China, the rising power of the world, has transformed its country into a superpower that will likely dominate the US by the 2030s. To do this, they need to advance their aerospace industry, along with supersonic civil jetliners that could take a traditional flight of ten hours down to five.
A new report from China Central Television (CCTV), reported in English via the Global Times, says China is expected to develop an environmentally friendly supersonic civil aircraft with prototypes expected for flight tests in 2035.
China Association for Science and Technology announced on Sunday at its annual meeting held in Harbin, Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, that it has started designing a green supersonic civil jetliner.
The CCTV report said supersonic air travel would take a traditional ten-hour flight down to five, would revolutionize travel between continents.
“Green supersonic civil aircraft is currently a hot research topic internationally, as well as the direction of future aerospace development,” Xu Yue, a senior engineer at the Chinese Aeronautical Establishment under the state-owned Aviation Industry of China, told CCTV.
We have extensively covered the developments of supersonic and even hypersonic technologies that are expected to revolutionize aerospace in the next decade.
Countries including the US, Japan, and some European countries have already published designs for supersonic planes, CCTV said.
In November 2018, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works started to build the X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) plane, which could take to the skies in the next several years.
The QueSST is for NASA’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstration program will be flown above several US cities to measure the public’s reaction of a low-boom sound from supersonic flight.
We even reported that an Atlanta-based startup is working on the development of hypersonic jetliners.
China has already made breakthroughs in technologies for supersonic and hypersonic flight.
“We hope that, through our own technological development and continued scientific investment, we can launch our own supersonic civil aircraft prototype in around 2035,” Xu said.
A race between China and the US has developed, in who can build, test, and launch a supersonic jetliner first. For the US, this will be about defending its aerospace empire. And for China, well, it’s about becoming the world’s next greatest superpower through technological advances, starting in aerospace, then in all other industries to displace the American empire.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XLkRwU Tyler Durden
Nike pulled the shoe, set to go on sale this week, after former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick told the company he and others found the version of the flag depicted on the shoe offensive, according to a Monday report from The Wall Street Journal. Nike said it did not want to “unintentionally offend and detract from the nation’s patriotic holiday.”
The design — often called the “Betsy Ross” flag, though it’s not clear the 18th century upholsterer actually made it — has been appropriated by extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the “militia movement” in recent years.
But the First Amendment generally forbids the government from retaliating against government contractors based on the contractors’ protected First Amendment activity (which would include either deciding to release a shoe with a particular flag design, or deciding not to release it); the Supreme Court so held in Board of Comm’rs v. Umbehr (1996). And while that case involved traditional payment-for-service contracting, the logic of the case would apply to financial incentives such as those involved in the Nike case. (Indeed, Umbehr relied on, among other cases, Speiser v. Randall (1959), which held this as to tax exemptions.)
Of course, the government can generally choose to terminate a contract (assuming the terms of the contract allow that) or not to renew it for a wide range of reasons. But it can’t do that based on, say, the party’s race or religion—or, the Court held in Umbehr and a companion case (O’Hare Truck Serv. v. City of Northlake (1996)) the party’s First-Amendment protected speech.
The Court in Umbehr focused on speech-based decisions to cancel a terminable-at-will contract, or not to renew such a contract. But it sounds like the Nike matter likewise involves a decision to cancel an already arranged plan; and just as the First Amendment bar on the government firing employees based on their First Amendment activity also applies to refusals to hire (Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois (1990)), so the First Amendment bar on terminating contracts based on First Amendment activity applies to refusals to contract.
Any image of a dead child is always harrowing, for everyone but the most deranged psychopaths among us. If the child has drowned while seeking a better life it is possibly worse. The public reaction of politicians to such images, which varies from doing very little, or nothing, to solve the issues that have led to a child drowning, to trying to make cheap political gains from the image, must be the worst.
On September 2 2015, this photo of Syrian Kurdish 2 year-old Alan Kurdi, lifeless on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey, went viral. Almost 4 years later, all Europe has done is try to hide the problems that led to his death, by handing Turkey billions of euros to keep refugees inside that country. And still today conditions in Lesbos, Greece are appalling. Hardly a thing has changed.
Improvements to the situation that lead to Alan Kurdi’s death, within Syria itself, have had very little to do with European efforts. Russia had a much bigger role in that. And Syria is not the only source, or place, of troubles and refugees. Libya has turned into an open air slave market thanks to US and EU “efforts” under Obama. And Iraq is not exactly a land of milk and honey either. Or Afghanistan.
And then this week another picture of a drowned child made the frontpages -and more. That child, too, drowned due to a situation that has a long history: the US seeking to turn Central America into a dirt-poor, chaotic and unsafe environment that local people desperately want to escape. Same difference. And again, in the US and EU it is used as propaganda material.
So who do you blame for this? Trump of course. Who also gets the blame for the conditions in which children are held at the US-Mexico border, in “cages”. A disaster that caused Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to stage a scene in which she cried her heart out while looking at an empty parking lot in an expensive dress.
The truth is, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. The people who are on AOC’s side of the divide will never see the reports on her faking the scene, that’s how segregated America has become. The “appropriate media” will convey the “appropriate” message” to the “appropriate audience”. Chuck Schumer even took the photograph to Capitol Hill for some quick and easy points.
Sen. Chuck Schumer: “President Trump, I want you to look at this photo. These are not drug dealers or vagrants or criminals. They are people simply fleeing a horrible situation in their home country for a better life.” pic.twitter.com/zGJIWy3JQ0
What Schumer et al do not mention was that the “cages” AOC -ostensibly- cried about were built by the Obama government, i.e. Schumer’s own party. And there’s a few other things he conveniently left out. Like the fact that the horrible situations in their home countries that these people face are caused by the US itself, including Democrats like Schumer.
The searing photograph of the sad discovery of their bodies on Monday, captured by journalist Julia Le Duc and published by Mexican newspaper La Jornada, highlights the perils faced by mostly Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty and hoping for asylum in the United States. According to Le Duc’s reporting for La Jornada, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, frustrated because the family from El Salvador was unable to present themselves to U.S. authorities and request asylum, swam across the river on Sunday with his daughter, Valeria.
He set her on the U.S. bank of the river and started back for his wife, Tania Vanessa Ávalos, but seeing him move away the girl threw herself into the waters. Martínez returned and was able to grab Valeria, but the current swept them both away. The account was based on remarks by Ávalos to police at the scene — “amid tears” and “screams” — Le Duc told The Associated Press.
That border did not become “grim” overnight, it has been exactly that for many years. We have proof of that. But first, more easy points.
The Democratic presidential candidates rushed to condemn the “inhumane” situation on the US border with Mexico – with some directly blaming Donald Trump – after a picture of a Salvadoran father and his toddler daughter found dead in the Rio Grande shocked the nation. The photograph, which emerged on Tuesday night, showed Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 26, and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria laying facedown near Matamoros, Mexico, on the bank of the river that marks the US border – reopening a fierce debate about the scale of the crisis.
The picture, by journalist Julia Le Duc, has drawn comparisons to the 2015 image of three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Jurdi, who drowned off Kos in Greece – sparking a significant moment in the European debate over migrants and refugees. Beto O’Rourke said: “Trump is responsible for these deaths.”Writing on Twitter, the former Texas congressman added: “As his administration refuses to follow our laws – preventing refugees from presenting themselves for asylum at our ports of entry – they cause families to cross between ports, ensuring greater suffering & death. At the expense of our humanity, not to the benefit of our safety.”
Fellow 2020 hopeful senator Kamala Harris condemned the picture as “a stain on our moral conscience”. She wrote: “These families seeking asylum are often fleeing extreme violence. And what happens when they arrive? Trump says, ‘Go back to where you came from.’ That is inhumane. Children are dying.” Corey Booker, New Jersey senator and 2020 candidate, also blamed the president. “We should not look away. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s inhumane and immoral immigration policy. This is being done in our name,” he tweeted.
These people don’t appear to have any knowledge of their own history, their own party. Either that or they’re flat-out lying. Kamala Harris: “..what happens when they arrive? Trump says, ‘Go back to where you came from.’ That is inhumane. Children are dying.” Here Kamala, Corey, Beto, take a listen to what Obama said in both 2007 and again in 2014. Take your time, we’ll wait:
2014 is not ancient history. Can someone please explain why this was not portrayed at the time as a morally abominable statement? pic.twitter.com/tUvMnFmxVs
While it’s impossible to quantify misery, and we should not even try, perhaps the closest we can get to doing it anyway is by looking at the number of people who have died at the US Southwest border. And if you can do that over an entire 20-year period, you at least have some indication.
And what do we see? The number of deaths under Trump is not high at all, at least in relative terms. Every death is one too many, true enough. But still. Since 2000, there was only one year, 2015, in which there were fewer deaths than in the two Trump years, 2017 and 2018.
Here’s a more detailed version of this (click for larger pic in new tab):
But yes, I know how much people love to hate Trump and his administration, and often for good reason too. But this whole thing appears to be about issues that existed during the previous Obama administration- and W. Bush- just as much, if not more. When Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi already were where they are now: in positions of -real- power. So you know, what do you do when they try and blame Trump for the very things they were complicit in?
And then there’s Salvini in Italy refusing entry to a ship filled with refugees. Which pretty much says he’s trying to force captains to break age-old maritime law (or the Law of the Sea, admiralty?!). And you can say he’s an idiot for doing it, and he is, but he is also telling the EU that Italy can’t accept 10 times more refugees than other EU nations just because it happens to have a coastline.
And sure Salvini is a belligerent fool, and so is Trump, but if you want to understand what happens you can’t stop at blaming only them. It’s tempting but it’s also far too easy. Even the Dalai Lama said people should stay in their own countries. But also that they should receive help from the west. Which for many decades have only been terrorizing them. This is as true in Africa as it is in Central America.
Arguably, all we need to do to stop children like Alan Kurdi and Valeria from drowning at border crossings is to make their home countries safe from our own criminal and deathly activities. But that’s not going to be easy. I read this piece today from think tanking US professors Mark Hannah and Stephen Wertheim, and it doesn’t even make sense beyond the initial message:
The last two presidents, Obama and Trump, were unlikely aspirants to the office partly because they bucked national-security orthodoxy, blasting Middle East wars and the political class that started them. Obama and Trump won their elections partly for the same reason. Once in office, however, they struggled to deliver. Endless war continues; diplomacy is in tatters; Americans suffer from underinvestment where they live and work; and the greatest threats, like climate change, loom larger across the globe. In 2020, the candidate who not only identifies these problems, but offers real solutions, will benefit.
Problem is, the Democrats are a radically pro-war party, just like the Republicans. The writers silently admit this by not naming one Democrat who is anti-war, and by not at all naming the one presidential candidate who is, Tulsi Gabbard. Which makes one suspect that they and their backers are not so much anti-war as they are anti-Trump, but since many Americans are anti-war these days, they see it as a possibly winning platform.
Given that Wertheim is a co-founder with George Soros and the Koch brothers of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, none of this is surprising. They just want the power back, and if that takes promising no more forever war during an election campaign, hey, that’s fine with them. And then once the election’s done, they can go back to their merry ways of inciting wars. They might as well claim they’re going to save us from climate change too.
The solution to the problem of children -and adults- drowning at border crossings is dead -pun intended- simple. Stop bombing people, stop interfering in their countries altogether, stop strangling them with economic sanctions. Implementing these very easy policies, though, is far from simple. And so the problem keeps growing.
The most important take-away from all this is that the problem is not Salvini or Trump, but the EU and US, the entire “body politic” of both. Where left and right are on the same side, that of power and money, and their ‘differences’ are mere distractions that serve to entertain their audiences. And the media whipping up a blind hatred of everything Salvini or Trump, is not going to make this world a better place.
Left and right alike dance to the tunes of the arms industries and other large corporations, which profit from chaos and misery, both in ‘powerless’ countries and at home. We’re stuck with “progressives” who have no meaningful link to progress and conservatives whose very last idea seems to be to conserve anything of value.
But be critical of the left and you’re labeled right wing, and vise versa. We live in a modern version of a segregated society, not progressing anywhere and not conserving a single thing on its way there.
We need to do better, much better, if we are to prevent the next child from drowning.
The Los Angeles luxury housing market has finally gotten the shot in the arm that it needed. The Manor, a 56,000 square-foot mansion in Holmby Hills, just sold for $120 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. The sale price is the highest in LA County history.
Despite not yet appearing in the public record, the transaction appears to be a “done deal”, according to the report. It represents another “notch in the belt” for the county, where the previous sale record was $110 million.
It is the fourth sale of $100 million or more in LA ever and a third in Holmby Hills, which sold two mansions for more than $100 million in 2016, one of which was the Playboy mansion. Still, the price tag is astronomical for one of the largest single-family homes in the country.
The mansion is set on 4.7 acres and the Manor includes more than 1 acre of living space. It’s 1500 square feet larger than the White House, which is about 50,000 square feet in size. It was built in 1991 for late producer Aaron Spelling and then sold to its current owner for $85 million in an all cash deal eight years ago.
The mansion was nicknamed “Candyland” during the Spelling’s tenure there. It has 20+ custom rooms, including a flower cutting room, a humidity controlled silver storage room, a barbershop and multiple gift wrapping rooms. It also includes a French wine and cheese room that is furnished with sidewalk tables, chairs, and French music. It also supports a one lane bowling alley.
A staff of 30 is required to take care of the mansion.
The current owner, Petra Ecclestone, daughter of Formula One billionaire Bernie Ecclestone, made some changes including opting for more contemporary interiors, a lounge lined in marble and a large aquarium. A room once used for Aaron Spelling’s wife’s doll collection has been converted into a hair salon and massage parlor. The home encompasses 123 rooms, including 14 bedrooms and 27 bathrooms.
There’s also a tanning room, solarium, game room, statues, koi ponds, swimming pool, a spa and a tennis court.
The mansion had been shopped for $150 million in 2014 and was brought to market in 2016 at $200 million. At the time it sold for $120 million, it was listed on the market for $160 million.
This looks to be a good sign for the stagnating LA real estate market. UCLA real estate professor Paul Habibi said: “If $120 million is the new benchmark, that makes it more plausible to sell a home for $75 million or $100 million.”
“They’re not looking for affordability thresholds, and they’re not dependent on mortgage rates. Estates like these have an extremely limited, idiosyncratic buyer pool,” he continued.
In Los Angeles as of June, there were about 230 sales of $5 million or more this year, down from 273 deals compared to the same period last year. For deals that have closed at $10 million or more, the market has seen a drop of more than 25% year-over-year. Sales of $20 million or more are down about 50%.
But the high-end market has heated up a little bit this summer:
Two transactions topped $40 million in May, including Adam Levine’s Beverly Hills mansion that sold to Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi for $42.5 million.
Last week, Uber co-founder Garrett Camp quietly dropped roughly $71 million on a newly built home in Trousdale Estates.
The Platinum Triangle – comprised of Bel Air, Holmby Hills and Beverly Hills – is no stranger to massive sales. This year alone, the wealthy area has seen 11 property transactions of $20 million or more, records show.
“Holmby Hills is probably the most affluent submarket in L.A. County,” Habibi concluded.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KWiwcC Tyler Durden
Decarbonizing the U.S. grid and replacing fossil fuels with renewables could cost US$4.5 trillion in investments over the next 10 to 20 years, Wood Mackenzie analysts have calculated.
Such a move away from fossil fuels would require the installation of 1,600 GW of new solar and wind capacity, the research firm said. This compares with a total capacity of 1,060 GW across the United States, of which 130 GW renewable capacity.
Yet a lot more generation capacity is not all, either. A lot of utility-scale storage installations would also be necessary to make the power produced by solar and wind farms reliable enough to replace fossil fuels in the long run. More precisely, Wood Mac’s analysts have calculated the storage capacity needed at 900 GW.
This sort of change has no precedent, the research firm said, and would necessitate a complete overhaul of the power generation industry.
“The challenges of achieving 100% renewable energy go far beyond the capital costs of new generating assets. Most notably, it will need a substantial redesign of electricity markets, migrating away from traditional energy-only constructs and more towards a capacity market,” said Wood Mac’s head of Global Wind Energy Research, Dan Shreve.
If the complete transformation to a fossil fuel-free U.S. is to be done by 2030, this would mean adding more renewable capacity every year over the next 11 years than has been added over the last 20 years combined.
Yet, there is a middle ground: pushing the all-renewables deadline further into the future and allowing some natural gas capacity in the mix. According to Wood Mac’s analysts, if 20 percent of the energy generated in the U.S. comes from natural gas, this would cut renewable installations costs by 20 percent as well, but it will also help reduce energy storage costs by as much as 60 percent.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RQkN9C Tyler Durden
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced Tuesday it had successfully tested a new anti-missile system in Saryshagan firing range in central Kazakhstan, as shown by a video released by the MoD.
Though the MoD did not disclose any further information about the test, including the precise type of next generation weaponry featured in the video, the military and Middle East affairs news site Al-Masdaridentified it as the A-235 so-called “Satellite Killer” based on visual similarities to a prior publicized A-235 test from last year.
Screengrab from the new missile launch test via Russian Defense Ministry/RT
“The anti-missile system shown in the video is believed to be an A-235 Nudul (‘satellite killer’); it was first unveiled in 2014. The A-235 is supposed to succeed the A-135 Amur, which is still in service,” according to the report.
The Russian Aerospace Defense Forces oversaw the tests which a defense ministry spokesman described as follows: “The new anti-ballistic missile, after several trials, has reliably confirmed its characteristics and successfully fulfilled the task by striking an assigned target with precision,” according to TASS.
Other Russian media sources described it only as a “new interceptor missile” – which also comes just as the S-500 ‘Prometheus’ is being prepped for delivery to operational units.
The A-235 is part of the Kremlin’s developing supersonic arsenal, reaching supersonic speeds which are several times faster than an average rocket.
Prior tests and capabilities of the A-235 were described previously byThe National Interest:
Russia has been preparing a purpose-built ASAT missile, the A-235 Nudol, for years, development of which has already included seven flight tests. The latest, on December 23, 2018, appeared highly successful, with the missile flying for seventeen minutes and 1,864 miles before splashing into its intended target area at sea. Described by Russian state-media as part of a new “space defense intercept complex,” the Nudol’s flight tests suggest an orbital ballistic intercept trajectory ideal for ASAT operations.
Below is a prior video of the A-235 being tested in December 2018:
Russia is carrying out and highly publicizing these tests at a moment when the fate of key international weapons treaties hang by a thread, especially the now all but collapsed Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty between Russia and the United States.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2NtKL4A Tyler Durden
Both bonds and gold are extending their rallies from the US session with 10Y yields toughing a 1.94% handle for the first time since President Trump was elected as China’s Caixin Composite PMI tumbles in June.
The Caixin China Composite Output Index fell further to 50.6 in June from the month before, dragged down by both the manufacturing and services sectors.
1) While the gauge for new orders dropped further it stayed in positive territory. The measure for new export business meanwhile returned to contractionary territory. The weakening of foreign demand was obvious.
2) The employment gauge fell further into contractionary territory, reflecting pressure on the jobs market, which was chiefly due to the reduced capacity of the services sector to absorb labor.
3) While the gauge for input costs inched down, the one for output charges edged up, pointing to easing cost pressure on companies.
4) The measure for future output fell to its lowest level since the survey added this gauge in early 2012, though it stayed in positive territory. This suggests sluggish business confidence.
Overall, China’s economy came under greater pressure in June. The conflict between China and the U.S. impacted business confidence rather heavily. Although its impact on exports hasn’t been fully reflected in the short-run, the longerterm situation doesn’t look optimistic. Future government policies to stabilize economic growth are likely to focus on new types of infrastructure, consumption and high-quality manufacturing.
The market is seemingly anticipating this weakness.
10Y yields are down over 7bps…
Gold has spiked up to recent multi-year highs, helped by the nomination of Judy Shelton for a Fed position…
Offshore Yuan is relatively unch but has plunged since the initial trade-truce euphoria…
The decoupling between global stocks and global bonds remains unprecedented…
It’s actually one of the few areas that has been studied in mainstream Economics. The links between global financial upset and broader economic consequences are pretty well understood. Trade gets shut down, therefore economies which are highly dependent upon the exchange of goods experience the effects first. When you see these bellwethers under pressure, it’s a bad sign.
The mysterious part is where these financial problems might come from. It’s one of the more uncomfortable aspects of the 2019, being in agreement with Economists who can clearly see that “trade wars” just aren’t significant enough to be this much of a disruption. In addition, it’s a huge stretch to believe that worries over a few billion in future US tariffs on Chinese goods would’ve produced such a decline in trade conditions starting all the way back to the middle if not earliest days of 2018.
The latest flood of PMI’s particularly dealing with manufacturing make both points. This slowdown becoming a full-blown downturn isn’t a new development, and it’s getting serious to the point that US-China geopolitics are set aside as immaterial.
The continued weakness exhibited by the South Korea Manufacturing PMI during June primarily reflects the ongoing global trade slowdown. Panellists [sic] reported that this is taking its toll on their businesses, weighing on demand for goods and subsequently leading to cuts in production.
Subdued export demand resulted in the sharpest drop in new work from abroad since January. An associated decline in pressure on business capacity led to more cautious staff hiring in June, with employment growth easing to its weakest for just over two-and-a-half years.
This doesn’t mean that China isn’t included. The problem, in fact, seems to be the Chinese economy. No one can account for what’s going on there because there is no official or mainstream explanation other than trade wars. Tariffs are the only thing anyone talks about; therefore, it must be them.
Understanding instead the monetary mechanisms behind all this, we can see how the current disruption in global trade isn’t really different than the prior bouts of weakness. It is the repeating succession of monetary issues.
Both versions of China’s manufacturing sector PMI’s came in at 49.4 in June. The official index maintained by the government’s National Bureau of Statistics includes all the state-owned behemoths which at times can reflect more of what the government is doing than the rest of the economy. The other survey, the Caixin PMI, attempts to isolate conditions in the private economy by including mostly smaller and medium sized businesses.
That the two now equal suggests a couple of important points. The first is “stimulus”, or the distinct lack of it. The Communist government, as we’ve pointed out for a while, just isn’t coming to the rescue despite all the Western disbelief. Instead, what seems to be the official if undeclared doctrine of “managed decline” remains in place.
The second point is the second part: decline. China’s vast manufacturing sector appears to be doing just that. And it is China’s economy, not the trade stuff, which is where weakness originates. From Caixin:
Overall, China’s economy came under further pressure in June. Domestic demand shrank notably, foreign demand was still underpinned by front-loading exports, and business confidence fell sharply. [emphasis added]
According to these figures, Chinese industry is being supported right now by “trade wars” as firms seek to stuff global supply channels ahead of anticipated tariffs (obviously at the expense of future production).
The rest of China’s economy is slowly being squeezed another external problem – the same one that so negatively impacts global trade unrelated to protectionism. Chinese monetary growth has ground to a halt as a result of the latest eurodollar squeeze, a global dollar shortage which not only acts as an external drag it also becomes the operating baseline for RMB.
The October-December landmine.
This is why, I believe, on a day like Monday the stock market can surge to record highs while investors cheer the prospects for a trade deal while at the very same time the bond market remains unimpressed either way.
The issue is entirely liquidity risk, meaning dollar shortage. The bond market sees this in global monetary conditions and hedges against it in a manner consistent with forecasting imminent FOMC rate cuts. This global PMI data therefore confirms the economic consequences of something that must already be substantial.
That isn’t trade wars.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Xj1iI7 Tyler Durden
Massachusetts university has decided to take down a historical mural after students complained that the paintings depicting only white men eroded the school’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Tufts University stated in a news release that the Alumnae Lounge mural, which depicts “the great names of men” who informed the school’s history, does not include “a single image of a person of color, for example, despite the fact that black students were enrolled at Tufts as early as the late nineteenth century.”
“Students have told us that they don’t want to receive awards in Alumnae Lounge because they feel excluded, and that’s important to hear,” Tufts Senior Vice President Deborah Kochevar said, according to the news release.
“We want to attract a diversity of people to the university. But no less important, when they arrive, we want them to feel they belong here.”
Members of Tufts’ Jackson College for Women donated the mural, as well as the lounge, to the school. The mural will be archived and an online database for viewing and teaching purposes will be made available.
The murals “make alumni of color invisible, and therefore tell an incomplete story,” Tufts Africana Center Director Katina Moore said, according to the news release.
“By erasing the presence of students of color…from the historical record, the murals create an unwelcoming space for current students of color.”
But not all committee and community members were on board.
“I am principally opposed to erasing any form of historical record,” Tufts art and art history professor Andrew McClellan said. McClellan had chaired the committee.
“To not have the historical record up there to see who we were seems to me to be an act of denying history,” said former Tufts provost Sol Gittleman.
The decoration of the Alumnae Hall will now be under the direction of an ad hoc public art committee, which will make the lounge’s adornments “fully representative of the rich diversity” of the school’s students and alumni, according to Kochevar.
Tufts’ College Republicans and Democrats chapters declined to comment on the matter.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Lsnld8 Tyler Durden
Heroin addict, and former Boeing engineer Anthony Hathaway, robbed 30 banks from 2013 to 2014, spoke with Bloomberg about how a life of addiction that led to the crime.
Hathaway was appointed technical designer by Boeing, after a decade of hard work. He was in charge of design for galleys on the 747-8 Intercontinental. He told Bloomberg that he was the only engineer at the Boeing Everett Factory in Everett, Washington, that didn’t have a college degree.
Several years of earning $100,000 per year and living large in the 2000s, he had a herniated disc after an incident during a company sporting event and was prescribed OxyContin by his doctor in 2005.
“It was like a miracle drug,” Hathaway told Bloomberg.
And this is when his life spiraled down: Hathaway had two back surgeries to fix the disc, doctors prescribed him even more opioids, sometimes at higher doses. He said he instantly developed an addiction and became reclusive.
Hathaway said: “I was peeling the coating off of the OxyContin, crushing them, and snorting them. I knew I was in trouble.”
When OxyContin in 2010 modified pills to make it uncrushable, Hathaway and his teenage son resorted to heroin instead.
His salary couldn’t support the expensive drug habit, and in summer 2011, his son robbed a bank and was arrested after a dye pack in cash exploded as he left.
Shortly after, Hathaway became homeless, had to move in with his mother, and at that very moment, he decided to become a professional bank robber. “I started planning,” he said.
He added: ” I knew that as long as I didn’t leave any fingerprints or DNA or facial recognition that I should be able to pull this off without too many problems.”
Hathaway knocked over his first bank on February 5, 2013, at a Banner Bank in Everett, down the street from the Boeing factory; 27 more robberies followed over the year. He told Bloomberg that he never carried a weapon.
By Spring of 2013, he robbed several more banks and was broadcasted on Washington’s Most Wanted TV show. Police called him the Cyborg Bandit as detectives believed his face mask was made of metal.
Hathaway switched up costumes for different banks, with one that looked like he had roughly cut t-shirts as a mask.
He said there were several incidents where the police almost caught him – one with a teller who planted a GPS device into the money bag, which he quickly discovered, as well as one teller who became uncooperative during a heist.
The most money he ever stole from a bank was a little over $6,000 from Whidbey Island Bank in Bothell. He averaged one robbery per week in 2013, but there was a 67-day quiet period from May to June when his winnings from a casino allowed him to take a break.
Hathaway staged his last bank robbery on February 11, 2014, at KeyBank in Seattle. He shot up with heroin right before the robbery and passed out. Minutes later he awoke and robbed the bank, made off with $2,310. FBI and police immediately surrounded him as he walked outside – ending his 30-robbery streak.
In a plea arrangement in January 2016, Hathaway was sentenced to 106 months in prison.
Detective Len Carver with the Seattle Police Department and a member of the FBI’s Seattle Safe Streets Task Force, said he thought one of Hathaway’s masks were made of metal.
Carver said in one instance, Hathaway wore a T-shirt draped over your head. “I’ve never seen a guy just drape a T-shirt over his head and cut some holes in it” before robbing a bank.
Hathaway, now 50, sits in the Monroe Correctional Complex in Washinton state. Has cable TV, and a job at the jail that pays 42¢ an hour, with a maximum of $55 per week, and 20% of that goes to court fees and restitution for his crimes.
“It’ll be around $112,000 by the time I get out,” he tells Bloomberg during a visit in June. “But I have my whole life to pay it off.”
Hathaway’s quick transition from star engineer at Boeing to a nasty heroin addiction that contributed to dozens of bank heist, all started with pain management programs in hospitals prescribing highly addictive legal opioids.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2J5rfXN Tyler Durden
According to a researcher from the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), young people in the United States are not feeling the effects of the so-called “robust” economy we’ve supposedly been privy to. While we are constantly told the economy and the job market have boomed in the post-financial crisis period, Americans are struggling to find stability.
EIG says that a path to progress poses a “catch 22” situation for those who even attempt to bridge the gap. Many will go to college only to be burdened by a low paying job and massive student loan debt that cripples their earning power. This creates an even worse situation for many living in the “distressed” communities, which EIG says are “increasingly rural.”
“And they don’t really have a pathway to get out of their situation and be able to afford moving to a prosperous metropolitan area to try to turn the situation around. So it’s really in a catch-22 that individuals who are trying to advance themselves from these communities end up landing.”
In an EIG report, originally published back in October of 2018, researchers looked at around 25,800 zip codes, which is about 99% of the U.S. population, and compared two periods: 2007 to 2011, and 2012 to 2016. One of the primary reasons for the distressed communities being left behind, researchers found, was a lack of educational attainment.
According to Yahoo Finance,“distress” (for the purpose of this study) was defined through seven metrics: educational attainment, housing vacancy, unemployment levels, poverty rate, median income, the change in the number of jobs, and in business establishments.
“It’s really troubling, we did a casual overlay of the [Distressed Communities Index] map with that of where student debt is most burdensome and found that delinquency rates are higher in places where economic opportunity is worse,” Fikri said.
Keith Orejel, an assistant professor at Wilmington College who studies rural communities, told Yahoo Finance that the “plight of rural America as much more structural. When one gets down to brass tacks, at the end of the day, rural areas never recovered from the Great Recession. If you actually look at the data, it is quite shocking. Urban and metropolitan employment today is well above what it was prior to the Great Recession, whereas total employment in nonmetropolitan areas is still below what it was prior to the Great Recession. And there is clearly just an absence of job opportunities in the countryside that is making these sort of economically unappealing places to live.”
Orejel added that the decline of the manufacturing industry is also playing a role in impoverishing those straggling in the middle class. Manufacturing jobs that were available in rural areas and created jobs that retained young people served as a “staple of middle-class jobs in the countryside have just been utterly devastated.”
The unfortunate reality is that far too many in the United States have not seen any effects of the booming economy the mainstream media raves about. Whether a person lives rurally or not is irrelevant. Large cities in California are bursting with homeless people, so it’s all relative. The reality, however, is that 78% live paycheck to paycheck, and that number will only go up.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2xsA2wq Tyler Durden
