I mentioned in my previous posts on the differences between the French Gendarmerie Nationale and the Police Nationale: the main one is that the Gendarmerie is an internal army--complete with special forces unit, the GIGN.
This headline is pointing out that the Gendarmerie Nationale is deploying its tanks to combat the riots.
The proper name for this is "ARIVE" (for ARmoured Infanty VEhicle). It replaces the véhicule blindé à roues de la Gendarmerie (VBRG) which is a little like the Russian BRDM-2 armored car. Here is the ARIVE in action:
While people in the US might bemoan things like this on their streets--it would probably keep the Kyle Rittenhouses out of the action.
Especially if an LE sniper would target anyone foolish enough to carry a weapon during a riot.
OK, I'll start this out by pointing out something I like about European cities: the slums are in the suburbs! So, Centre City Paris is peaceful while the 'burbs are blowing up. Anyway,
I'm sure most Americans are missing this, but a 17 year old was shot in Nanterre, which is in the Hauts-de-Seine, or the Western Suburbs of Paris. It's actually Departement 92, not 93. Still, I'll put up this song.
Time to get serious here since it's relates to police shooting someone during a traffic stop, something which happens in the US. But one difference is that there might be a firearm present in the states--less of a possibility in France, but not totally unknown. On the other hand, cops shooting someone is a whole lot less common in France. I'm not totally sure how different the concept of "legitimate defence" is in France. Toss in the law was relaxed in 2017. It's also against the law to comply with a police officer.
This is the French law on the use of firearms by the "guardians of the peace": According to article L. 435-1 of the French Internal Security Code, police officers and gendarmes may only use firearms in five very distinct and clearly described situations:
When their lives or physical integrity are threatened or when armed persons threaten their lives, their physical integrity or that of others.
When, after two loud summonses, they cannot otherwise defend the premises they occupy or the persons entrusted to their care (a privilege reserved exclusively for the gendarmes prior to 2017).
When, immediately after two loud summonses, they cannot compel persons to stop, other than by the use of weapons, if they are trying to escape from their custody or their investigations and if, in their flight, they are likely to cause injury to themselves or to others.
When they are unable to immobilise, other than by the use of weapons, vehicles, boats or other means of transport, the drivers of which do not comply with the order to stop and the occupants of which are likely, in their flight, to cause injury to themselves or to others.
For the sole purpose of preventing the recurrence, in the near future, of one or more murders or attempted murders that have just been committed, when they have real and objective reasons for considering that such a recurrence is likely in the light of the information available to them at the time they use their weapons.
In addition to the question of legitimate self-defence under one of the above criteria, there are also the issues of resisting arrest and fleeing from the police--which is criterion #3 above. Also, the police office in question was saying he feared for his companion's life, but that is under question based upon the video of the arrest.
The interesting bit is that the victim had been the subject of as many as five police checks since 2021 - what are known as refus d'obtempérer - refusals to co-operate. So, he sort of knew the drill, but decided to run anyway despite his reputation of being well liked and a good kid. I'm going to add that the 2005 riots were started when when two teenagers were electrocuted as
they fled police after a game of football and ran into an electricity
substation in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
Yes, you can see the bullet in the magazine.
So, you don't need to have a cop kill you to start a riot--just do something stupid. That seems to be the case here as well since the cop had a gun drawn. I would add that the 2017 law made the cops a bit more trigger happy according to some people.
On the other hand, having been through a few police roadblocks in Ireland, you should take a hint if the cops are carrying weapons, especially obviously cocked machineguns where you can see the bullet, that trying to avoid the roadblock might be a bad idea.
Even if you are white in a safe place like Ireland.
I had a weird feeling that number 3 would be what it is (no spoilers--watch the thing). Nope, I wouldn't live in North America even if all the changes I would like to see happened for a bunch of reasons.
Disclaimer: I am a shareholder in a few tech companies! I also subscribe to the UN's Principles for Responsible Investment (unpri.org). Even then I let my Luddite tendencies run amok. Yeah, it's fun asking Microsoft why our products are shit, yet we have a monopoly at the shareholder meetings...
But the real reason I am writing this is that Twitter has become crap since Elon Mush has taken it over. I guess when you have a family that made its money in blood diamonds investing in your projects you can go wild and make shitloads of money
On paper
The problem with this bubble is that it is tulipmania waiting to explode, but there are probably darker forces behind the bubble, as in the surveillance state.
So, you might want to start making posts about how much support gun control, in fact banning guns sounds really good, if you are a ardent gun rights supporter because just remember who REALLY invented the internet. AND IT WASN'T AL GORE OR , EVEN, MORE IMPORTANTLY, TIM BERNERS-LEE!!
The origins of the Internet date back to the development of packet switching and research commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the late 1960s to enable time-sharing of computers. The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1970s to enable resource sharing.
Yeah, somebody is way ahead of the hackers, but that's another thing.
And it doesn't really matter since I am not keen on social media, especially if I am not connecting with the people I need or want to connect with.
And I'm not on twitter.
It seems that Mush's buying Twitter may be the end of the line.
This man is telling the truth. I have to admit that I am surprised that people are going to the Titanic on a regular basis. Wasn't it supposed to be closed off?
Bye, Bye Red States. This is what you get for climate change denial!!!
This map is the climate resilience screening index map, which is a map of the climate resilience screening index, which is designed to be sensitive to changes in the natural environment, built
environment, governance, and social structure and vulnerability or risk
to climate events.
CRSI has been used to develop an index score for climate resilience at
the county level (scalable both upward and downward spatially) the
represents both the vulnerability of the entity to multiple climate
events and the potential recoverability of these entities from climate
events. The approach uses five domains (natural environment, built
environment, governance, social structures and risk) and 20 indicators
related to the domains. CRSI characterizes holistic climate resilience
throughout the US at the county level (2000-2015); ascertains the
relationships among those domains and indicators; and, provide
information regarding how that resilience score is constructed and the
actions a community/county can take to improve their climate resilience.
The short form: it's how badly you are screwed when the effects of climate change start becoming even more obvious. And hard to remediate: as in forget electric cars--you're gonna need a bike, or to walk.
It's too bad that most red states are pro-life as well since they can't claim Darwin Awards for ignoring science and the weather warnings. At least we won't have to listen to their stupid comments any more.
I wasn't going to comment about this, but watching James Cameron talk about the rescue being a charade: especially after hearing a sound like an implosion. He raises a lot of good points--the main one being qualms about the carbon fibre technology used for the sub. Also, testing the sub's hull for integrity.
Still, think of all the money wasted on trying to find something which blew up because a bunch of people with more dollars than sense wanted to look at the Titanic.
Just think of who is paying the bill for all this.
In 2019, OceanGate said it was concerned the certification process could
slow down development and act as a drag on innovation. “Bringing an
outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into
real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” it said.
Yeah, I know that the 1619 project and related rubbish would like us to believe that racism is the cause of all the urban problems, but that is a really bad excuse for doing nothing. My question is how can there be institutional racism if there are black people in positions of power? Like the president of the United States for 8 years was BLACK.
Please answer that before making any criticisms. And you might want to watch this as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTsqRHQ53rA. I would point out that class and wealth might be more important to look at than race, you might want to look up Ursula Burns as well.
And back to more important and useful issues. Thanks.
Seriously, if we are going to get into how to be "anti-racists" maybe we need to start with ourselves. And black people need to admit that whites don't have a monopoly on being racist, which is why I mention Idi Amin.
A lot of the kids I was in school and University with happened to be victims of his expulsion of the Asians from Uganda. So, Amin wasn't just out to beat up on the colonial British. On the other hand, he considered himself the King of Scotland. Yep, he declared himself: “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji
Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth
and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in
General and Uganda in Particular.” He never won the DSO and MC, and the VC was his own medal the Victorious Cross.
He once said: “I myself consider myself the most powerful figure in
the world.” And he really did claim to be the uncrowned king of
Scotland, largely because of his love for pipe bands.
So, not only was he a racist--he was a total headcase.
And his expulsion of 80,000 Ugandan Asians totally trashed the economy of Uganda. Amin was overthrown in April 1979 and died in exile in Saudi Arabia on August 16, 2003.
So, keep that in mind when you want to paint one group of people with the same brush.
I have a lot of respect for Fred Hampton. He was probably one of three leaders who might surprise people as to how inclusive they were since most people don't associate Malcolm X with being inclusive. Malcolm's going on the Hajj changed his perspectives toward race which may have led to his assassination by the Nation of Islam (see Netflix's Who Killed Malcolm X). Likewise, Martin Luther King may have been too far to the left for the establishment.
But I want to talk about Fred Hampton. A short bio of Hampton is:
He came to prominence in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Hispanics), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. A Marxist–Leninist, Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying, "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”
He majored in pre-Law and used his knowledge of the law in his community police supervision project. I would like to think he was intelligent enough to not have been as into armed self-defence since that was the ostensible reason for his assassination. My opinion was that he was someone who would have unified diverse groups into a viable resistance. Divide and conquer has long been a tactic of repression and I think he was well aware of that. Or to use his own words:
"We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses
belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the
masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black
masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to
face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we
say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism
with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't
fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with
socialism"
J Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, Knew that the radical
coalitions that Hampton forged in between the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, Young Lords, and other groups in Chicago were a stepping stone to the
rise of a revolution that could cause a radical change in the United States. I'm not sure what the exact course of events were that led to the brutal murder of Fred Hampton, but it was planned at high levels. The Chicago police announced the hit squad who killed Hampton had been attacked by the "violent"
and "extremely vicious" Panthers and defended themselves accordingly.
But Hampton didn't shoot back. He had been drugged and was slaughtered in his sleep. This is why I would like to believe he wasn't tooled up and knew that option was not the best choice. I would like to believe that he knew that being non-violent does not mean being submissive, but it also doesn't mean being a fool. Unfortunately, he let the wrong person into his inner circle.
I'm not sure how much I agree with Judas and the Black Messiah, but the bottom line is that Hampton was someone who understood what the issues were, and still are, in US culture. I imagine him being the first black president. Even sadder is the fact that he was sold out by a Judas and we are left waiting for a second, or first, coming.
Then Bernie Sanders would have seemed conservative if Fred Hampton had been around.
Mentioning Fred Hampton is the best way to celebrate today. Focusing on the issues that effect us all is the best way to remember him. I wish I could have him say it, but the quote above pretty much does the job.
I am hopeful that there is another Fred Hampton out there who will work to unify the races because he really speaks the truth to power. It's hard to believe that such a person doesn't exist in the age of the internet. We need the new black messiah to straighten things out between the races.
I find this interesting since he is from Texas and he talks about his memories of how Juneteeth was celebrated. His story is a totally different take on the narrative we are given that General Granger told the slaves of Galveston that they were free.
He gives a good reason for why this holiday should be celebrated by taking it out of the popular context. But he points out he is from Texas and has a bias toward this celebration, as do a lot of other people who have promoted it. Juneteenth was not nationally known until recently. For the longest time, it was been
something mostly celebrated by African Americans, Black Americans in
Texas, and millennials. I'm not sure whether its becoming a Federal Holiday has actually led to any real acceptance.
I'm not sure that Juneteenth can keep up with the hype surrounding it. It was probably counterproductive to push this onto people without any real connection to the history behind the event. The fact that some black people in Texas would gather around for a barbecue isn't really a reason that will get people to pay attention to WHY it should be celebrated.
In fact, it works better for the people who want to virtue signal without substance.
I have no problem with the interracial aspect, but, I have always thought this was a musical odd couple: sort of like Johnny Rotten and Marie Osmond. Well, it's been confirmed by Mademoiselle Greco herself:
I wasn't tempted to sing with Miles: why try to do badly, or less well,
something that other people do so well? I'm not going to start singing
jazz standards: it's not in my blood or my culture. Mind you, I have a
deep affection and huge admiration for Ella Fitzgerald and a few others.
It's interesting how US blacks would come to France and experience freedom. Joesphine Baker sang that she had two loves, her home country and Paris. And for good reason.
The reason this relationship ended was:
At four o'clock in the morning I got a call from Miles, who was in
tears. "I couldn't come by myself," he said. "I don't ever want to see
you again here, in a country where this kind of relationship is
impossible." I suddenly understood that I'd made a terrible mistake,
from which came a strange feeling of humiliation that I'll never forget.
In America his colour was made blatantly obvious to me, whereas in
Paris I didn't even notice that he was black.
Although, it may never have truly ended:
Between Miles and me there was a great love affair, the kind you'd want
everybody to experience. Throughout our lives, we were never lost to
each other. Whenever he could, he would leave messages for me in the
places I travelled in Europe: "I was here, you weren't."
Or how an obscure event became a thing. Trying to call it Worldwide or implying it has much of a significance beyond the US is a stretch: sort of like the World Series. And it's not that I am being a "Grinch" since the google trends doc shows that it had little or no interest prior to 2015. And it wasn't until Black Lives Matter and the associated virtue signalling appeared that it was able to take off according to Google Trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=juneteenth
Now, mainstream media would have us believe that this was some sort of "thing" prior to BLM, instead of a bunch of scared people trying to pander to that organisation. Virtue signalling costs nothing, but feels really good.
So, take a relatively obscure celebration and turn it into a "something". You weren't crazy if you were wondering why you had never heard of it before 2020. And you were among a very small group of people if you DID know about this prior to then. But there's this little truth bomb hidden in all the bullshit about Juneteenth:
Very few people of all ethnicities gave a shit about Juneteenth prior to that date. I seriously doubt they would have given a rat's ass about it afterward either. The NPR clip mentioned in the screen cap pretty much sums the situation up. More amusingly, NPR interviews Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, who happens to have been born in Ghana.
Those with a familiarity of the triangular trade will know it as home to the Ashanti Empire, which was the largest slaveowning and slave trading state during the Atlantic slave trade and is found in the territory that is today's Ghana.
Somehow, I think that Ms. Opoku-Agyeman's opinion on Juneteenth is probably not the best one to have taken. I could be even meaner as to who NPR could have chosen to interview, but he's dead. Actually, there were a lot of slave traders out there besides the one I was thinking about.
But virtue signalling is free!
And when it comes to race everything is truly black and white in the US. Not the nuance needed for a reasoned discussion of this topic.
Personally, I would have picked Odunde if we want to go for obscure African-American festivals since it probably has more of a following than Juneteenth. I mean, you may as well go all out if you are going to virtue signalling.
I know that Juneteenth would have passed me by had it not been a call to my bank over a declined charge where I was greeted by a recording that the institution would be closed because of Juneteenth.
I'm surprised people care, but it is a day off from work.
And I won't quote a certain DC shock jock no matter how germane that might be to the discussion... On the other hand, the above clip is much better than that shock jock's statement ever was for showing racism.
Also NPR chose to take the opinion of someone from hails from a nation that was one of the worst offenders in the slave trade about WHY we should be concerned about Juneteenth. Never mind all talk of slavery tends to focus on white people. But not all white people were slaveowners. And that leaves out the abolitionists who were white and put their lives on the line to free slaves. John Brown mean anything to you?
You can't blame everyone for the actions of a small group, otherwise these black people need to get off their high horse since they were complicit in the ethnic cleansing of the native North Americans courtesy of the Buffalo Soldiers, or the blacks who were in the US Army after the Civil War. The ones who found they could get ahead by going west and fighting the Native Americans.
But we have the the Google Trends data which shows most people aren't too concerned. I'm just tired of the pointless virtue signalling which really doesn't change anything.
Jason Slaughter at Not Just Bikes says, "he's not an urban planner, but he plays one on TV." I would love have done something that I consider useful as a career, which urban planning or working for Greenpeace Europe would have been, but that's another story. Like Jason, I have travelled around and know that the North American car culture is not sustainable. While conservatives want to pretend that "The Green New Deal" and the change in culture to at least renewable energy is a somehow wrong: it's obvious that it is a necessity.
And the failure to pay attention to that will have worse ramifications than the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, which should have been a wake up call, but wasn't.
Jason points out that North American at one time had super mass transit, but went to car culture post war. I've been wanting to post this except from Lawrence Weaver's Introduction to the book "Small Country Homes of Today" in 1922:
Neighbourhood to Road. — Nothing at once costs so much and gives so little to show for it as road-making. If the chosen site of the house itself is not close to a good road, and a long drive is needed in consequence, a sum for road-making must be set aside which will probably distress the client not a little. In this connection the liability to motor dust must be considered, a factor governed largely by the prevailing wind.
Accessibility. — Neighbourhood to a railway station is not only a question of the personal convenience of those who live in the house, but affects the cost of building. Thoughtful folk will also consider how near the site will be to post and telegraph office, church and shops.
Public Services — Drainage, Water and Light. — Connection with municipal sewerage is a factor in cost. If there is no system near enough, when the house is built, it should be ascertained whether any extensions are likely in the future, as the design of house drainage somewhat discharges according to whether it discharges into a public sewer or into a private cesspool or septic tank. If it is contemplated that the house drainage shall discharge at a point beyond the site, by arrangement with an adjoining owner, care must be taken to ensure that such right is secured in perpetuity. A pure and plentiful water supply is infinitely important, both for drinking purposes and for garden use, and if no public mains are available, the possibility of getting a permanent supply from a private artesian well needs to be carefully explored. For lighting, in default of public gas or electricity, the respective merits of a private installation of electric light, acetylene or petrol gas need consideration.
This is from over 100 years ago. I wish that it had been written by Edwin Luteyns, but it wasn't. Still, it interesting that the advice was to be central, rather than spread. A copy of this book can be found at: https://archive.org/details/smallcountryhous01weav/page/n13/mode/2up
It's also interesting that the advice was to build near services, which is no longer the way things are done in North America.
Recycling and "renewables" aren't "new" either, but those are separate topics.
The problem is that some people need to hear the alarm clock ringing and stop dreaming of a past that didn't exist.
I do have to agree since I would see tourists visit, DC, London, Paris, and even NYC and love the public transportation.
Definitely, things can and should change since it makes no sense to sit on a road when riding public transporation can get you where you want to go much faster. I find having a car is more of a problem than an asset: especially since the thing sits idle most of the time.
This is a great video from Not Just Bikes on why this is:
Anyway, more on this subject if you want to take the time:
OK, this is from France 24, but there is enough English for an intelligent person to figure out what is going on:
The basic gist of it is that the town of Newtok, Alaska is the first North American settlement to move because of climate change. Ok, there are only 400 people who live there and they are Yup'ik, but this is not an isolated incident. South Pacific Islanders are seeing their countries since into the ocean.
So, if you don't trust the US government, in particular DoD and NOAA, maybe you might listen to a Yup'ik person tell you that climate change is real.
This is an interesting video on how the suburbs are not as profitable as pedestrian friendly downtowns.
Being from the lost city of Detroit has coloured my opinions on US development. This pretty much confirms my belief that it was indeed the city that committed suicide, as is the case with Flint and Saginaw. Nevermind that I haven't spent a lot of time in Detroit since I was a toddler, and even really been to the other two, but my encounters with the city make me think of European cities.
Particularly the ones that were bombed to shit during World War II. At least there was the Marshall plan for Europe. The US isn't as kind to its cities. One can come up with all sorts of glib reasons for why US cities are messed up, but I think Strong Towns pretty much has the problem figured out.
Still, the US hates its cities for some reason. They would prefer to see unprofitable development as opposed to having people live in population dense areas. Is this divide and conquer? Keep the people apart and alone so they are easier to manipulate?
Anyway, Urban3 is a consulting company that helps cities better understand the economic impact of development. They have worked with many American cities to better understand and visualize the costs of development, and uncover which properties are productive, and which are not. Some municipalities have been willing to share that information, and it has provided a fascinating glimpse into the financial problems caused by sprawling car-centric suburban development.
https://www.urbanthree.com/
The bottom line is that the current US model of sprawl is not sustainable.
I was tempted to call this "Of Angels, Aliens, and Impeachment" since people are believing the existance of Aliens and UFOs with less of a factual basis than the evidence that Joe Biden was on the take.
The House Oversight committee subpoenaed four banks and received thousands of
records, the memo said. Based on those records, the committee said Biden
family members, associates and their companies received more than $10 million in payments from people or companies with foreign ties, during and after Biden’s vice presidency.
A selection of the released bank records show that, from 2015 to
2017, Biden family members received money from a foreign company
connected to Gabriel Popoviciu, The New York Times reported. Popoviciu is a Romanian businessman who was convicted in Romania on criminal corruption charges.
I'm with Joe Rogan that if this were Trump, the media would be up his asshole with a microscope, but it's Biden and the equal before the law and rule of law shit evaporates for the people liked by the Oligarchy.
They might have a point if there was proof that these allegations were being investigated, but nothing has happened while Trump seems to be a litigation magnet. But Trump was cast as a distraction. He's not a real villain, he's the heel in the Kayfabe world of WWF.
On the other hand, Biden is real, but is he being given the scrutiny he deserves?
It's amusing that the one person who is not from Minnesota, and has only been there on a layover flight knows about Strong Towns. This organisation was started by a planning engineer from Minnesota.
This explains the phenomenon of sprawl and traffic.
The previous clip mentioning Strong Towns was posted by someone who is of the same opinion I am about the US and urban planning: Emmigrate. On the other hand, people need to think about the points made by Strong Towns.
But my my point in the posts about the I-95 Bridge collapse is that there does need to be more options and alternatives to driving on an "arterial" road for the reasons presented in this video. Arterial roads get congested. Not to mention there isn't an alternative to an arterial form of transit if it becomes unusable.
The current US lifestyle is not sustainable for the reasons presented by Strong Towns. I am going to post their New Member Orientation Video, even though I have been supporting this group for a while now.
Like Strong Towns, I want to be a delivery mechanism for ideas that should become viral, whether that is in regard to urban development, the environment, addressing the US gun issue, US politics in general, and so on.
But these are ideas which need to be out there and discussed. Unfortunately, I think the institutions will keep them from being as widely disseminated and discussed as they should be.
I don't really care what political bias News Nation has, the segment this picture comes from was fairly accurate as to the problems that will be caused by this one small bridge having collapsed. They are talking about MILLIONS of people being inconvenienced by this. Toss in that the detour will take people onto a road which is even worse. It has TWO accident black spots in this stretch of highway. Both of these are on the detour route:
Accident Black Spot Philadelphia - Grant Ave and E Roosevelt Blvd
Accident Black Spot Philadelphia - Red Lion Rd and E Roosevelt Blvd
This means that the traffic following the detour will be on a very bad stretch of road.
Sure, SEPTA is talking about adding cars to the already over used regional rail, but that is not even a band aid on the wound. We are talking arterial bleeding in terms of what a disaster this one small bridge collapsing will cause.
I would be ecstatic if I were a terrorist and this sort of target had been taken out. In fact, there is another spot on I-95 which the results would have been far worse for traffic in this corridor than this had the accident happened there. That gives you an idea of how bad having an accident like this will effect transportation on the East Coast.
Unfortunately, the US is unprepared to deal with the problems caused by its failure to address the issues that this disaster has raised. I really wish that it would cut the partisan bullshit and start working on the problems the US is causing itself.
The US has to pull its head out of its ass sometime, and I hope it is soon.
One interesting thing about US politics is that the concept of subsidies is well camouflaged. Taxpayers subsidise Wal-Mart because the employees need to resort to social services to live on the low wages. Likewise, the US subsidises the automobile by giving free parking, not fully funding highway maintenance, Land use laws that favour sprawl, and so on.
The major one is the cost of petrol since that would be the one place where adding a road tax would make sense: make the users pay for maintaining the roads they use. The other alternative would be to have more toll roads.
But the issue of making sure that transportation is somehow set up to handle varied modes of transportation so that the country doesn't shut down if the main forms are put out of commission due to poor maintenance or weather.
Also, transportation and the issues related to it need to be addressed, since those are yet another thing which is ignored due to distractions in the US political process.
The term is also kind of nonsensical since it comes from the British sitcom "Yes, Minister" episode "The Bed of Nails"(S3E5). On the other hand, the US has pretty much put its transportation into cars and highways along with air. Rail transportation is of the third world calibre I would expect for the world's most affluent third world nation.
Which is disappointing since the US was once a leader in rail transportation.
I tossed in canals for good measure since I like canals: the old fashioned jobbies with longboats and towpaths. You can bike or hike beside them, or take a small craft for a leisurely jaunt around the countryside. Which are yet another thing that has been trashed in the US.
But the reason for this is that I heard that a section of I-95 in Philadelphia has collapsed which is a major transportation fuck up. And appropriate that it happened in the city that doesn't work. Philadelphia is a totally messed up city with a road system which was designed for horse drawn vehicles trying to deal with 21 century traffic. It has the subway to nowhere and destroyed its tramways. This means that a good section of the US east coast has been fucked by failing to have alternative forms of transportation which are actually viable for commuters.
Remember that air traffic on the east coast was buggered for several days due to the Canadian wild fires. So, air traffic is also not the answer.
This means that the two main forms of transportation in the US, highways and air traffic, really don't do the job. And rail is pathetic where it exists. Sure, the above video is in French, but the point is that the French have kept their rail transport viable and up to date. They are even proposing to stop internal flights of 500km or less in favour of air travel.
I would hate to have to rely on US rail transport to address the traffic on the east coast at this point.
Additionally, the US is going to have to make the road users pay for the proper maintenance of the roads which is going to truly bugger that method of transport, because the US can't run its current level of traffic on dirt roads and goat paths. And the problems with infrastructure are getting painfully obvious.
The real bottom line is that the US has been dodging issues using hot button issues ("culture wars") and not addressing the real problems of society: like health care, transportation, energy, the environment, and so on.
It ain't the Russians who make me want to see a change in the US political system. It's the homegrown oligarchs.
OK, Fox news may be the "dissenting opinion", but they are often WRONG, as is their sister service, Sky News Australia. Who are engaging in climate change denial and basically suffering from having their heads up their asses about the need to start adopting renewable resources.
Fox can call AOC and idiot, but it's hard to argue that NOAA and the US Department of Defence are ignorant on this issue.
On the other hand, "Kennedy" said something along the lines of if AOC is for clean power, she should be all in for Nuclear.
Who is calling whom an idiot? Does Kennedy know about Chernobyl? Fukushima? Does she understand why people were worried when the Russians occupied the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant? Three Mile Island? I'm sure there are more reasons that people who know anything about nuclear power would never make a comment like that.
Jesus.
Personally, I would trust NOAA and DoD long before I would trust most of the clowns on Fox.
I find it interesting that to hear about Hunter Biden and his laptop one has to dig for that information in the US media. On the other hand, I was saying "WHOA!" when I heard about the Bidens and Ukraine. Lots of other things going on which have me wondering, but the silence is bothersome. Particularly from my co-bloggers.
There are lots of ways to rig an election, one of which is to control the information. It's one thing to call Fox News viewers misinformed. Especially if one doesn't get good information from their news source: and US media is terribly untrustworthy.
My first reaction to Fox News was to want to turn the Television to the window and take a walk the way Poles did during martial law in the 1980s. I feel that way toward US media as a whole now. Fortunately, I don't have to watch it, but I am curious as to how Joe Biden can manage to maintain power given his obvious flaws. There are too many questions, but one is labelled a conspiracy theorist if they mention them.
If I have any influence from the Soviet Bloc, it is to question the party line. Especially if that party line is left unchallenged. Add in that the people who question are persecuted for airing the opinions. It's nice that the internet allows for the publication of opposing viewpoints, but whether those viewpoints are seen is another matter.
The reality is that there may be another sham election where a weak candidate may end winning against a much stronger opposition. Where districts which should be impossible to win are won.
One doesn't need to be a conspiracy theorist to question that.
