home with a head full of thc and adolescent depression after school. I was gonna shoot myself in the head with my dad’s Ruger . 22 pistol but I didn’t because they needed me on bass clarinet in Band and I would have missed Coronation Street. I went to Manchester about 5 years ago to see the street. Corrie is a central pillar in my life.

Posted by: Absurdio | Jul 9 2021 4:08 utc | 100