Unintended Consequences

U.S. taxpayers may have to end up paying $15 billion to the Canadian company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline. The company is seeking damages after Democrat President Joe Biden canceled the pipeline to pursue his far-left energy agenda.

TC Energy announced last month that they were scrapping the project because revoked the permit needed to complete the pipeline. Fox Business noted that a study from the State Department found that the pipeline would have created 26,100 indirect and direct jobs.

TC Energy announced last week that it had “filed a Notice of Intent to initiate a legacy North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) claim under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to recover economic damages resulting from the revocation of the Keystone XL Project’s Presidential Permit,” the company said in a statement. “TC Energy will be seeking to recover more than US$15 billion in damages that it has suffered as a result of the U.S. Government’s breach of its NAFTA obligations.”

The Notice of Intent was filed with the U.S. Department of State. In May, nearly two dozen state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for canceling the pipeline, saying that he exceeded his presidential authority.

The attorneys general argue that Biden exceeded his authority because “of a provision Congress tucked into tax legislation in 2011 that required then-President Barack Obama to either approve the pipeline within 60 days or issue a determination that it wasn’t in the national interest,” NBC News reported. “Obama then rejected TransCanada’s (now TC Energy Corp) application weeks later, saying Congress gave him insufficient time, but allowed the company to re-apply, which deferred the decision until after his re-election. Obama later rejected the application, President Donald Trump approved it, and Biden revoked the approval.”  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Hollywood

 

Ancient Ruins

The world is littered with the ancient ruins of man-made cities and settlements that stretch back thousands of years. Represented are 100 ruins that embody some of the outstanding achievements of humanity across various cultures and civilizations.

1 – Por-Bazhyn – The Mysterious Island Fortress in Siberia
Por-Bazhyn, meaning “Clay House” in the Tuvan language are the remains of an adobe monastery or a fortified palace, that was built on a small island in Lake Tere-Khol, located in the Sengelen mountains of southern Siberia, Russia. Radiocarbon dating and dendrochronological studies suggest that Por-Bazhyn was built around AD 777 by the Uighurs, a tribal confederation under the Orkhon Uyghur that ruled from AD 742 to 848.


2 – Rujm el-Hiri – the “Stonehenge of the Levant”
Rujm el-Hiri (meaning “”stone heap of the wild cat”), also called Gilgal Refā’īm (meaning “wheel of spirits”), is an ancient megalithic monument, located in the Israeli-occupied region of the Golan Heights. Archaeologists dating sediment eolian samples, and the study of pottery sherds excavated in situ, suggest it was constructed either during the Early Bronze Age II around 3000 to 2700 BC, or from the Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age I between 3880– 3540 BC (although there is still no consensus).

3 – The Sunken Town of Pavlopetri
Pavlopetri, also called Paulopetri, is a submerged ancient town, located between the islet of Pavlopetri and the Pounta coast of Laconia, on the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Ceramics recovered in situ confirms that Pavlopetri had Mycenaean occupation, but further archaeological evidence suggests that the town was occupied as early as 3500 BC.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

America

 

Independence Day

 

Fourth of July

Independence Day (colloquially the Fourth of July or July 4) is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the Declaration of Independence of the United States, on July 4, 1776. The Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies were no longer subject (and subordinate) to the monarch of Britain, King George III, and were now united, free, and independent states. The Congress had voted to declare independence two days earlier, on July 2, but it was not declared until July 4.

Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, political speeches, and ceremonies, in addition to various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the national day of the United States.

During the American Revolution, the legal separation of the thirteen colonies from Great Britain in 1776 actually occurred on July 2, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia declaring the United States independent from Great Britain's rule.  After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, a statement explaining this decision, which had been prepared by a Committee of Five, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress debated and revised the wording of the Declaration to remove its vigorous denunciation of the slave trade, finally approving it two days later on July 4. 

Jefferson had written the following indictment against King George III:  He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he had deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Liberty

 

Using Novels to Predict...

Philip Oltermann of THE GUARDIAN writes...


Three years ago, a small group of academics at a German university launched an unprecedented collaboration with the military – using novels to try to pinpoint the world’s next conflicts. Are they on to something?

s the car with the blacked-out windows came to a halt in a sidestreet near Tübingen’s botanical gardens, keen-eyed passersby may have noticed something unusual about its numberplate. In Germany, the first few letters usually denote the municipality where a vehicle is registered. The letter Y, however, is reserved for members of the armed forces.

Military men are a rare, not to say unwelcome, sight in Tübingen. A picturesque 15th-century university town that brought forth great German minds including the philosopher Hegel and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, it is also a modern stronghold of the German Green party, thanks to its left-leaning academic population. In 2018, there was growing resistance on campus against plans to establish Europe’s leading artificial intelligence research hub in the surrounding area: the involvement of arms manufacturers in Tübingen’s “cyber valley”, argued students who occupied a lecture hall that year, brought shame to the university’s intellectual tradition.

Yet the two high-ranking officials in field-grey Bundeswehr uniforms who stepped out of the Y-plated vehicle on 1 February 2018 had travelled into hostile territory to shake hands on a collaboration with academia, the like of which the world had never seen before.

The name of the initiative was Project Cassandra: for the next two years, university researchers would use their expertise to help the German defence ministry predict the future.

The academics weren’t AI specialists, or scientists, or political analysts. Instead, the people the colonels had sought out in a stuffy top-floor room were a small team of literary scholars led by Jürgen Wertheimer, a professor of comparative literature with wild curls and a penchant for black roll-necks.

After the officers had left, the atmosphere among Wertheimer’s team remained tense. A greeting gift of camouflage-patterned running tops and military green nail varnish had helped break the ice, but there was outstanding cause for concern. “We’d been unsure about whether to go public over the project,” recalls Isabelle Holz, Wertheimer’s assistant. The university had declined the opportunity to be formally involved with the defence ministry, which is why the initiative was run through the Global Ethic Institute, a faculty-independent institution set up by the late dissident Catholic, Hans Küng. “We thought our offices might get paint-bombed or something.”

They needn’t have worried. “Cassandra reaches for her Walther PPK” ran the headline in the local press after the project was announced, a sarcastic reference to James Bond’s weapon of choice. The idea that literature could be used by the defence ministry to identify civil wars and humanitarian disasters ahead of time, wrote the Neckar-Chronik newspaper, was as charming as it was hopelessly naive. “You have to ask yourself why the military is financing something that is going to be of no value whatsoever.”  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Dark Matter & Galaxy Spin

The Milky Way rotates at a whopping 130 miles (210 kilometers) per second, but a new study has found that dark matter has slowed the rotation of its bar by at least 24% since its formation nearly 14 billion years ago.

"Astrophysicists have long suspected that the spinning bar at the center of our galaxy is slowing down, but we have found the first evidence of this happening," study co-author Ralph Schoenrich, an astrophysicist at University College London, said in a statement.

These new findings not only shed light on the rotation of the Milky Way but also provide an insight into the nature of one of the most elusive materials in the universe — dark matter.

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a thick band of stars in the center and large pivoting arms stretching out across the cosmos. Scientists think that a halo of dark matter surrounds the Milky Way, extending out far beyond its visible edge, as occurs at other galaxies.

In the new study, researchers used data from Gaia, a European Space Agency mission mapping the positions of billions of stars, to study the Hercules Stream, a thick cluster of stars that revolve around the Milky Way at the same rate that the galactic bar itself spins.

Because the stars in the Hercules Stream are gravitationally trapped by the pivoting bar, slowing down the bar's rotation would cause the stars to creep outward to keep their orbits in sync with the bar's spin.

The researchers found evidence of such an outward cosmic migration when they investigated the chemical makeup of the stars. The Hercules Stream stars are rich in heavier elements, suggesting that these stars formed closer to the galactic center, where stars are about 10 times richer in metals compared to those in the galactic suburbs.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Some Characters

 

I Don't Own No Gun

I am a Vietnam Veteran but after leaving the military made a pledge to myself that I would never own or fire another firearm...  at 73 years of age, I have honored and continue to fulfil that pledge...

HOWEVER, I do believe in the Second Amendment and the right of every American to bear arms if they so desire...  I also believe that it is not the law abiding citizens that are the problem with firearms but the few people who have criminal intent on their minds...  or, those who are mentally deranged for some reason...  typically outside of their own control. 

AND, if a LIBERAL GOVERNMENT ever tries to take guns or the Second Amendment away from the people, there will be a CIVIL WAR in this country because of it...   This is NOT A THREAT...  this is a fact of life and the RIGHTS that were given to us by our Founding Fathers.

Change the government to SOCIALISM and change the CONSTITUTION so that there is no more Second Amendment and this country will pay the price for that egotistical desire...  MOREOVER, not only will this country suffer internally, but it will suffer externally as well as our enemies RUSSIA and CHINA will have a perfect opportunity for conquest...

WAKE UP AMERICA...

Chine's Secret Computer System

Whether it is China’s rover on Mars, its space station orbiting the Earth or its moon probe bringing back lunar samples, one little-known system is behind them all.  The core of the Kylin computer operating system has been guarded as a national secret and its use in the country’s space programme has only just been officially confirmed.

Its main codes were written by Chinese military researchers, according to developer China Electronics Corporation (CEC), but it also includes elements of Unix-like software FreeBSD, parts from Linux, and a user interface similar to Windows.  It is a hybrid, like the mythical qilin dragon beast it is named after.

Speaking to state media on the weekend, members of the Kylin development team revealed the role the operating system played in these missions, coordinating communication between artificial intelligence software, human controllers on the ground and all the hardware on board the spacecraft.

Until about a decade ago, China, like most other countries, relied on Linux and Windows to drive its space programmes, according to a paper published in domestic journal Space Industry Management last year.

From 2008, China’s space authorities started to replace Western software and hardware in satellites and spacecraft. The process sped up after Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about US hacking activities.

Kylin was one of the results – along with the Zhanxing, or Warring Star, system developed by the Chinese military’s space force, according to the paper.

Dan Jianqun, a lead scientist with CEC’s Kylin project, said China had no other choice but to develop its operating system.

“Using other people’s systems, to quote President Xi [Jinping], is like building a house on other people’s land. It can be large and beautiful, but it can also be destroyed overnight,” he said in an interview on state television on Sunday.

The transition from western to home-made software was full of challenges, according to some of the software engineers involved.  Liu Jun, a software engineer on the Kylin team, said space missions required not only high security, but reliability and performance.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...