"Equal Pay" - Chip Bok, US
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Thursday, March 24, 2016
The losing game of publicly financed sports venues
Another great article on how taxes taken from hard-working public are used for something from which most of the general public will never get any meaningful benefit, & it reduces the money a municipal / provincial / state / federal government has to put it towards a better cause. Governments of all levels in the Western world are crying for more money & are putting in more austerity measures to cut expenditures & increasing taxes.
All the while, these same governments are spending the few money they have on things that are completely useless. These monies could be used for building more affordable housing for homeless & hence, reduce homelessness, or improving infrastructure (water pipelines, public transit, roads, cheaper & sustainable energy), which can also create jobs, which in turn, creates more tax revenue for the government, or simply providing or increasing funding for any number of social causes & NGOs.
But nooooo. The taxes from hard-working public, who itself, is trying to scrimp & save every nickel & dime by buying unorganic, cheap & unhealthy food, for instance, are being used to built expensive stadiums, which ultimately benefit the wealthy owners of sports franchises. They themselves pay much less in taxes but take full benefit of other people's taxes.
But then again, as the article asks that are governments merely stupid to bend to the demands of these wealthy individuals & then answers right away that sports subsidies are a political winner. So who is to blame here? Government or the public. The same public who will give their hard-earned money to a wealthy individual & wealthy players, & gets a paltry return for its own investment. Ironically, while the owners & players are swimming in cash & laughing how they have duped the public, the public is also not only cheering "their team" (who will leave the city as soon as it bleeds the city dry) but also buying expensive merchandise with their own money & still giving their taxes. I blame the public who claims to have open eyes & ears & have common sense, but then take such a stupid step.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-losing-game-of-publicly-financed-sports-venues/article25563294/
The people of Quebec City & Edmonton are falling prey to one of the oldest con games – the notion that spending public money on pro sports venues is a sound investment.
Facts don’t seem to matter in this game. And your city could be fleeced next.
Stacks of independent research over many decades have shown that building a stadium or luring a new franchise does little for a city’s economy. They typically don’t generate significant new tax dollars, jobs or growth. In most cases, the money would be more wisely spent on badly needed public infrastructure, such as roads, transit or schools.
And yet, governments serially ignore the evidence & continue to shower subsidies on team owners & their media partners.
In Quebec City & Edmonton, governments are currently sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into new arenas. In Quebec City’s case, the aim is to attract an NHL franchise. The rationale in Edmonton is to keep its team, the Oilers, from leaving.
Gobs of taxpayer cash will similarly be needed if Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre gets his wish of bringing professional baseball back to the city. The price tag for buying a franchise & building a new baseball stadium – presumably, a domed one – will top $1-billion. And it won’t happen unless taxpayers pick up a big chunk of the tab.
So why are governments so gullible?
The simple answer is that sport subsidies are a political winner.
They’re sold as investments in the economy. But it’s really about civic pride, the thrill of the game & cheering for the home team.
Montrealers, for example, overwhelmingly support the idea of bringing baseball back to their city more than decade after the Expos left for Washington, D.C., according to a recent Abacus Data poll. Nearly 90% of 500 residents surveyed expressed varying levels of support, ranging from lukewarm to strong. Just 12% are against it. Roughly 8 out of 10 respondents said Major League Baseball would be good for the economy & generate more taxes for the city.
The reality is quite the opposite, according to numerous independent economic studies conducted over several decades in North America.
“The weight of economic evidence … shows that taxpayers spend a lot of money and ultimately don’t get much back,” according to a 2001 study, “Should Cities Pay for Sports Facilities?” for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “And when this paltry return is compared with other potential uses of the funds, the investment, almost always, seems unwise.”
The subsidies rarely stop once the venues are up & running. Billions of dollars a year in hidden subsidies flow to existing sport venues, according to a 2012 book by Judith Grant Long, now an associate professor of sports management at the University of Michigan. In her book, Public-Private Partnerships for Major League Sports Facilities, Ms. Grant Long found that taxpayers are subsidizing 78%of the average professional sports facility in Canada & the US.
Earlier this year, US President Barack Obama moved in his budget to close down one financial vehicle that has encouraged subsidies by barring the use of tax-exempt bonds to finance professional sports facilities. In Canada, governments often fund the projects directly from their own coffers, tapping into lower government borrowing costs.
The real story, however, may be that the main beneficiaries of government largesse are team owners.
Quebec City’s $400-million Centre Vidéotron was built with a combination of municipal & provincial government money. It's ... a lure for an eventual NHL franchise sought by Videotron owner Quebecor Inc., controlled by Parti Québécois Leader Pierre Karl Péladeau.
The cost of Edmonton’s $480-million Rogers Place arena, due to open in time for the 2016-17 NHL season, is being split between the city & wealthy team owner Daryl Katz, who had earlier threatened to move the Oilers to Seattle.
Mr. Katz, who also owns the Rexall pharmacy chain, is now poised to cash in with a massive mixed-used residential, office & entertainment development he’s planning for the surrounding area, dubbed “The Ice District.” The $2-billion project will include 1,000 residential units, 1.3 million square feet of office space in skyscrapers that will rank among the tallest buildings in Western Canada, a luxury hotel & a public plaza with an outdoor skating rink, casino, restaurants & stores.
The private development wouldn’t make much sense without the subsidized Rogers Place as its anchor. And businesses elsewhere will lose as customers inevitably migrate to the new entertainment area, making the deal a wash on the city’s tax ledger.
This losing scenario will play out in your city too unless someone stands up and says, enough.
All the while, these same governments are spending the few money they have on things that are completely useless. These monies could be used for building more affordable housing for homeless & hence, reduce homelessness, or improving infrastructure (water pipelines, public transit, roads, cheaper & sustainable energy), which can also create jobs, which in turn, creates more tax revenue for the government, or simply providing or increasing funding for any number of social causes & NGOs.
But nooooo. The taxes from hard-working public, who itself, is trying to scrimp & save every nickel & dime by buying unorganic, cheap & unhealthy food, for instance, are being used to built expensive stadiums, which ultimately benefit the wealthy owners of sports franchises. They themselves pay much less in taxes but take full benefit of other people's taxes.
But then again, as the article asks that are governments merely stupid to bend to the demands of these wealthy individuals & then answers right away that sports subsidies are a political winner. So who is to blame here? Government or the public. The same public who will give their hard-earned money to a wealthy individual & wealthy players, & gets a paltry return for its own investment. Ironically, while the owners & players are swimming in cash & laughing how they have duped the public, the public is also not only cheering "their team" (who will leave the city as soon as it bleeds the city dry) but also buying expensive merchandise with their own money & still giving their taxes. I blame the public who claims to have open eyes & ears & have common sense, but then take such a stupid step.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The people of Quebec City & Edmonton are falling prey to one of the oldest con games – the notion that spending public money on pro sports venues is a sound investment.
Facts don’t seem to matter in this game. And your city could be fleeced next.
Stacks of independent research over many decades have shown that building a stadium or luring a new franchise does little for a city’s economy. They typically don’t generate significant new tax dollars, jobs or growth. In most cases, the money would be more wisely spent on badly needed public infrastructure, such as roads, transit or schools.
And yet, governments serially ignore the evidence & continue to shower subsidies on team owners & their media partners.
In Quebec City & Edmonton, governments are currently sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into new arenas. In Quebec City’s case, the aim is to attract an NHL franchise. The rationale in Edmonton is to keep its team, the Oilers, from leaving.
Gobs of taxpayer cash will similarly be needed if Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre gets his wish of bringing professional baseball back to the city. The price tag for buying a franchise & building a new baseball stadium – presumably, a domed one – will top $1-billion. And it won’t happen unless taxpayers pick up a big chunk of the tab.
So why are governments so gullible?
The simple answer is that sport subsidies are a political winner.
They’re sold as investments in the economy. But it’s really about civic pride, the thrill of the game & cheering for the home team.
Montrealers, for example, overwhelmingly support the idea of bringing baseball back to their city more than decade after the Expos left for Washington, D.C., according to a recent Abacus Data poll. Nearly 90% of 500 residents surveyed expressed varying levels of support, ranging from lukewarm to strong. Just 12% are against it. Roughly 8 out of 10 respondents said Major League Baseball would be good for the economy & generate more taxes for the city.
The reality is quite the opposite, according to numerous independent economic studies conducted over several decades in North America.
“The weight of economic evidence … shows that taxpayers spend a lot of money and ultimately don’t get much back,” according to a 2001 study, “Should Cities Pay for Sports Facilities?” for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “And when this paltry return is compared with other potential uses of the funds, the investment, almost always, seems unwise.”
The subsidies rarely stop once the venues are up & running. Billions of dollars a year in hidden subsidies flow to existing sport venues, according to a 2012 book by Judith Grant Long, now an associate professor of sports management at the University of Michigan. In her book, Public-Private Partnerships for Major League Sports Facilities, Ms. Grant Long found that taxpayers are subsidizing 78%of the average professional sports facility in Canada & the US.
Earlier this year, US President Barack Obama moved in his budget to close down one financial vehicle that has encouraged subsidies by barring the use of tax-exempt bonds to finance professional sports facilities. In Canada, governments often fund the projects directly from their own coffers, tapping into lower government borrowing costs.
The real story, however, may be that the main beneficiaries of government largesse are team owners.
Quebec City’s $400-million Centre Vidéotron was built with a combination of municipal & provincial government money. It's ... a lure for an eventual NHL franchise sought by Videotron owner Quebecor Inc., controlled by Parti Québécois Leader Pierre Karl Péladeau.
The cost of Edmonton’s $480-million Rogers Place arena, due to open in time for the 2016-17 NHL season, is being split between the city & wealthy team owner Daryl Katz, who had earlier threatened to move the Oilers to Seattle.
Mr. Katz, who also owns the Rexall pharmacy chain, is now poised to cash in with a massive mixed-used residential, office & entertainment development he’s planning for the surrounding area, dubbed “The Ice District.” The $2-billion project will include 1,000 residential units, 1.3 million square feet of office space in skyscrapers that will rank among the tallest buildings in Western Canada, a luxury hotel & a public plaza with an outdoor skating rink, casino, restaurants & stores.
The private development wouldn’t make much sense without the subsidized Rogers Place as its anchor. And businesses elsewhere will lose as customers inevitably migrate to the new entertainment area, making the deal a wash on the city’s tax ledger.
This losing scenario will play out in your city too unless someone stands up and says, enough.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
The Interview: Nobel laureate & economist Joseph Stiglitz
What I liked from this interview is about a little discussion on economic & financial inequality among the public. Politicians & economists of the world are trying to increase demand, & hence, GDP, but they are not trying to resolve the root problems of the recession & slow recovery, & keep trying to put in place harsh austerity measures for the poor public & tax cuts for the rich. These measures are counter-intuitive & decrease the national demand & hurt the national & international economies even further.
The tax cuts for the rich doesn't entice the rich to take that extra cash & increase the minimum wages or provide more benefits to their workers, & instead, they invest in their private yachts, sports arenas, sports clubs, racing animals, real estate, stock portfolios, or simply horde it all away in tax havens. The harsh austerity measures, coupled with more taxes in some cases, for the poor public reduce the free cash available to them, for discretionary purchases, & in many cases, even for needy purchases, which in turn, reduces aggregate demand in the country.
These measures create economic, financial, & social inequality. People cannot move up the social ladder, since they don't have enough money, but they can definitely move down, which is happening all over the world. The young populations of the world are seeing their dreams crush after spending a fortune on their education & building that dream where they would be owning their own homes, have families, build up their wealth, & finally, retire to a relaxing future. Instead, they are seeing their degrees pretty much worthless & jobs that pay so little that owning homes & building up wealth is becoming a very far-fetched dream. All the while, these same poor youths are also seeing people with no discernible talent making a lot of money, for instance, celebs like the Kardashian family or the rich billionaire kids of new billionaires in Europe, China, India, & Russia.
That inequality starts to breed hatred in these young minds. That hatred then tries to find an outlet in terms of violence; be it gun violence in America or Canada or gang warfare in Latin America or refugee crisis of Europe or ranks of terrorist groups like ISIS & Al-Qaeda in Middle East & Africa swelling up with young Westerners.
So, the root problem of violence in Middle East, Latin America, Europe, & in North America are all due to inequality all over the world. If only politicians & economists try to resolve this one major problem, we won't be having these fears of recessions hounding us all the time, & violence would definitely be down all over the world, which in turn, would save billions in arms & weaponry purchases, safety & security apparatus, & of course, millions of lives around the world. Those billions of money can then be used towards helping students in post-secondary institutions with their tuitions, improving infrastructure, creating more companies with subsidies, for instance, for green economies, which in turn, create more well-paying jobs, which in turn, would increase aggregate demand & reduce inequality. If only ... !!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University, has written extensively about inequality in America, including his latest book, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them. He’ll be a visiting scholar in the new Lind Initiative U.S. Studies at the University of British Columbia this fall.
...
Q: You’ll be lecturing at UBC on global inequality. Why should people be worried about inequality?
A: Inequality is very related to the problems we’re talking about. People at the top spend less money than those at the bottom so when you have redistribution toward the top, aggregate demand goes down. Unless you intervene, you’re going to have a weak economy unless something else happens. That something else could be a bubble. The US tried a tech bubble & a housing bubble, but those were not sustainable answers. So I view inequality as a fundamental part of our macroeconomic weakness. There have always been two theories about inequality. One is that it reflects just deserts. The other is that there are large elements of exploitation & inequality of opportunities. The evidence is overwhelmingly that the increase in inequality is associated with those negative factors. If it were all social contribution, then when the top did better, they would be contributing to everybody’s well-being. That trickle-down hasn’t happened. We’ve seen median income, people in the middle, actually worse off than they were 25 years ago.
Q: You’ve said that inequality is fraying the bonds that hold the US together. That sounds scary. Is it that bad?
A: Oh, I think it is. [It’s behind] a lot of what you see as dysfunctional behaviour & extremism. Particularly, young men are angry. You know, how can people like Donald Trump be so politically successful, running ahead in the Republican primary with no policy other than a sense of anger? What he’s been doing is pointing out the corruption in our system. I mean, Jeb Bush has Florida put $250 million of pension funds into Lehman Brothers & then when he leaves as governor he gets a job at Lehman at a salary of $1.3 million—those things resonate with Americans. The system looks broken.
What I argued in The Great Divide is that societies can’t function without trust, both politically & economically. And in the context of politics, what you see increasingly is young people not voting. The voter turnout in the last election was the lowest it’s been since the Second World War, when a lot of people were off fighting. In 2010, voter turnout among young people was 20%. Americans like to say we’re fighting for democracy, & yet young Americans have come to the view that democracy doesn’t deliver.
Q: It’s been 4 years since you wrote, “Of the one per cent, by the one per cent, for the one per cent,” which gave the Occupy movement its slogan “We are the 99 per cent.” Is inequality getting more attention now?
A: Very much so. You see Hillary Clinton has emphasized it in her campaign, but even the Republicans have said inequality is the major issue. To me that’s one of the optimistic things, that it’s finally moved to the top of a political agenda. The other optimistic note is that you see, across the country, 70% support for increasing the minimum wage. Congress can’t get it through because it’s dysfunctional & so we’re having strong grassroots movements to raise it, in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York. The grassroots people are saying our national government is broken; we have to do something about it.
...
Q: What about Canada? Do you think we have an inequality problem?
A: Oh, yes, clearly. But it’s in the middle of the OECD pack. It’s not as good as the Scandinavian countries. It’s not been doing as good a job as it did in the past in taking inequality of market income & reducing it. Also, you are a natural resource economy, & natural resource economies, with a couple of exceptions, tend to be very unequal. You can, in principle, tax the natural resource rents at very high rates & use that to create a more equal society. The country that’s been most successful at that is Norway. The more typical countries are those in the Middle East where a small group seizes those resources, uses it to buy arms to make sure that they can oppress the remainder, & you get these great inequalities. So Canada is among the better performing of the natural resource economies, but it’s still not up to the best performing.
Q: In Canada the share of income going to the rich has been falling for several years. We have better social mobility than in the US. Why is Canada better on inequality?
A: You have a more egalitarian education system, & I think your health care system is so much better than ours. A third aspect that clearly is part of American history is our racial issue. But the problems of inequality are even within the white group. 20% of American children grow up in poverty, & that means they get inadequate nutrition, inadequate health care, & because we have a very local education system, they get inadequate access to education. With those as a starting base, you perpetuate inequality. That’s why, here in New York, Mayor de Blasio has made a big deal of trying to focus on preschool education, because by 5 years old, there are already huge differences. We’ve finally begun to recognize it.
...
The tax cuts for the rich doesn't entice the rich to take that extra cash & increase the minimum wages or provide more benefits to their workers, & instead, they invest in their private yachts, sports arenas, sports clubs, racing animals, real estate, stock portfolios, or simply horde it all away in tax havens. The harsh austerity measures, coupled with more taxes in some cases, for the poor public reduce the free cash available to them, for discretionary purchases, & in many cases, even for needy purchases, which in turn, reduces aggregate demand in the country.
These measures create economic, financial, & social inequality. People cannot move up the social ladder, since they don't have enough money, but they can definitely move down, which is happening all over the world. The young populations of the world are seeing their dreams crush after spending a fortune on their education & building that dream where they would be owning their own homes, have families, build up their wealth, & finally, retire to a relaxing future. Instead, they are seeing their degrees pretty much worthless & jobs that pay so little that owning homes & building up wealth is becoming a very far-fetched dream. All the while, these same poor youths are also seeing people with no discernible talent making a lot of money, for instance, celebs like the Kardashian family or the rich billionaire kids of new billionaires in Europe, China, India, & Russia.
That inequality starts to breed hatred in these young minds. That hatred then tries to find an outlet in terms of violence; be it gun violence in America or Canada or gang warfare in Latin America or refugee crisis of Europe or ranks of terrorist groups like ISIS & Al-Qaeda in Middle East & Africa swelling up with young Westerners.
So, the root problem of violence in Middle East, Latin America, Europe, & in North America are all due to inequality all over the world. If only politicians & economists try to resolve this one major problem, we won't be having these fears of recessions hounding us all the time, & violence would definitely be down all over the world, which in turn, would save billions in arms & weaponry purchases, safety & security apparatus, & of course, millions of lives around the world. Those billions of money can then be used towards helping students in post-secondary institutions with their tuitions, improving infrastructure, creating more companies with subsidies, for instance, for green economies, which in turn, create more well-paying jobs, which in turn, would increase aggregate demand & reduce inequality. If only ... !!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University, has written extensively about inequality in America, including his latest book, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them. He’ll be a visiting scholar in the new Lind Initiative U.S. Studies at the University of British Columbia this fall.
...
Q: You’ll be lecturing at UBC on global inequality. Why should people be worried about inequality?
A: Inequality is very related to the problems we’re talking about. People at the top spend less money than those at the bottom so when you have redistribution toward the top, aggregate demand goes down. Unless you intervene, you’re going to have a weak economy unless something else happens. That something else could be a bubble. The US tried a tech bubble & a housing bubble, but those were not sustainable answers. So I view inequality as a fundamental part of our macroeconomic weakness. There have always been two theories about inequality. One is that it reflects just deserts. The other is that there are large elements of exploitation & inequality of opportunities. The evidence is overwhelmingly that the increase in inequality is associated with those negative factors. If it were all social contribution, then when the top did better, they would be contributing to everybody’s well-being. That trickle-down hasn’t happened. We’ve seen median income, people in the middle, actually worse off than they were 25 years ago.
Q: You’ve said that inequality is fraying the bonds that hold the US together. That sounds scary. Is it that bad?
A: Oh, I think it is. [It’s behind] a lot of what you see as dysfunctional behaviour & extremism. Particularly, young men are angry. You know, how can people like Donald Trump be so politically successful, running ahead in the Republican primary with no policy other than a sense of anger? What he’s been doing is pointing out the corruption in our system. I mean, Jeb Bush has Florida put $250 million of pension funds into Lehman Brothers & then when he leaves as governor he gets a job at Lehman at a salary of $1.3 million—those things resonate with Americans. The system looks broken.
What I argued in The Great Divide is that societies can’t function without trust, both politically & economically. And in the context of politics, what you see increasingly is young people not voting. The voter turnout in the last election was the lowest it’s been since the Second World War, when a lot of people were off fighting. In 2010, voter turnout among young people was 20%. Americans like to say we’re fighting for democracy, & yet young Americans have come to the view that democracy doesn’t deliver.
Q: It’s been 4 years since you wrote, “Of the one per cent, by the one per cent, for the one per cent,” which gave the Occupy movement its slogan “We are the 99 per cent.” Is inequality getting more attention now?
A: Very much so. You see Hillary Clinton has emphasized it in her campaign, but even the Republicans have said inequality is the major issue. To me that’s one of the optimistic things, that it’s finally moved to the top of a political agenda. The other optimistic note is that you see, across the country, 70% support for increasing the minimum wage. Congress can’t get it through because it’s dysfunctional & so we’re having strong grassroots movements to raise it, in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York. The grassroots people are saying our national government is broken; we have to do something about it.
...
Q: What about Canada? Do you think we have an inequality problem?
A: Oh, yes, clearly. But it’s in the middle of the OECD pack. It’s not as good as the Scandinavian countries. It’s not been doing as good a job as it did in the past in taking inequality of market income & reducing it. Also, you are a natural resource economy, & natural resource economies, with a couple of exceptions, tend to be very unequal. You can, in principle, tax the natural resource rents at very high rates & use that to create a more equal society. The country that’s been most successful at that is Norway. The more typical countries are those in the Middle East where a small group seizes those resources, uses it to buy arms to make sure that they can oppress the remainder, & you get these great inequalities. So Canada is among the better performing of the natural resource economies, but it’s still not up to the best performing.
Q: In Canada the share of income going to the rich has been falling for several years. We have better social mobility than in the US. Why is Canada better on inequality?
A: You have a more egalitarian education system, & I think your health care system is so much better than ours. A third aspect that clearly is part of American history is our racial issue. But the problems of inequality are even within the white group. 20% of American children grow up in poverty, & that means they get inadequate nutrition, inadequate health care, & because we have a very local education system, they get inadequate access to education. With those as a starting base, you perpetuate inequality. That’s why, here in New York, Mayor de Blasio has made a big deal of trying to focus on preschool education, because by 5 years old, there are already huge differences. We’ve finally begun to recognize it.
...
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Monday, February 29, 2016
Students turning to campus food banks as tuition, living costs rise
Now, this article might be based merely on a poll, but it is still reporting on a hidden, but very serious, problem. Tuition keeps getting expensive & inaccessible every academic semester. Students' wages & their parents' incomes are not increasing accordingly. But the hype of getting an education is not only constantly there but becoming an ever-ringing alarm bell.
So, every parent & family wants their children to attend a good post-secondary institution. Good post-secondary institution also charge exorbitant tuition fees, which in part, is due to governments at all levels cutting education funding. That in turn increases tuition fees.
So, unless the parents have a garden of magic trees with leaves of hard cold cash, children will suffer in getting their education. This is especially true for families which don't have enough income & wealth in the first place. If parents don't / can't contribute to their children's education, then their kids' education is affected even worse. As I blogged last year, that some universities are building luxury dorms to cater to children of affluent families, & at the same time, charging exorbitant tuition fees to poverty-stricken students.
Even this food bank mentioned in this article is volunteer-run. Universities & governments still won't help students, who are in dire need to choose between basic food or studies, with enough support to help them focus on their studies than to worry about where their next meal is going to come from, if at all.
This is the terrible condition of poverty-stricken students in first-world countries; from US to Canada to UK. These countries are considered as welfare nations. These countries will charge high taxes but those taxes are paying government ministers' salaries than providing a meal to a hungry student. Then, that hungry student will most likely get even more burdened with debts to fill his stomach & study.
How can we expect a nation to be productive when it can't even provide its poor students with enough food to help them keep their focus on their studies? How can we expect a nation to produce brilliant leaders of tomorrow when a majority of its poor can't even get proper food to keep their brains properly functioning? How can we expect a nation to expect its youth to become the engine of growth & productivity when that young population received no help, whatsoever, when it needed it the most & now, after graduating, it is saddled with thousands upon thousands in student debt?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A new campus food bank at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax is part of a troubling trend, says the Canadian Federation of Students.
Similar services have sprung up on campuses across Canada as tuition fees & living costs have risen along with student debt, national chairperson Bilan Arte said Tuesday.
“Student unions keep having to prioritize this issue because their members keep saying that they’re making these hard choices between tuition and their next meal. This is incredibly alarming for our organization.
“I think it really underscores for us the importance of talking about the inaccessibility of post-secondary education in Canada today.”
The federation, representing more than 500,000 members from 80 students’ unions, is calling on the federal & provincial governments to make higher learning more affordable.
Arte ... said the true extent of student poverty is largely unrecognized & under-reported.
“How many food banks opening on campus is it going to take before governments sort of realize that maybe there’s a problem?”
Financial aid officer Allen Wolfe of Saint Mary’s University said he helped set up the campus service after referring students to local food banks on a weekly basis. The plight of an international student who was going without meals convinced him to act.
“It wasn’t until a long interview with him that I realized he wasn’t eating,” Wolfe said in a telephone interview. “He was starving, basically, but still maintaining perfect grades.
“That’s really what stuck with me this year and what pushed me forward to make this happen.”
Wolfe stressed that, like many campus food banks, the Saint Mary’s service relies on volunteers & is not funded by the university.
“There’s no budget line for this. It’s going to be regularly maintained by food drives.”
Maximum student loan limits have not risen in the last 2 years as food, housing & other prices have gone up, he added.
Wolfe said he also sees many young people who never learned how to properly budget for life on their own.
While campus-specific statistics are not available, Arte referred to a national study released last fall by Food Banks Canada. It found that community food banks across the country support about 841,000 people a month, up 25% since the economic slide of 2008.
“We know that campuses are microcosms of the larger society,” Arte said. “We have generally heard and have seen our members report an increase in the usage of their food banks on campus.”
A new poll just released by CIBC (TSX:CM) found that 51% of college & university students turned to their parents last year for help after running out of cash.
The online survey conducted Aug. 13-17 among 1,001 Canadian parents who are Angus Reid Forum panellists suggested 48% of students from families with incomes higher than $125,000 asked for more money, compared to 52% from families earning less than $75,000.
So, every parent & family wants their children to attend a good post-secondary institution. Good post-secondary institution also charge exorbitant tuition fees, which in part, is due to governments at all levels cutting education funding. That in turn increases tuition fees.
So, unless the parents have a garden of magic trees with leaves of hard cold cash, children will suffer in getting their education. This is especially true for families which don't have enough income & wealth in the first place. If parents don't / can't contribute to their children's education, then their kids' education is affected even worse. As I blogged last year, that some universities are building luxury dorms to cater to children of affluent families, & at the same time, charging exorbitant tuition fees to poverty-stricken students.
Even this food bank mentioned in this article is volunteer-run. Universities & governments still won't help students, who are in dire need to choose between basic food or studies, with enough support to help them focus on their studies than to worry about where their next meal is going to come from, if at all.
This is the terrible condition of poverty-stricken students in first-world countries; from US to Canada to UK. These countries are considered as welfare nations. These countries will charge high taxes but those taxes are paying government ministers' salaries than providing a meal to a hungry student. Then, that hungry student will most likely get even more burdened with debts to fill his stomach & study.
How can we expect a nation to be productive when it can't even provide its poor students with enough food to help them keep their focus on their studies? How can we expect a nation to produce brilliant leaders of tomorrow when a majority of its poor can't even get proper food to keep their brains properly functioning? How can we expect a nation to expect its youth to become the engine of growth & productivity when that young population received no help, whatsoever, when it needed it the most & now, after graduating, it is saddled with thousands upon thousands in student debt?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A new campus food bank at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax is part of a troubling trend, says the Canadian Federation of Students.
Similar services have sprung up on campuses across Canada as tuition fees & living costs have risen along with student debt, national chairperson Bilan Arte said Tuesday.
“Student unions keep having to prioritize this issue because their members keep saying that they’re making these hard choices between tuition and their next meal. This is incredibly alarming for our organization.
“I think it really underscores for us the importance of talking about the inaccessibility of post-secondary education in Canada today.”
The federation, representing more than 500,000 members from 80 students’ unions, is calling on the federal & provincial governments to make higher learning more affordable.
Arte ... said the true extent of student poverty is largely unrecognized & under-reported.
“How many food banks opening on campus is it going to take before governments sort of realize that maybe there’s a problem?”
Financial aid officer Allen Wolfe of Saint Mary’s University said he helped set up the campus service after referring students to local food banks on a weekly basis. The plight of an international student who was going without meals convinced him to act.
“It wasn’t until a long interview with him that I realized he wasn’t eating,” Wolfe said in a telephone interview. “He was starving, basically, but still maintaining perfect grades.
“That’s really what stuck with me this year and what pushed me forward to make this happen.”
Wolfe stressed that, like many campus food banks, the Saint Mary’s service relies on volunteers & is not funded by the university.
“There’s no budget line for this. It’s going to be regularly maintained by food drives.”
Maximum student loan limits have not risen in the last 2 years as food, housing & other prices have gone up, he added.
Wolfe said he also sees many young people who never learned how to properly budget for life on their own.
While campus-specific statistics are not available, Arte referred to a national study released last fall by Food Banks Canada. It found that community food banks across the country support about 841,000 people a month, up 25% since the economic slide of 2008.
“We know that campuses are microcosms of the larger society,” Arte said. “We have generally heard and have seen our members report an increase in the usage of their food banks on campus.”
A new poll just released by CIBC (TSX:CM) found that 51% of college & university students turned to their parents last year for help after running out of cash.
The online survey conducted Aug. 13-17 among 1,001 Canadian parents who are Angus Reid Forum panellists suggested 48% of students from families with incomes higher than $125,000 asked for more money, compared to 52% from families earning less than $75,000.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
When it comes to war in space, US has the edge
This article gives us a little taste of how the world's major powers, financially & militarily, are in a race to spend trillions upon trillions to conquer their global rivals in space & show to the world how they "won" the race. Ironically, those trillions are coming from people taxes; the same taxes people of a country pay, voluntarily or involuntarily, to receive basic necessities to fulfill their basic human needs.
Trillions of those taxes are being spent on something which most of the world's population will never use. All these space military hardware is not helping anyone improve billions of lives right here on Earth.
We humans want to take a giant leap towards Moon settlement & Mars colonization, but we forget very easily that billions of humans are living a miserable & wretched life right in our backyard, right here on this very planet.
Our fellow humans are dying of thirst because water is becoming a shortage, but trillions are not being spent to come up with cheap technologies to solve this impending crisis.
Our fellow humans are dying of hunger or suffering from eating unhealthy foods because feeding everyone in the world a healthy diet would require billions in funding, but billions are not being spent on research to improve agriculture & food accessibility for billions of poor.
Our fellow humans are living without a roof over their heads & homelessness is only increasing. But billions are not being spent on building affordable housing to provide a decent living space to our own fellow human beings.
Similarly, there are thousands more issues where trillions can be spent easily to improve human & animal lives; fatal diseases, climate change, animal welfare, sustainable energy etc. & make our little planet a living utopia for all. But, instead of improving lives for billions on this little planet of ours, trillions are being spent, of people's own money, on advancing technologies to destroy more lives & wreck more havoc on this little planet.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quietly & without most people noticing, the world’s leading space powers — the US, China & Russia — have been deploying new & more sophisticated weaponry in space.
Earth’s orbit is looking more & more like the planet’s surface — heavily armed & primed for war. A growing number of “inspection” satellites lurk in orbit, possibly awaiting commands to sneak up on & disable or destroy other satellites. Down on the surface, more & more warships & ground installations pack powerful rockets that, with accurate guidance, could reach into orbit to destroy enemy spacecraft.
A war in orbit could wreck the delicate satellite constellations that the world relies on for navigation, communication, scientific research & military surveillance. Widespread orbital destruction could send humanity through a technological time warp. “You go back to World War Two,” Air Force General John Hyten, in charge of US Space Command, told 60 Minutes. “You go back to the Industrial Age.”
It’s hard to say exactly how many weapons are in orbit. That’s because many spacecraft are “dual use.” They have peaceful functions & potential military applications. With the proverbial flip of a switch, an inspection satellite, ostensibly configured for orbital repair work, could become a robotic assassin capable of taking out other satellites with lasers, explosives or mechanical claws. Until the moment it attacks, however, the assassin spacecraft might appear to be harmless. And its dual use gives its operators political cover. The US possesses more space weaponry than any other country, yet denies that any of its satellites warrant the term.
When 60 Minutes asked the Air Force secretary whether the United States has weapons in space, Secretary Deborah Lee James answered simply: “No, we do not.”
Still, it’s possible to count at least some of the systems that could disable or destroy other satellites. Some of the surface-based weaponry is far less ambiguous & so easier to tally. Even taking into account the difficulty of accurately counting space weaponry, one thing is clear: The US is, by far, the world’s most heavily armed space power.
But not for a lack of trying on the part of other countries.
New Cold War in space
Earth’s orbit wasn’t always such a dangerous place. The Soviet Union destroyed a satellite for the last time in an experiment in 1982. The US tested its last Cold War anti-satellite missile, launched by a vertically flying F-15 fighter, in 1985.
For the next 3 decades, both countries refrained from deploying weapons in space. The “unofficial moratorium,” as Laura Grego, a space expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, described it, put the brakes on the militarization of space.
Then in 2002, President George W. Bush withdrew the US from a treaty with Russia prohibiting the development of antiballistic-missile weapons. The move cleared the way for Bush to deploy interceptor missiles that administration officials claimed would protect the US from nuclear attack by “rogue” states such as North Korea. But withdrawing from the treaty also undermined the consensus on the strictly peaceful use of space.
5 years later, in January 2007, China struck one of its own old satellites with a ground-launched rocket as part of a test of a rudimentary anti-satellite system. This scattered thousands of potentially dangerous pieces of debris across low orbit. Beijing’s anti-satellite test accelerated the militarization of space. The US, in particular, seized the opportunity to greatly expand its orbital arsenal.
US companies & government agencies have at least 500 satellites — roughly as many as the rest of the world combined. At least 100 of them are primarily military in nature. Most are for communication or surveillance. In other words, they’re oriented downward, toward Earth.
But a few patrol space itself. The US military’s Advanced Technology Risk Reduction spacecraft, launched into an 800-mile-high orbit in 2009, is basically a sensitive infrared camera that can detect the heat plumes from rocket launches &, presumably, maneuvering spacecraft. It then can beam detailed tracking data to human operators on the ground.
The risk-reduction satellite works in conjunction with other spacecraft & Earth-based sensors to keep track of Earth’s approximately 1,000 active satellites. The telescope-like Space-Based Space Surveillance satellite, launched in 2010, “has a clear and unobstructed view,” according to an Air Force fact sheet, “of resident space objects orbiting Earth from its 390-mile-altitude orbit.”
“Resident space object” is military speak for satellites.
A network of around 30 ground radars & telescopes complements the orbital sensors. Together, these systems make “380,000 to 420,000 observations each day,” Space Command explains on its Website.
Observing & tracking other countries’ satellites is a passive & essentially peaceful affair. But the US military also possesses at least 6 spacecraft that can maneuver close to enemy satellites & inspect or even damage them.
In 2010, the Air Force launched its first X-37B space plane. A quarter-size, robotic version of the old Space Shuttle, the X-37B boosts into low orbit — around 250 miles high — atop a rocket but lands back on Earth like an airplane.
The two X-37Bs take turns spending a year or more in orbit. Officially, the Air Force describes the maneuverable mini-shuttles as being part of “an experimental test program to demonstrate technologies for a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform.” But they could also attack other spacecraft.
The X-37Bs “could be used to rendezvous and inspect satellites, either friendly or adversarial, and potentially grab and de-orbit satellites,” the Secure World Foundation, a space advocacy group, pointed out. The group stressed that the feasibility of the X-37Bs as weapons is low because the mini-shuttles are limited to low orbits & because the US operates at least 4 other maneuverable satellites that are probably far better at stalking & tearing up enemy spacecraft.
These include 2 Microsatellite Technology Experiment satellites that the military boosted into low orbit in 2006. The MiTEx satellites are small, weighing just 500 pounds each. This makes them harder for enemy sensors to detect — giving them the advantage of surprise in wartime.
The two Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites are much bigger & higher up. From their stationary positions 22,000 miles above Earth, these spacecraft — in orbit since July 2014 — monitor other satellites & can, according to the Air Force, “maneuver near a resident space object of interest, enabling characterization for anomaly resolution and enhanced surveillance.”
Maneuverable space planes & satellites are one way of attacking enemy spacecraft. But there’s an older, less subtle method — blasting them out of space with a rocket.
In late 2006, an US spy satellite malfunctioned shortly after reaching low orbit. In early February 2008, the Pentagon announced it would shoot down the dead spacecraft. Officially, Washington insisted that the anti-satellite operation was a safety measure, to prevent the defunct craft’s toxic fuel from harming someone when the satellite’s orbit decayed & it tumbled to Earth.
But it appeared to more than one observer that China’s 2007 anti-satellite test motivated Washington’s own satellite shoot-down. A new Cold War was underway, this time in space.
On Feb. 20, 2008, the Navy cruiser Lake Erie, equipped with a high-tech Aegis radar, launched a specially modified SM-3 antiballistic-missile interceptor. The rocket struck the malfunctioning satellite at an estimated speed of 22,000 miles an hour, destroying it.
Today, the US has dozens of Aegis-equipped warships carrying hundreds of SM-3 missiles, more than enough to quickly wipe out the approximately 50 satellites apiece that Russia & China keep in low orbit.
“Aegis ships could be positioned optimally,” Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote in a 2011 paper, “ to stage a ‘sweep’ attack on a set of satellites nearly at once.”
As an anti-satellite backup, the US Army & the Missile Defense Agency also operate 2 types of ground-launched missile interceptors that have the power to reach low orbit — & the accuracy to strike spacecraft.
Against this huge arsenal, Russia & China possess few counterweights. China’s 2007 anti-satellite test, & a similar trial in early 2013, proved that Beijing can hit a low satellite with a rocket. In 2010, the Chinese space agency launched a cluster of small space vehicles, including 2 named SJ-6F & SJ-12, that slammed into each other in orbit, seemingly on purpose. In July 2013, China deployed a small inspection spacecraft, designated SY-7, in low orbit.
Like the US fleet of maneuverable inspection spacecraft, the tiny SY-7 with its remote-controlled claw could be orbital repair or inspection vehicle — or it could be a weapon.
“One could dream up,” Brian Weeden, a technical & space adviser at the Secure World Foundation, told the War Is Boring Website in 2013, “a whole bunch of dastardly things that could be done with a robotic arm in close proximity.”
But China lacks the space- & ground-based sensors to accurately steer these weapons toward their targets. Compared to the US space-awareness system, with its scores of radars & telescopes, China possesses a relatively paltry system — one consequence of Beijing’s diplomatic isolation.
Where the US can count on allies to host parts of a global sensor network, China has few formal allies & can only deploy space-awareness systems inside its own borders, on ships at sea or in space. The Chinese military can watch the skies over East Asia, but is mostly blind elsewhere.
By contrast, Russia inherited an impressive space-awareness network from the Soviet Union. Russia’s allies in Europe — in particular, the former Soviet & Eastern Bloc states — extend the network’s field of view. As a result, Moscow possesses “a relatively complete catalog of space objects,” the Secure World Foundation concluded.
But Russia is still far behind the US & China as far as space weaponry is concerned. There was a 31-year gap between the Soviet Union’s last anti-satellite test & Russia’s first post-Soviet orbital-weapon experiment. On Christmas Day in 2013, Russia quietly launched a small, maneuverable inspection spacecraft into low orbit, hiding the tiny spacecraft among a cluster of communications satellites.
2 more space inspectors followed, one in May 2014 & another in March 2015. Moscow hasn’t said much about them, but amateur satellite spotters have tracked the vehicles performing the kinds of maneuvers consistent with orbital attack craft. “You can probably equip them with lasers,” Anatoly Zak, the author of Russia in Space: Past Explained, Future Explored, said of the Russian craft. “Maybe put some explosives on them.”
They join a growing number of space weapons guided by expanding networks of Earth-based & orbital sensors on a new, distant battlefront of a so far bloodless neo-Cold War.
Trillions of those taxes are being spent on something which most of the world's population will never use. All these space military hardware is not helping anyone improve billions of lives right here on Earth.
We humans want to take a giant leap towards Moon settlement & Mars colonization, but we forget very easily that billions of humans are living a miserable & wretched life right in our backyard, right here on this very planet.
Our fellow humans are dying of thirst because water is becoming a shortage, but trillions are not being spent to come up with cheap technologies to solve this impending crisis.
Our fellow humans are dying of hunger or suffering from eating unhealthy foods because feeding everyone in the world a healthy diet would require billions in funding, but billions are not being spent on research to improve agriculture & food accessibility for billions of poor.
Our fellow humans are living without a roof over their heads & homelessness is only increasing. But billions are not being spent on building affordable housing to provide a decent living space to our own fellow human beings.
Similarly, there are thousands more issues where trillions can be spent easily to improve human & animal lives; fatal diseases, climate change, animal welfare, sustainable energy etc. & make our little planet a living utopia for all. But, instead of improving lives for billions on this little planet of ours, trillions are being spent, of people's own money, on advancing technologies to destroy more lives & wreck more havoc on this little planet.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quietly & without most people noticing, the world’s leading space powers — the US, China & Russia — have been deploying new & more sophisticated weaponry in space.
Earth’s orbit is looking more & more like the planet’s surface — heavily armed & primed for war. A growing number of “inspection” satellites lurk in orbit, possibly awaiting commands to sneak up on & disable or destroy other satellites. Down on the surface, more & more warships & ground installations pack powerful rockets that, with accurate guidance, could reach into orbit to destroy enemy spacecraft.
A war in orbit could wreck the delicate satellite constellations that the world relies on for navigation, communication, scientific research & military surveillance. Widespread orbital destruction could send humanity through a technological time warp. “You go back to World War Two,” Air Force General John Hyten, in charge of US Space Command, told 60 Minutes. “You go back to the Industrial Age.”
It’s hard to say exactly how many weapons are in orbit. That’s because many spacecraft are “dual use.” They have peaceful functions & potential military applications. With the proverbial flip of a switch, an inspection satellite, ostensibly configured for orbital repair work, could become a robotic assassin capable of taking out other satellites with lasers, explosives or mechanical claws. Until the moment it attacks, however, the assassin spacecraft might appear to be harmless. And its dual use gives its operators political cover. The US possesses more space weaponry than any other country, yet denies that any of its satellites warrant the term.
When 60 Minutes asked the Air Force secretary whether the United States has weapons in space, Secretary Deborah Lee James answered simply: “No, we do not.”
Still, it’s possible to count at least some of the systems that could disable or destroy other satellites. Some of the surface-based weaponry is far less ambiguous & so easier to tally. Even taking into account the difficulty of accurately counting space weaponry, one thing is clear: The US is, by far, the world’s most heavily armed space power.
But not for a lack of trying on the part of other countries.
New Cold War in space
Earth’s orbit wasn’t always such a dangerous place. The Soviet Union destroyed a satellite for the last time in an experiment in 1982. The US tested its last Cold War anti-satellite missile, launched by a vertically flying F-15 fighter, in 1985.
For the next 3 decades, both countries refrained from deploying weapons in space. The “unofficial moratorium,” as Laura Grego, a space expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, described it, put the brakes on the militarization of space.
Then in 2002, President George W. Bush withdrew the US from a treaty with Russia prohibiting the development of antiballistic-missile weapons. The move cleared the way for Bush to deploy interceptor missiles that administration officials claimed would protect the US from nuclear attack by “rogue” states such as North Korea. But withdrawing from the treaty also undermined the consensus on the strictly peaceful use of space.
5 years later, in January 2007, China struck one of its own old satellites with a ground-launched rocket as part of a test of a rudimentary anti-satellite system. This scattered thousands of potentially dangerous pieces of debris across low orbit. Beijing’s anti-satellite test accelerated the militarization of space. The US, in particular, seized the opportunity to greatly expand its orbital arsenal.
US companies & government agencies have at least 500 satellites — roughly as many as the rest of the world combined. At least 100 of them are primarily military in nature. Most are for communication or surveillance. In other words, they’re oriented downward, toward Earth.
But a few patrol space itself. The US military’s Advanced Technology Risk Reduction spacecraft, launched into an 800-mile-high orbit in 2009, is basically a sensitive infrared camera that can detect the heat plumes from rocket launches &, presumably, maneuvering spacecraft. It then can beam detailed tracking data to human operators on the ground.
The risk-reduction satellite works in conjunction with other spacecraft & Earth-based sensors to keep track of Earth’s approximately 1,000 active satellites. The telescope-like Space-Based Space Surveillance satellite, launched in 2010, “has a clear and unobstructed view,” according to an Air Force fact sheet, “of resident space objects orbiting Earth from its 390-mile-altitude orbit.”
“Resident space object” is military speak for satellites.
A network of around 30 ground radars & telescopes complements the orbital sensors. Together, these systems make “380,000 to 420,000 observations each day,” Space Command explains on its Website.
Observing & tracking other countries’ satellites is a passive & essentially peaceful affair. But the US military also possesses at least 6 spacecraft that can maneuver close to enemy satellites & inspect or even damage them.
In 2010, the Air Force launched its first X-37B space plane. A quarter-size, robotic version of the old Space Shuttle, the X-37B boosts into low orbit — around 250 miles high — atop a rocket but lands back on Earth like an airplane.
The two X-37Bs take turns spending a year or more in orbit. Officially, the Air Force describes the maneuverable mini-shuttles as being part of “an experimental test program to demonstrate technologies for a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform.” But they could also attack other spacecraft.
The X-37Bs “could be used to rendezvous and inspect satellites, either friendly or adversarial, and potentially grab and de-orbit satellites,” the Secure World Foundation, a space advocacy group, pointed out. The group stressed that the feasibility of the X-37Bs as weapons is low because the mini-shuttles are limited to low orbits & because the US operates at least 4 other maneuverable satellites that are probably far better at stalking & tearing up enemy spacecraft.
These include 2 Microsatellite Technology Experiment satellites that the military boosted into low orbit in 2006. The MiTEx satellites are small, weighing just 500 pounds each. This makes them harder for enemy sensors to detect — giving them the advantage of surprise in wartime.
The two Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites are much bigger & higher up. From their stationary positions 22,000 miles above Earth, these spacecraft — in orbit since July 2014 — monitor other satellites & can, according to the Air Force, “maneuver near a resident space object of interest, enabling characterization for anomaly resolution and enhanced surveillance.”
Maneuverable space planes & satellites are one way of attacking enemy spacecraft. But there’s an older, less subtle method — blasting them out of space with a rocket.
In late 2006, an US spy satellite malfunctioned shortly after reaching low orbit. In early February 2008, the Pentagon announced it would shoot down the dead spacecraft. Officially, Washington insisted that the anti-satellite operation was a safety measure, to prevent the defunct craft’s toxic fuel from harming someone when the satellite’s orbit decayed & it tumbled to Earth.
But it appeared to more than one observer that China’s 2007 anti-satellite test motivated Washington’s own satellite shoot-down. A new Cold War was underway, this time in space.
On Feb. 20, 2008, the Navy cruiser Lake Erie, equipped with a high-tech Aegis radar, launched a specially modified SM-3 antiballistic-missile interceptor. The rocket struck the malfunctioning satellite at an estimated speed of 22,000 miles an hour, destroying it.
Today, the US has dozens of Aegis-equipped warships carrying hundreds of SM-3 missiles, more than enough to quickly wipe out the approximately 50 satellites apiece that Russia & China keep in low orbit.
“Aegis ships could be positioned optimally,” Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote in a 2011 paper, “ to stage a ‘sweep’ attack on a set of satellites nearly at once.”
As an anti-satellite backup, the US Army & the Missile Defense Agency also operate 2 types of ground-launched missile interceptors that have the power to reach low orbit — & the accuracy to strike spacecraft.
Against this huge arsenal, Russia & China possess few counterweights. China’s 2007 anti-satellite test, & a similar trial in early 2013, proved that Beijing can hit a low satellite with a rocket. In 2010, the Chinese space agency launched a cluster of small space vehicles, including 2 named SJ-6F & SJ-12, that slammed into each other in orbit, seemingly on purpose. In July 2013, China deployed a small inspection spacecraft, designated SY-7, in low orbit.
Like the US fleet of maneuverable inspection spacecraft, the tiny SY-7 with its remote-controlled claw could be orbital repair or inspection vehicle — or it could be a weapon.
“One could dream up,” Brian Weeden, a technical & space adviser at the Secure World Foundation, told the War Is Boring Website in 2013, “a whole bunch of dastardly things that could be done with a robotic arm in close proximity.”
But China lacks the space- & ground-based sensors to accurately steer these weapons toward their targets. Compared to the US space-awareness system, with its scores of radars & telescopes, China possesses a relatively paltry system — one consequence of Beijing’s diplomatic isolation.
Where the US can count on allies to host parts of a global sensor network, China has few formal allies & can only deploy space-awareness systems inside its own borders, on ships at sea or in space. The Chinese military can watch the skies over East Asia, but is mostly blind elsewhere.
By contrast, Russia inherited an impressive space-awareness network from the Soviet Union. Russia’s allies in Europe — in particular, the former Soviet & Eastern Bloc states — extend the network’s field of view. As a result, Moscow possesses “a relatively complete catalog of space objects,” the Secure World Foundation concluded.
But Russia is still far behind the US & China as far as space weaponry is concerned. There was a 31-year gap between the Soviet Union’s last anti-satellite test & Russia’s first post-Soviet orbital-weapon experiment. On Christmas Day in 2013, Russia quietly launched a small, maneuverable inspection spacecraft into low orbit, hiding the tiny spacecraft among a cluster of communications satellites.
2 more space inspectors followed, one in May 2014 & another in March 2015. Moscow hasn’t said much about them, but amateur satellite spotters have tracked the vehicles performing the kinds of maneuvers consistent with orbital attack craft. “You can probably equip them with lasers,” Anatoly Zak, the author of Russia in Space: Past Explained, Future Explored, said of the Russian craft. “Maybe put some explosives on them.”
They join a growing number of space weapons guided by expanding networks of Earth-based & orbital sensors on a new, distant battlefront of a so far bloodless neo-Cold War.
Criminal Minds, S1E16 quote
A quote with which I can really relate to ...
Humans are born as social creatures with pack mentality, they will naturally seek to follow the majority, & rarely step outside of social protocol or ethical rules in social gatherings. Neither will they stand up & ask too many questions about the authorities of our society, since they would rather avoid such conflict to keep their conformity.
Nietzsche argues in this quote that to truly be the master of yourself, & to truly grasp the full potential of your life, you have to realize that the ideals & norms of society are hollow & without any real value or justification for their existence. Once you realize this, then you become a much better human.
I believe the ultimate morale behind this quote is that you should not just follow the majority blindly, which is something humans have a natural tendency to do, you have to be critical of the majority, & of the authorities. And you should never be afraid to go against the majority.
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