#Commercial Vehicle Group

[aurumacadicus]

In before I start seeing people bitching about rainbow capitalism MY favorite rainbow capitalism story is about Subaru. Yes the Japanese car company.

In the nineties, they were struggling. They were competing with a dozen other companies targeting the main demographic at the time: white men ages 18-35, especially after a failed luxury car launch with a new ad agency. “What we need is to focus on niche demographics,” they decided, and then focused on people who enjoyed the outdoors. The Subaru was excellent at driving on dirt roads that many other vehicles couldn’t at the time, so it was perfect for all those off-road campers; they started making all-wheel drive standard in all their cars to help with that. And the people who wanted cars to go do outdoor stuff? Lesbians.

Okay. Of course it wasn’t only lesbians buying Subarus. They’re on the list with educators, health-care professionals, and IT people. But the point is, this Japanese car company interviewed this strange demographic (single, female head of household) and realized one important factor: They were lesbians. They liked to be able to use the cars to go do outdoorsy stuff, and they liked that they could use the cars to haul stuff rather than a big truck or van. Subaru had a choice to make then. They had four other demographics they could market to, after all--the educators, the health-care professionals, IT professionals, and straight outdoorsy couples. Their company didn’t hinge on this one “problematic” demographic.

And they decided “fuck it,” and marketed to lesbians anyway. This included offering benefits to American gay and lesbian employees for their domestic partners, so it didn’t look like a cash grab. (This was not a problem. They already offered those in Canada.)

Yes, there was some backlash. They got letters from a grassroots group accusing them of promoting homosexuality, and every letter said they’d no longer be buying from Subaru. “You didn’t buy from us before, either,” Subaru realized, and ignored them. It helped that the team really cared about the plan, and that they had many straight allies to back them up. There was also some initial backlash when Subaru hired women to play a lesbian couple in the commercial, but they quickly found that lesbians preferred more subtlety; “XENA LVR” on a license plate, or bumper stickers with the names of popular LGBTQ+ destinations, or taglines of “Get out. Stay out.” that could be used for the outdoors--or the closet.

Subaru said “We see you. We support you.” They sponsored Pride parades and partnered with Rainbow Card and hired Martina Navratilova as spokeswoman. They put their money where their mouth is and went into it whole hog. In a time where companies did not want to take our money, Subaru said, “Why not? They’re people who drive.” And that was groundbreaking.

[jsaseen]

[ai-azura]

Helm.ai Raises $31 Million in Series C Funding Round for Autonomous Vehicle Softwar

Helm.ai Raises $31 Million in Series C Funding Round for Autonomous Vehicle Softwar

Helm.ai is a startup based in Menlo Park, California that is developing software for advanced driver assistance systems, autonomous driving, and robotics. The company recently raised $31 million in a Series C round, led by Freeman Group, pushing its valuation to $431 million. The company has developed software that can understand sensor data as well as a human, using an unsupervised learning…

[zvaigzdelasas]

Hydrogen-powered trucks are expected to reach life-cycle cost parity with their fossil-fuel-burning peers in China by 2027 even without the aid of subsidies, a milestone which the world’s biggest producer and consumer of the zero-emission energy source, seeks to achieve eight years ahead of Europe.

This will push forward the country’s ambition to dominate the market for hydrogen fuel cells in the transport sector as Beijing’s enabling environment starts paying off, an industry executive said.[...]

“China has developed a world-leading industry in commercial vehicle applications for hydrogen fuel cell technology, with enterprises ranging from upstream raw materials to downstream products over the past decade,” said Robin Lin, chairman and president of Refire Group, a Chinese supplier of hydrogen fuel cell technologies.[...]

China has stepped up its game this year with the central and local authorities releasing a variety of hydrogen-related policies and incentives, following the release of its first national-level guidelines for the hydrogen energy industry in 2023.

Nearly a third of its end-2023 fleet of 18,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were sold last year alone, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, indicating the gathering pace. In a further sign of accelerating offtake, China targets to have at least 50,000 units on the road by 2025, according to its national plan.

According to Lin, China has seen significant reduction in the manufacturing cost of hydrogen fuel cell systems, which account for roughly half the cost of a hydrogen vehicle. The cost has dived from over 30,000 yuan per kilowatt in 2015 to less than 4,000 yuan per kilowatt now.[...]

“In transport, heavy-duty trucks could be the first to achieve successful commercialisation of hydrogen fuel cell technology,” he said.[...]

In China, high-purity hydrogen generated as a by-product from industrial processes, such as Shanxi province, is around 25 to 40 yuan per kilogram at local hydrogen refuelling stations, while high-purity hydrogen in other regions, such as Shanghai, is around 50 to 70 yuan per kilogram at local hydrogen refuelling stations, according to Refire.

13 May 24

[openworldadventurer]

I lived in Malmö for six years, so when I heard Eurovision was coming to my old neighborhood, I planned a visit to see friends and watch the festivities in my old park, which was being turned into the “Eurovillage”. Of course, that was before the Oct 7th attacks, Israel’s brutal escalation, and Eurovision’s refusal to hold them to the same standards as Russia.

So while I’ve been in town, I’ve been spending at least as much time checking in with friends and covering the protests as I’ve spent walking around the festivities. And hooboy, the changes to this sleepy little town have been pretty intense.

While the actual arena and filming is being done at Malmö Arena in the commercial suburb of Hyllie, the center of events in the city itself is Folketspark, a lovely old park and event center in the heart of the Möllan neighborhood. And right along one side of the park is a long graffiti wall that runs along a rondel, a cherished centerpiece of public art and protest in the city.

It’s been one of the centerpieces of protest all week, but far from the only one:

Despite the neighborhood being hit hard by gentrification over the last decade, Möllan is still predominantly foreign-born Swedes and immigrants (like me, when I was here). It’s predominantly middle-eastern folks, both immigrants and refugees, including one of the largest Palestinian populations in Europe. It’s also one of the most progressive cities in Sweden, home to the leftist Vänsterpartiet and fairly active queer and antifascist groups. And all of these groups have been uniting for the protests

So as you can expect, the protests around the park and the city have been pretty constant. Entirely peaceful, to everyone’s credit, but absolutely constant. And you can’t go anywhere near the event without seeing Palestinian flags flown from windows and shopfronts in solidarity, or protest graffiti on Eurovision posters.

Meanwhile, the security presence around the Eurovillage has been absolutely wild. In a city where police rarely even carried pistols, there are now approximately ten times as many police, many bearing automatic rifles. When protests threaten to get too close to the park, they shut off entrances and surround protesters with police vans. Helicopters and drones buzz in the skies above, to the annoyance of locals. And local Swedes look at the armored police vehicle like an unwelcome alien from another planet (or worse, like an unwelcome trend from America).

Thankfully, I haven’t seen any particular abuse out here in Malmö, although I know there have been lots of arrests at protests around the arena proper. I’m hoping it stays that way for the finals tonight.

But just know that for every picture you see of the Eurovision events, there’s countless scenes of protest from the local residents, often just on the other side of the camera.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, where the dead and wounded, including children, were taken following violent Israeli airstrikes targeting residential homes in the Bureij Refugee Camp. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

252 DAYS OF GENOCIDE: ZIONIST US PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN CLAIMS HAMAS RESPONSIBLE FOR LACK OF CEASEFIRE DEAL AS ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER SAYS NO DEAL WILL STOP THEIR WAR ON HAMAS, ANOTHER PALESTINIAN CHILD DIES OF STARVATION IN GAZA, GENOCIDE GOES ON ENDLESSLY AS RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOODS CONTINUE TO BE TARGETED

On 252nd day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 4 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 34 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 71 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands, of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind when considering the scale of the mass murder.

US President Joe Biden, speaking at the Group of Seven Summit being held in Italy, said on Thursday that he does not have confidence that a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal could be reached in the immediate future, blaming Hamas for the failure to reach a deal, and absolving the Israeli occupation of having to make sacrifices in its negotiations with the Palestinian resistance movement.

The US President continued, stating that "I have not lost hope, but it will be difficult."

" Hamas... must take action," Biden added.

Following his comments, Biden later went on to say that Hamas was "by far the biggest obstacle" to reaching a ceasefire agreement.

“I presented a proposal that was approved by the Security Council, the G7, and the Israelis, and the biggest obstacle so far is Hamas, which refuses to sign even though they proposed something similar," President Biden claimed.

Previously, the Hamas resistance movement welcomed the US President's proposal for a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal, telling reporters that the group viewed the deal "positively" before making adjustments to the timetable for the deal and seeking commitments from the Zionist entity and the United States that the Israeli occupation wouldn't continue its operations in Gaza once its hostages were released.

Earlier, US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, told reporters that the Israeli occupation was committed to the ceasefire proposal, arguing that "Israel has supplied this proposal. It has been sitting on the table for some time. Israel has not contradicted or walked that back."

Hamas countered the plan by offering its own amendments, which Sullivan responded to by saying the goal is “to figure out how we work to bridge the remaining gaps and get to a deal.”

Despite the talk by US officials that the occupation is committed to the deal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated his intention to continue the war, regardless of any ceasefire or hostage exchange deals, until the Hamas resistance group is "destroyed".

Additionally, US State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, claimed to the media on Thursday that the United States has not yet witnessed the Israeli occupation launch a "major military operation in the city of Rafah."

This despite countless videos and witness testimony claiming otherwise as the Israeli occupation forces advanced with its tanks and other armored vehicles, penetrating neighborhoods in the west, east, south and center of Rafah, while occupation warplanes hammered the city's residential buildings and public infrastructure, and while Zionist soldiers detonated entire residential blocks in the center of the city.

In other news, more than 23'000 litres (6'076 gallons) of fuel was allowed to enter the Gaza Strip over the last day in order to operate water wells in the Palestinian enclave.

According to the head of the local Water Authority, Mazen Ghoneim, 23 thousand litres of fuel entered Gaza from Thursday evening to Friday morning, allowing 20 water wells to resume operation, including 5 wells east of Gaza City, 2 water wells in the town of Beit Hanoun, 4 wells in the vicinity of Beit Lahiya, 9 wells in the Jabalia area, and 3 more in the Jabalia Refugee Camp.

In statement issued on Friday by the Water Authority, Ghoneim confirmed that in addition to attempting to provide potable drinking water under catastrophic conditions, the Authority was also seeking to reduce risks associated with sewage flows, to which the Authority allocated part of the fuel quantities to operate three sewage plants in the Birkat Abu Rashid area, in addition to the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood and the Al-Baqqara area of Gaza City.

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) continued their massacres of Palestinian families by bombing and shelling various residential neighborhoods and public infrastructure across the Gaza Strip on Thursday night and Friday morning, resulting in the deaths of dozens of Palestinians and wounding scores of others.

On Thursday evening, an Israeli occupation drone bombed a gathering of Palestinian civilians on Kashko Street in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, resulting in the death of a citizen and wounding several others.

At the same time, Zionist warplanes bombed the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, killing one civilian and wounding at least four others, while another strike targeting in the vicinity of the Canada Well in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, west of the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, killed two more civilians and wounded a number of others.

Similarly, in yet another criminal massacre, warplanes belonging to the Israeli occupation army fired two missiles into a house on Al-Nafaq Street in Gaza City, resulting in the deaths of 11 civilians, with three children and three women among those killed, including the deaths of a woman and a child belonging to the Al-Shiekh family. The casualties were transported to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the city.

Israeli warplanes also bombed a residential house belonging to the Al-Bakri family, west of Gaza City, where displaced civilians from the Abu Odeh family were seeking shelter, killing three women and wounding a number of others. Included among the dead was a woman named Hakima who was part of the medical staff at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the city.

A civilian was also killed, and three others injured, as a result of the Israeli occupation's bombing of the Port of Gaza City.

Additionally, the slaughter continued when Israeli gunboats fired heavy machine guns off the coast of Khan Yunis, south of Gaza, killing two fisherman, while Zionist forces penetrating neighborhoods east of Rafah opened fire on civilians in the town of Al-Shouka, murdering two civilians and wounding several others. Occupation helicopters were also witnessed firing machine guns into the western neighborhoods of Rafah.

Elsewhere in the enclave, IOF fighter jets bombed a residential house in the city of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, resulting in the martyredom of one Palestinian and wounding a number of others.

Israeli artillery shelling also pummeled Al-Sika Street, in the east of the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, which coincided with occupation artillery shelling in the vicinity of the school complex on Al-Mansoura Street, in the center of the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, east of the city.

According to local medical staff, at least 20 Palestinian civilians were killed in Zionist raids on several areas of Gaza at dawn on Friday.

In more heartbreaking news, a child was killed after Zionist artillery detatchments, penetrating the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City, fired several shells into residential buildings in the neighborhood, while occupation fighter jets bombed civilian homes in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, wounding a number of people.

Also in central Gaza, Zionist airstrikes targeted a house belonging to the Abu Galambo family in the Bureij Refugee Camp, killing a child and wounding at least 10 others, while occupation warplanes bombed the town of Al-Mughraqa, in addition to the area of the Netzarim Junction, north of the Nuseirat Camp.

Meanwhile, local civil defense crews said they'd recovered the bodies of three martyrs from the Saudi neighborhood, west of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, while a civilian was assassinated by the bombardment of Zionist gunboats that targeted the port area of Khan Yunis, also south of Gaza.

In further news south of Gaza, witnesses told Palestinian media correspondants that the Israeli occupation army also continued its detonations of residential squares in the city of Rafah.

In the Shaboura Refugee Camp, in central Rafah, the Israeli occupation forces detonated and destroyed three entire residential squares, in addition to a fourth residential block in the Brazil neighborhood, east of Rafah.

Yet another atrocity was committed when the Zionist army bombed a house while it's residents were inspecting the damage to their homes resulting from prior bombing and shelling in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, west of Rafah, resulting in the deaths of two Palestinian citizens, while Israeli fighter jets carried out further airstrikes and artillery shelling on areas of eastern and central Rafah.

IOF warplanes also bombed a civilian residence in the Al-Fokhari neighborhood, east of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, killing a young man.

North of Gaza, 14 civilians were killed, and others wounded, in two Israeli raids on central and western neighborhoods of Gaza City.

In more tragic news, medical sources from a local hospital announced the death of a Palestinian child as a result of starvation and dehydration, raising the number of deaths caused by malnutrition in the Gaza Strip to 40.

The medical source told Palestinian media outlet WAFA News that a child had died from malnutrition and dehydration, while a lack of medical supplies also contributed to the child's death while at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, the infinitely rising death toll now exceeds 37'266 Palestinians killed, including upwards of 15'000 children and over 10'000 women, while another 85'102 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

June 14th, 2024.

#source1

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#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[ogradyfilm]

Recently Viewed: Head

Star vehicles for musicians are hardly a rarity in Hollywood—after all, creatively bankrupt studio executives are perfectly willing to exploit pretty much any intellectual property that might be marketable, artistic integrity be damned—but even within that niche genre, Head stands out. Whereas A Hard Day’s Night (The Beatles) and True Stories (Talking Heads frontman David Byrne) are ultimately sincere and earnest despite their surface-level whimsy, the motion picture “adaptation”—more like antithesis!—of popular sitcom The Monkees is deeply cynical beneath its absurdist humor and psychedelic visuals, mercilessly deconstructing the superficiality of the entertainment industry, the elusive (and illusive) nature of the American Dream, and the manufactured public image of the band around which it revolves (exemplified by such sanitized, inoffensive lyrics as, “We’re too busy singing to put anybody down”).

The satire is as caustic as it is deliberately unsubtle. In an early scene, Micky Dolenz stumbles across a Coca-Cola vending machine in the middle of a barren desert—a condemnation of rampant commercialism and mindless consumerism that is subsequently reinforced by a rapidly edited montage of roadside billboard advertisements. Later, Peter Tork briefly breaks character mid-take to fret about how slapping a woman, even within the context of his work as an actor, might damage his reputation (“The kids won’t dig it, man!” he complains to the indifferent director)—lampooning the inherent egotism of celebrity. In the movie’s most scathing sequence, a concert is intercut with archival footage of the Vietnam War; as the performance ends, the frenzied audience storms the stage and literally tears the group apart—exposing them as nothing more than hollow mannequins. The medium itself can barely contain the filmmakers’ moral outrage: metafictional conflicts frequently disrupt the narrative; flashbacks within interludes within digressions overlap and interweave, making the “plot” borderline indecipherable. It can only be summarized in terms of its individual episodes and the loose thematic associations between them—which is akin to trying to explain a fever dream (or a drug-induced hallucination) to your pet cat.

Featuring cameo appearances by Jack Nicholson, Frank Zappa, and Timothy Carey and punctuated by stylistic flourishes that anticipate such cinematic classics as Raging Bull and Skyfall (no, seriously), Head is a fascinating countercultural artifact. Even amongst its New Wave contemporaries, it remains defiantly unconventional, incomprehensible, and unclassifiable; it must be experienced firsthand to be properly understood—though your mileage may vary in that regard.

[tearsinthemist]

It marks a setback for U.S. efforts to speed up the deployment of electric heating and vehicles, and increases the number of buildings that will ultimately require costly retrofits to meet modern energy standards.

“Really bad and surprising news,” Mike Waite, the director of codes at watchdog American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and a volunteer who helped author this year’s commercial building codes, wrote in an email to HuffPost. “The ICC Board went against their consensus committees, appeals board and staff.”

The surprise decision to overturn the appeals board’s ruling comes after the ICC violated its own internal policies to give the industry groups extra time to file appeals. Advocates, who called the move a “scandal,” were relieved when the appeals board delivered what seemed like a final verdict. The board of directors has typically followed the appeals board’s recommendations.

[usafphantom2]

Enclosures To Defend F-15Es From Drone Attacks Eyed At Seymour Johnson AFB

Joseph TrevithickPUBLISHED May 30, 2024 5:02 PM EDT

Officials at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina are looking into the possibility of erecting physical barriers to protect F-15E Strike Eagles there from drones.

USAF

Officials at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina are looking into the possibility of setting up physical barriers to help protect F-15E Strike Eagles there from being attacked by small drones. The anti-drone barricade idea underscores the danger that drones present right now to U.S. military facilities and critical civil infrastructure domestically, as well as to American forces overseas. It also speaks to how the U.S. military is still lagging in efforts to address these still-growing threats at home and abroad, as well as continued legal, regulatory, and other challenges.

The U.S. Air Force's 4th Contracting Squadron, part of the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson, put out its request for information (RFI) about potential options for "Counter Small Unmanned Aerial System Barrier" yesterday. The facility in North Carolina is one of two bases in the United States that host operational F-15E Strike Eagle squadrons. F-15Es are some of the Air Force's most in-demand tactical combat jets. In April, forward-deployed Strike Eagles, including from Seymour Johnson's 335th Fighter Squadron, played out an outsized role in defending Israel from incoming Iranian threats by downing more than 70 drones.

F-15Es on the flight line at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in 2022. USAF

"Problem Statement: Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (s-UAS) disrupt airfield operations and agencies have limited response capabilities due to restrictions on counter measures posed by the Federal Aviation Administration (Section 130i, Title 10, USC)," the notice says. We will come back to that latter point.

"The requirement: Build a passive barrier that will prevent a Group 1 or Group 2 sUAS from making physical contact with an F-15E Strike Eagle using commercial off the shelf material," it adds.

The U.S. military breaks uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) down into five groups based on maximum weight, operating altitude, and top speed. Group 1 includes drones with weights up to 20 pounds, that can fly up to 1,200 feet, and can reach speeds of up to 100 knots. Group 2 is the next tier up covering uncrewed aerial vehicles that weigh between 21 and 55 pounds, can get up to 3,500 feet, and hit top speeds of up to 250 knots.

The requirements for the proposed anti-drone barriers at Seymour Johnson include that it "needs the strength to stop [a] 55lb drone traveling at 125 mph [nearly 109 knots]" and that "any space/gaps in material or design should not exceed six inches."

How exactly the barriers might be emplaced is not entirely clear, but mention is made of existing flight line shelters with simple canvas covers, suggesting that this would be add-on protection for those structures.

A look at the kind of open canvas-topped shelters in use on the flight line at Seymour Johnson now (seen here after a snowstorm in 2022). USAF

The "weight of material should be kept to a minimum to reduce structural load and facilitate rapid open/closing," the RFI does note, adding that whatever the barriers are made of needs to be flame retardant. The "system [also] needs to be tightly secured in both open and closed positions."

Whether or not any specific drone incidents at Seymour Johnson have prompted this barrier requirement is unknown and The War Zone has reached out for more information.

What is known is that drone incursions over or near U.S. military bases and training ranges, as well as critical civilian infrastructure, across the United States (including its outlying territories) have been an increasingly serious issue for years now, as The War Zone regularly reports. Just in March, we were the first to reveal that Langley Air Force Base in Virginia had been swarmed by drones for weeks last year. Those incidents prompted a major whole-of-government response, which you can read more about here.

Though many such drone-related incidents to date have appeared to be innocuous, they reflect very real potential threats that are only expected to grow in size and scope going forward. The barrier to entry to employing small drones, as well as weaponizing them to differing degrees, is also very low. The conflict in Ukraine has forced this reality fully into the mainstream consciousness, especially through the use on both sides of highly maneuverable first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones. These are exactly the kinds of threats officials at Seymour Johnson now look to be seeking to address in part through physical barriers – which is also one of the many anti-drone countermeasures that have already emerged in Ukraine.

At the same time, it is important to stress again that these threats are not new or unknown to the U.S. military, and they are rapidly growing in frequency and sophistication.

"One day last week I had two small UASs that were interfering with operations... At one base, the gate guard watched one fly over the top of the gate check, tracked it while it flew over the flight line for a little while, and then flew back out and left," now-retired Air Force Gen. James "Mike" Holmes, then head of Air Combat Command (ACC), said back in 2017.

“Imagine a world where somebody flies a couple hundred of those and flies one down the intake of my F-22s with just a small weapon on it," Holmes added at the time.

As we noted at the time, jets just sitting idle and exposed on the flight line would be even easier targets for drones. In this way, an adversary could potentially knock out large numbers of aircraft on the ground, even in the United States using commercially available technology, before they ever have a chance to get in the fight.

Four years later, AFWERX, an internal Air Force technology incubator, put out a broad call for proposals for ways to defend the service's bases at home and abroad from drones. As the new contracting notice from Seymour Johson Air Force Base shows, the U.S. military continues to be very much playing catch-up to addressing these now well-established threats.

Another look at an F-15E under an open shelter at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. USAF

“You can only report what you see, and so that’s part of the challenge,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters at the Pentagon just earlier this month when asked about drone threats to domestic facilities, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. "But I’d say that’s usually two or three a week, total across the U.S. And it’s never primarily in one part of the country or another."

Part of the issue, at least domestically, continues to be the morass of overlapping authorities, as well as competing legal and regulatory requirements. Back in 2017, Gen. Holmes noted that "I have no authority given to me by the government to deal with that [drone incursions]."

Even in 2017, efforts were being made to try to expand the authorities available to base commanders in the United States to respond to potentially hostile drones. The U.S. government has made additional domestic counter-drone policy changes since then.

However, as the new contracting notice from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base makes clear, there continue to be hurdles to taking more proactive measures to address drone threats.

Section 130i, Title 10, as cited in the Seymour Johnson anti-drone barrier RFI, does provide authority for "action" to be taken to include measures to "disrupt control of the unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft, without prior consent, including by disabling the unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft by intercepting, interfering, or causing interference with wire, oral, electronic, or radio communications used to control the unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft" and the "use reasonable force to disable, damage, or destroy the unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft."

Air Force security personnel train with 'guns' designed to jam the link between a drone and its controller at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. USAF

However, the statute also stipulates that "the Secretary of Defense shall coordinate with the Secretary of Transportation and the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration before issuing any guidance or otherwise implementing this section if such guidance or implementation might affect aviation safety, civilian aviation and aerospace operations, aircraft airworthiness, or the use of airspace."

The FAA continues to impose significant limitations on the use of active anti-drone countermeasures in many domestic contexts. The War Zone has also highlighted in the past how obtuse and convoluted the existing mechanisms are for securing authorization to take action against uncrewed aerial threats within the United States can be, and that situation does not look to have improved substantially in recent years.

"The first problem is that our nation lacks adequate drone detection capability. We still rely on the early warning radars that served us so well during the Cold War," Senators Jack Reed and Roger Wicker, wrote in a joint op-ed in the Washington Post in April. "Today, though, they are unable to detect, identify and track small aircraft at both high and low altitudes. Inside the United States, we can hardly track anything other than commercial aircraft. Almost none of our domestic military bases have the sensors to identify small drones."

It's worth noting here that the filter ‘gates’ on various air defense radars in North America were altered in February 2023, which immediately resulted in the tracking of a large amount of additional aerial activity. The radar changes followed a Chinese spy balloon intruding into U.S. airspace and soaring across the country over a period of days before being shot down over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina. Within a week, U.S. fighters had brought down three more still-unidentified objects flying in U.S. and Canadian airspace, as you can read more about here. Members of the Senate subsequently demanded a review of the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command's (NORAD) “aerospace warning and control mission and procedures."

An unclassified map showing various NORAD air defense nodes in the contiguous United States, including certain early warning radar sites. DOD

"If we fixed our tracking problem, though, a second issue would arise. U.S. agencies lack clear lines of authority about which agency is responsible for stopping these incursions. Instead, a dizzying maze of overlapping jurisdictions and inflexible bureaucracies confuses, rather than clarifies, crisis response," Senators Reed and Wicker, a Democrat from Rhode Island and Republican from Mississippi, respectively, who are also the top members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, continued in their recent op-ed. "Government officials from an alphabet soup of agencies – Defense Department, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration – spend hours if not days simply discussing who can take action when a UAS is identified. Too often, low-altitude incursions are treated as a law enforcement matter instead of as a national security issue."

Whether Seymour Johnson ultimately gets anti-drone barriers or not remains to be seen. If these added defensive measures are implemented there, they could quickly become commonplace at other bases.

Regardless, the new contracting notice underscores the U.S. military's ongoing efforts to respond to the now well-established threat posed by uncrewed aerial systems, and its continued struggle in doing so.

Contact the author: Tyler@twz.com

@thewarzonewire via X

[phoenixyfriend]

Ko-fi prompt from @thisarenotarealblog:

There's a street near me that has eight car dealerships all on the same lot- i counted. it mystifies me that even one gets enough sales to keep going- but 8?? is there something you can tell me that demystifies this aspect of capitalism for me?

I had a few theories going in, but had to do some research. Here is my primary hypothesis, and then I'll run through what they mean and whether research agrees with me:

Sales make up only part of a dealership's income, so whether or not the dealership sells much is secondary to other factors.

Dealerships are put near each other for similar reasons to grouping clothing stores in a mall or restaurants on a single street.

Zoning laws impact where a car dealership can exist.

Let's start with how revenue works for a car dealership, as you mentioned 'that even one gets enough sales to keep going' is confusing. For this, I'm going to be using the Sharpsheets finance example, this NYU spreadsheet, and this Motor1 article.

This example notes that the profit margin (i.e. the percentage of revenue that comes out after paying all salaries, rent, supply, etc) for a car dealership is comparatively low, which is confirmed by the NYC sheet. The gross profit margin (that is to say, profits on the car sale before salaries, rent, taxes) is under 15% in both sources, which is significantly lower than, say, the 50% or so that one sees in apparel or cable tv.

Cars are expensive to purchase, and can't be sold for much more than you did purchase them. However, a low gross profit margin on an item that costs tens of thousands of dollars is still a hefty chunk of cash. 15% gross profit of a $20,000 car is still $3,000 profit. On top of that, the dealership will charge fees, sell warranties, and offer upgrades. They may also have paid deals to advertise or push certain brands of tire, maintenance fluids, and of course, banks that offer auto loans. So if a dealership sells one car a day, well, that's still several thousand dollars coming in, which is enough to pay the salaries of most of the employees. According to the Motor1 article, "the average gross profit per new vehicle sits at $6,244" in early 2022.

There is also a much less volatile, if also much smaller, source of revenue in attaching a repairs and checkup service to a dealership. If the location offers repairs (either under warranty or at a 'discounted' rate compared to a local, non-dealership mechanic), state inspections, and software updates, that's a recurring source of revenue from customers that aren't interested in purchasing a car more than once a decade.

This also all varies based on whether it's a brand location, used vs new, luxury vs standards, and so on.

I was mistaken as to how large a part of the revenue is the repairs and services section, but the income for a single dealership, on average, does work out math-wise. Hypothesis disproven, but we've learned something, and confirmed that income across the field does seem to be holding steady.

I'm going to handle the zoning and consolidation together, since they overlap:

Consolidation is a pretty easy one: this is a tactic called clustering. The expectation is that if you're going to, say, a Honda dealership to look at a midsize sedan, and there's a Nissan right next door, and a Ford across the street, and a Honda right around the corner, you might as well hit up the others to see if they have better deals. This tactic works for some businesses but not others. In the case of auto dealerships, the marketing advantage of clustering mixes with the restrictions of zoning laws.

Zoning laws vary by state, county, and township. Auto dealerships can generally only be opened on commercially zoned property.

I am going to use an area I have been to as an example/case study.

This pdf is a set of zoning regulations for Suffolk County, New York, published 2018, reviewing land use in the county during 2016. I'm going to paste in the map of the Town of Huntington, page 62, a region I worked in sporadically a few years ago, and know mostly for its mall and cutesy town center.

Those red sections are Commercially Zoned areas, and they largely follow some large stroads, most notably Jericho Turnpike (the horizontal line halfway down) and Walt Whitman Road (the vertical line on the left). The bulge where they intersect is Walt Whitman Mall, and the big red chunk in the bottom left is... mostly parking. That central strip, Jericho Turnpike, and its intersection with Walt Whitman... looks like this:

All those red spots are auto dealerships, one after another.

So zoning laws indicate that a dealership (and many other types of commercial properties) can only exist in that little red strip on the land use map, and dealerships take up a lot of space. Not only do they need places to put all of the cars they are selling, but they also need places to park all their customers and employees.

This is where we get into the issue of parking minimums. There is a recent video from Climate Town, with a guest spot by NotJustBikes. If you want to know more about this aspect of zoning law, I'd recommend watching this video and the one linked in the description.

Suffolk county does not have parking minimums. Those are decided on a town or village level. In this case, this means we are looking at the code set for the town of Huntington. (I was originally looking on the county level, and then cut the knot by just asking my real estate agent mom if she knew where I could find minimum parking regulations. She said to look up e360 by town, and lo and behold! There they are.)

(There is also this arcgis map, which shows that they are all within the C6 subset of commercial districting, the General Business District.)

Furniture or appliance store, machinery or new auto sales - 1 per 500 square feet of gross floor area

Used auto sales, boat sales, commercial nurseries selling at retail - 5 spaces for each use (to be specifically designated for customer parking) - Plus 1 for each 5,000 square feet of lot area

This is a bit odd, at first glance, as the requirements are actually much lower than that of other businesses, like drive-in restaurants (1 per 35 sqft) or department stores (1 per 200 sqft). I could not find confirmation on whether the 'gross floor area' of the dealership included only indoor spaces or also the parking lot space allotted to the objects for sale, but I think we can assume that any parking spaces used by merchandise do not qualify as part of the minimum. Some dealerships can have up to 20,000 gross sqft, so those would require 40 parking spaces reserved solely for customers and employees. Smaller dealerships would naturally need less. One dealership in this area is currently offering 65 cars of varying makes and models; some may be held inside the building, but most will be on the lot, and the number may go higher in other seasons. If we assume they need 30 parking spaces for customers and employees, and can have up to 70 cars in the lot itself, they are likely to have 100 parking spaces total.

That's a lot of parking.

Other businesses that require that kind of parking requirement are generally seeing much higher visitation. Consider this wider section of the map:

The other buildings with comparative parking are a grocery store (Lidl) and a post office (can get some pretty high visitation in the holiday season, but also just at random).

Compare them, then, to the "old town" section of the same town.

There are a handful of public parking areas nearby (lined in blue), whereas the bulk of the businesses are put together along this set of streets. While there is a lot of foot traffic and vehicle passage, which is appealing for almost any business, opening a car dealership in this area would require not only buying a building, but also the buildings surrounding it. You would need to bulldoze them for the necessary parking, which would be prohibitively expensive due to the cost of local real estate... and would probably get shot down in the application process by city planners and town councils and so on. Much easier to just buy land over in the strip where everyone's got giant parking lots and you can just add a few extra cramped lanes for the merchandise.

Car dealerships also tend to be very brightly lit, which hits a lot of NIMBY sore spots. It's much easier to go to sleep if you aren't right next to a glaring floodlight at a car dealership, so it's best if we just shove them all away from expensive residential, which means towards the loud stroads, which means... all along these two major roads/highways.

And if they're all limited to a narrow type of zoning already, they might as well take advantage of cluster marketing and just all set up shop near each other in hopes of stealing one of the other's customers.

As consumers, it's also better for us, because if we want to try out a few different cars from a few different brands, it's pretty easy to just go one building down to try out the Hyundai and see if it's better than a Chevy in the same price group.

(Prompt me on ko-fi!)

[hirocimacruiser]

Part of an article from a J's Tipo on homologation specials. This section specifically on the TA64 GrpB rally special. I had to go over the translation a few times but think pretty accurate now.

CELICA GT-TS

Run hard on the dirt with a twin cam turbo!

Celica was introduced in 1982 as Japan's first specialty car equipped with a twin-cam turbo engine.

The Celica 1800GT/T made its commercial debut. The installed engine, the 3T-GTE re-engine, is based on its model name.

As you can see, it is a power unit based on the 2T/G engine, which is highly regarded as a masterpiece of the 1.6L. Specifically, the total displacement was increased to 1770cc by extending the stroke by 8mm, and a turbocharger made in-house by Toyota was installed. As a result, the 1.8L class at that time

Unprecedented maximum output of 160PS/6000rpm、21.08kgm/4800rpm.

The bore of this high-performance engine has been enlarged by 0.5 mm, and the total displacement has been increased to 1791cc to create a special unit 4T-GTEU.

The limited production car equipped with 4T-GTEU engine is the Celica GT-TS (hereinafter referred to as GT-TS).

GT-TS is a special machine for WRC participation, and the engine installed on it, 4T-GTEU, is completely exhaustive.

Volume is 21cc more than 3T-GTEU

at 1791cc. This is because of the turbo coefficient due to regulation!

When multiplied by 1.4, the total displacement is 2507cc.

This is a measure to set it in the 2.5 to 3.0L class.

3T-GTEU・If you multiply it by 1.4, you get 2478cc, which becomes the next level lower class 2.0~2.50L Therefore, 0.

The total displacement was increased by enlarging the bore by 5mm. The result is 2507cc when multiplied by the turbo factor, and if physically possible, the displacement could be up to 3L in terms of regulation.

Expansion was allowed.

GT-TS was the WRC standard at the time.

This is a machine built to meet Group B regulations. As a result, only 200 units were produced, most of which were sold in Japan. GT-TS is just a base machine,

Displacement, rear suspension

(changed to 4 Link Rigid), and other than the vehicle weight, it is no different from GT-T.

Nothing will change.

PIC CAPTION

Unlike the 240RS, this one was also sold in Japan, so the seats are firm and the cockpit looks like a production car.

[good-old-gossip]

Israel kills children, damages infrastructure in West Bank 

Reported by -

Tamara Nassar Rights and Accountability 16 June 2024

A warning on 4 June from the UN human rights commissioner that “unprecedented bloodshed” in the occupied West Bank must come to an end has gone unheeded.

The Israeli military, at times in collaboration with Israel’s Border Police and Israel’s domestic secret police Shin Bet, has continued to conduct deadly raids into the occupied West Bank, wreaking havoc to private Palestinian property and civilian infrastructure in the process.

An Israeli military raid into Kafr Dan village west of Jenin in the northern West Bank killed six Palestinians earlier this week.

The invading Israeli forces used Energa anti-tank rifle grenades against a home belonging to the Abed family, killing three, Saqr Aref Abed, Mustafa Allam Mirie and Ahmad Muhammad Abu Obeid.

Others killed during the Israeli attack and confrontations in the village include Ayman Abu Fadalah, Muhammad Hazza Mirie and Ahmad Muhammad Samoudi, 17.

On 11 June, Ahmad was with another child, allegedly carrying homemade explosive devices as they waited for Israeli armored vehicles to pass by on a road in the center of Kafr Dan.

An Israeli sniper shot at the two children from a distance of 100 to 150 meters with six bullets, according to Defense for Children International - Palestine.

One bullet hit Ahmad in his leg, and he collapsed and started pleading for help. The other child was able to flee though he was injured in the thigh.

The Israeli sniper shot towards Ahmad again, striking him in his chest and head.

An Israeli military vehicle then approached Ahmad, and the Israeli driver stepped out and shot the child three more times.

The driver of the military vehicle remained near him for a few minutes as Israeli forces blocked a Palestinian ambulance from reaching Ahmad as he lay wounded on the ground.

“Israeli forces shot Ahmad, waited until he fell to the ground, then shot him several more times, then blocked paramedics from reaching him until they were confident he bled out,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP.

“The United States must stop sending weapons to the Israeli military that are used to kill Palestinian children without restraint, whether in Gaza or the West Bank.”

Ahmad is the older brother of a 12-year-old boy who was shot, and later succumbed to his wounds, during an Israeli raid in Jenin in September 2022.

Mahmoud Muhammad Samoudi had allegedly thrown stones at Israeli vehicles when Israeli forces opened fire at the group of youths he was a part of.

Elsewhere on 10 June, Israeli occupation forces raided the village of Kafr Nimeh, west of Ramallah, and shot and killed four Palestinian men and injured others.

Israeli armored vehicles invaded the Kafr Nimeh village, raided homes and commercial stores, confiscated surveillance cameras and set up a checkpoint at the village’s entrance.

Israeli authorities had been pursuing two Palestinians suspected of setting fire to a vehicle and its trailer in the Sde Ephraim settlement “outpost” in the occupied West Bank overnight on 9 June.

Sde Ephraim was established on a hilltop belonging to the nearby Palestinian village of Ras Karkar.

While all Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law and building them is a war crime, what Israel refers to as “outposts” are often built without even Israel’s permission and are considered illegal under Israeli law.

The men killed were identified as Muhammad Raslan Abdo, Muhammad Jaber Abdo and Rashdi Samih Ataya, according to the Palestinian Authority civil affairs department, which did not name the fourth Palestinian who was killed.

Local news sources named him as Wasim Bisam Zidan.

Israeli forces had previously detained Muhammad Jaber Abdo for two decades, and he was released in 2022. He was a member of Hamas’ armed wing operating in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces claimed to have found a makeshift sub-machine gun and other weapons in the vehicle.

Israeli forces then barred Palestine Red Crescent Society medics from reaching and evacuating the injured for at least two hours.

When one ambulance tried to reach, Israeli forces fired at it with live ammunition, puncturing its tires.

Israeli forces also opened fire on Palestinians gathered in the area, injuring eight with live ammunition, including a child.

Israel is now withholding the bodies of all four Palestinians its forces killed in Kafr Nimeh, UN monitoring group OCHA said. Israel withholds the remains of Palestinians killed during what it claims were attacks, intending to use them as bargaining chips in negotiations.

A governorate-wide strike on Ramallah and al-Bireh was reportedly declared the next day, on 11 June, in mourning.

Wreaking havoc on a refugee camp

Israeli forces invaded the al-Faraa refugee camp in the foothills of the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank accompanied with military bulldozers in the late hours of 9 June. Israeli forces briefly withdrew from the camp at dawn the next day but stormed it later with large reinforcements.

Israeli forces also invaded several other neighborhoods in nearby Tubas, before withdrawing completely on the afternoon of 10 June after a 16-hour operation, which saw armed Palestinians defend the camp from the Israeli invaders.

Soldiers raided homes in the refugee camp and used them as sniper and observation points. Bulldozers partially damaged some homes.

A 16-year-old Palestinian child, Mahmoud Ibrahim Nabrisi, was walking out of an alley that led to the refugee camp’s main square when he saw Israeli soldiers stationed in a community center for disabled people in the camp, according to a field investigation by DCIP.

Mahmoud tried to warn people in the area of the presence of the Israeli forces. That’s when an Israeli sniper hiding behind a small hole in the building’s wall that the military created to observe and shoot from, fired at Mahmoud from a distance of 120 to 150 meters. Three bullets hit Mahmoud, one near his eye, one behind his ear and another in his leg.

Palestinian youth transferred Mahmoud to an ambulance, which took him to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

As has often been the case with Israeli military raids in the occupied West Bank, which include highly destructive attacks on infrastructure, Israeli bulldozers damaged sewage, electricity and water networks during their invasion of al-Faraa refugee camp. Israeli forces also destroyed and bulldozed the refugee camp’s main square and road.

تغطية صحفية: دمار كبير جراء عدوان الاحتلال على مخيم الفارعة في طوباس pic.twitter.com/zPTp8SGn02— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) June 10, 2024

Israeli forces also surrounded the camp, preventing Palestinian residents from going in or leaving.

Soldiers burned three houses, partially destroyed two and burned four vehicles and destroyed another during their invasion of the camp.

Local media circulated pictures of a home in the camp after it was bombed by the Israeli army, as well as damaged and destroyed vehicles:

تغطية صحفية: من منزل في مخيم الفارعة بعد تفجيره من قبل جيش الاحتلال ظهر اليوم pic.twitter.com/aeRmk44hcN— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) June 10, 2024

تغطية صحفية: جيش الاحتلال يدمر مركبات خلال عدوانه على مخيم الفارعة اليوم pic.twitter.com/GpT5zAokA0— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) June 10, 2024

The Israeli military’s widespread destruction of civilian and public infrastructures leads residents to believe that the Israeli army is taking revenge on the camp by destroying it, Wafa news agency reported.

The Israeli military has conducted four major raids into the al-Faraa refugee camp since 7 October, killing 17 Palestinians, the news agency reported.

“Unprecedented bloodshed”

Earlier this month, the UN high commissioner for human rights Volker Türk said Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were “being subjected to day after day of unprecedented bloodshed.”

More than 520 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, including at least 504 by Israeli forces, according to OCHA.

Israeli settlers have killed at least 10 Palestinians, and another seven were killed by either Israeli army or settler fire.

Of those killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, 132 were children.

Israeli forces and settlers have injured over 5,200 Palestinians in the West Bank since 7 October, at least 800 of them children. One third of all injuries were by live ammunition.

Israeli forces and settlers have killed 51 Palestinian children since the beginning of the year, including two US citizens, according to documentation by DCIP.

[sillygoose067]

Over the 7 Seas

Ch.19

Charles Leclerc x Reader

The boys end up ordering fried chicken to refuel during the break. You call Charles over to join the haphazard circle on the floor. The members of SKZ do their best to welcome him to this niche little family, and discuss the subtleties and specificity of each other’s occupations. “Wow, you are a racer?! What car do you drive?”

“Actually, I am a driver for Ferrari”

Collective gasps. Everyone knows what Ferrari’s are and how big of a deal they are. “So do you drive a Ferrari around the track?”

“No actually. All of us F1 drivers get motor vehicles put together, somewhat personalized. The car is much, much smaller than a normal, commercial vehicle. It only seats one person, and we need to follow lots of weight protocols and barely drink water…” Charles goes into the many specifics of being an F1 driver. The members tell him that maybe, sometime during his stay, he can join them in the gym and show them what his routine is (of course Changbin asked that). Then, the subject switches to the music production process and how each of the members got to where they were currently.

When the food arrives, you turn to Charles. “I swear to every god there is, this Korean fried chicken will forever change your life. You will never look at fried chicken the same after this. Are you prepared?”

Stricken by your sudden change in behavior, he agrees. Everyone watches with a bated breath as he takes a bite out of his first piece. The moment the chicken makes a delicious crunch and reaches Charles’ tastebuds, his eyes widen and he almost moans. Putain de merde (Holy shit).

If this was fried chicken, what the hell had he been eating when he got KFC all these years? KFC?? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Fuck that. KFC as in Korean Fried Chicken was by all means superior.

Once he gets over the shock to his taste buds, Charles tells the three people who he learned were the main producers of the group, 3racha, about his ideas and compositions, inquiring about whether or not they could help. “Of course man! What do you need? Han here is a genius lyricist, as is Changbin, but he and I mainly produce the actual music”, says Chan. “Tell you what. Why don’t you come join us in my studio tomorrow and we can experiment with some of the stuff you have”.

Charles checks-in with you quickly, then agrees. 

…

When you finally arrive at the hotel, you block out your surroundings and immediately get into the shower, feeling icky with sweat. Charles however, takes a step inside and notices that there was only one bed. Uh oh. This felt too much like one of those disgusting Hallmark movie plots. When you come out of the shower, drying your hair with a towel and in a bathrobe, you finally see the problem. “Ummm, je peux prendre le canapé (Um, I can take the sofa)”, volunteers Charles, scratching the back of his neck and trying to keep down the blush crawling up his cheeks.

“Non, non, ce n'est pas la peine de faire ça. Ce serait vraiment mauvais pour ton dos... C'est bon, je suis d'accord pour partager le lit…(No, no, no need to do that. It would be really bad for your back... It's ok, I'm ok with sharing the bed…)”

Charles just hmms in acknowledgement and rushes off to take a shower of his own. 

…

When he returns, you’ve already blow-dried your hair and are sitting at the vanity doing some skincare. From your peripheral, you see that he’s only got a towel around his waist, held by an arm, and is drying his hair with a smaller towel. Quickly, you avert your eyes and continue to do your skincare as you hear him rustling around his suitcase and grabbing some clothes. 

“What are you doing there Chéri?”, you hear Charles ask from behind you. You deduce that he’s changed by now and look up through the mirror. “Just some basic upkeep for my skin. I wasn’t born this flawless, you know?”, you flick your hair sassily. 

“Hmm, but I beg to differ, love”.

Flustered by the sudden flattery, you scramble around the table, knocking over some of the products, and desperately trying to find your moisturizer. When you look back up through the mirror, Charles is smirking at you successfully. You grab a small hand-towel on the table and throw it at him, aiming for his stupidly handsome, dimpled face, but of course, his quick driver reflexes kick-in and he catches it before impact.

He comes over and stands over your shoulder. “Mind if I join you?”

You turn to him and he bends down to your level. Scooping out some of your moisturizer, you rub it on his face, taking your time to trace the arch of his nose and over his cheekbones. Charles watches as you gently massage the product, his eyes never leaving the concentrated look on your face. When you’re done, you break this intimate moment by stretching your neck up slightly and leaving a light kiss at the corner of his lips.

[mariacallous]

On one of my first reporting trips to Haiti, in 1987, I set out north by road from the capital, Port-au-Prince, on the eve of an election, hoping to get a taste of voter sentiment in the countryside.

After 50 miles, my car was stopped at a roadblock on the outskirts of a seaside town called Saint-Marc. There, bands of thugs loosely allied with right-wing politicians were roughing up passengers, extorting money from them, and, in at least one case, setting a vehicle on fire.

I was allowed to proceed but warned that I couldn’t return to the capital until after the election the next morning. For whatever reason, the thugs had decided they would shut down the highway for 48 hours. When my reporting was done, I headed back by the same route, and the scene had badly deteriorated. A line of stopped vehicles stretched into the distance, and now, burnt-out wrecks lay strewn on either side of the roadbed.

When my car reached the front of the line and we were interrogated, I was alarmed to find that the same man who had warned me against trying to return was still holding sway. After a long and squirmy conversation, he finally let me through, though, but not before administering several punches to the head of my terrified driver.

This was just the smallest intimation of the trouble to come. When I went out to cover voting in the capital the next day, one of the first scenes I came upon was the site of a massacre at a polling station hosted by a school. Thus commenced my introduction to Haiti.

Over the next six years, during which I made countless visits to the country, often involving lengthy stays, I sometimes imagined I had seen everything. After one violent coup d’état, armed groups occupied the airport, stopping all commercial aviation. To fly in, I banded together with other Miami-based reporters to charter a Learjet plane, but on approach to Haiti’s capital, the pilot was warned off with the threat that our plane would be shot down if it attempted to land.

The next day, we rented another small jet, and this time there was no one running or policing the airport. We landed and walked through a terminal that had mysteriously been left completely deserted.

In 1992, I was invited to the army headquarters for an interview with the leader of the right wing junta, U.S.-trained Lt. Gen. Raoul Cédras. At the appointed time, I was ushered into a conference room on the second floor of the rickety building where seven senior Haitian military officers sat stone-faced around a large table. When Cédras entered the room, our meeting began with him sliding his revolver to the middle of the table and asking his men unsmilingly who would like to volunteer to shoot this journalist who has been such a pest. After a long moment of tense silence, he took his gun back and holstered it and the interview proceeded. Haitian journalists, I hasten to add, experienced much worse.

A year later, I stayed on in the country for weeks after the start of an international embargo of a military regime that had overthrown the elected leader, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and was now clinging defiantly to power. One afternoon in October 1993, I looked on as a gun-waving band of a few dozen militiamen orchestrated a raucous portside demonstration that prevented the docking of a 522-foot-long U.S. warship, the USS Harlan County, with more than 200 soldiers aboard.

The ship had arrived bearing a contingent of international peacekeepers that was intended to pave the way for Aristide’s rightful restoration. The secret to their success in turning the ship back was the chant “Somalia, Somalia.” Their invocation of the Battle of Mogadishu, more famously known to Americans as the Black Hawk Down Incident, a week earlier, in which 18 Americans were killed, had more power than any magician’s spell.

I have taken the time to revisit scenes like these for one reason that is obvious and another that may not be. The first is that Haiti is presently in the grips of a very serious crisis, with no functioning government and violent gangs running rampant. The second is that, despite its catastrophic nature, few of the elements in Haiti’s grave situation are actually entirely new.

During the trying period in which I covered the country, I witnessed moments when the National Assembly completely broke down and became essentially irrelevant, when two or more people claimed legitimacy to rule, and when power briefly seemed vacant. I saw times when the streets were ruled by gangs or by shadowy militia like the Tonton Macoutes and the so-called attachés. I saw fecklessness by the international community, of which the Harlan County incident is but one example, and I also saw fleeting moments when the world appeared to come through for Haiti when every alternative seemed exhausted.

This included the restoration of Aristide to power through a U.S.-led intervention under President Bill Clinton in 1994. My coverage of Haiti and its region ended just then, but from afar I also followed Aristide’s subsequent failure and one might even say betrayal of his country as a brittle, vindictive, and—as many of his critics believe—violence-prone and even corrupt leader. His trajectory was all the more remarkable and disheartening in light of his beginnings, as a Salesian priest and devotee of progressive liberation theology.

What makes Haiti’s situation so special today is the way that all of its past failures seem to be recurring at once, in symphonic tragedy or grand mashup. There is no president (The last one, Jovenel Moïse, was murdered in 2021.). The acting prime minister, Ariel Henry, has been effectively exiled. There is no parliament. There is no army. There is barely a police force. And there is virtually no economy, save for a lucrative traffic in narcotics from South America, for which the country has long served as a wide-open trans-shipment base.

Gangs rule the streets, but they provide no structure or order, no hope for the future, and certainly no peace. The population lives at their mercy, with ordinary people terrorized and shot randomly as they seek out food or try to go about their daily business. Large numbers of people are reduced to living on the streets under shabby tarpaulins without municipal water, sewage, or electricity.

This had all led to the return of a recurrent and hard-to-resolve debate. Should the outside world intervene, and if so, what form should this take? The deployment of a Kenyan police contingent has been delayed by the effective anarchy in Port-au-Prince—as well as the Kenyan High Court decision—and for a cluster of reasons, historic and current, the United States is taking a hands-off approach, avoiding any direct intervention of its own. The historical reasons for this are solid.

Little known to most Americans, the United States has a destructive, racist, and corrupt imperial history in Haiti, which includes an intervention by the Marines in 1915, following another period of extraordinary political violence in the country. Washington’s contemporary reluctance would seem to stem from domestic U.S. politics: After a century of foreign interventions, deploying U.S. troops overseas for nation-building or even peacekeeping purposes is nowadays considered a vote loser.

Where does this leave Haiti? Sources of optimism are difficult to find. A starting point for the outside world might be a reckoning with how brutally and thoroughly Haiti was exploited in its past. This begins with the creation by France of what has often been called the most profitable colony in the world. This is a story that traces back to the early 18th century and the launching of a prison industrial labor camp system, prettified under the name “plantations,” in order to produce sugar on an untold scale.

Cane was only one of the raw ingredients. The lives of Africans who were brought there and forced to work in the fields was the other. In the human equivalent of planned obsolescence, newly enslaved Africans were worked to death with an average life expectancy of roughly five years from the time of arrival. Replacing this labor due to mortality was considered then just an ordinary feature of business. I wrote extensively about what the world owes Haiti as a result of this gruesome exploitation in my book Born in Blackness.

Crimes like these were insidiously compounded by the embargo that Western nations placed on Haiti as punishment for the audacity of winning its own freedom from outside domination and slavery in 1804. For this insult to Western wealth and power, the country was subjected to exorbitant and crippling indemnity payments that lasted for decades.

Ultimately, though, it is in Haiti’s feat of self-liberation that the country’s hopes for rebirth must lie. Modern history offers few if any more triumphal stories than the defeat of one Western army after another (France, Spain, Britain, and then France again) by Africans brought to Hispaniola to be worked to death—all in the cause of freedom and sovereignty.

In 1804, when Haiti was born, no other Western nation had legally enacted the values of the Enlightenment so fully—by abolishing slavery and discrimination on the basis of race. Long before the American Civil War and major civil rights legislation of the mid-20th century, Haitians had written these ideals into their constitution.

In recent decades, Haitians have been betrayed by the greed, pettiness, and narrow vision of their elites. But history shows us an example of the capacity of its people to rise up against the worst sorts of iniquity, and the Haitian people will somehow need to summon this capacity again. And when they tell the international community what form of assistance would be most helpful, the world should rally to their needs.

[shibaraki]

ON THE RUN ┊ SHINSOU HITOSHI

tags: GN reader, underground heroes (reader + shinsou), OC villains (one quirk involves shooting bullets), mutual attraction/romantic tension, dubcon kiss (<- very much reciprocated just no asking beforehand)

wc: 1.3k

Fuck fuck fuck.

The uneven pavement is harsh beneath your hefty footfalls, arms bent and swinging at your sides as you try to maintain sprinting pace. Your heart is throbbing behind your ribs, crawling steadily up your throat, anxiety vining it's way into the tissue of your lungs as your breathing sharpens. Shinsou is at your back, his carbon-alloy scarf whipping in the wind as it passes, both of you running in the same direction.

Botched. It should have been a simple reconnaissance mission — being underground heroes, discretion was your area of expertise. But not only were you apparently lacking in accurate knowledge of the villains quirks, the blueprints of the warehouse had also been outdated; the two areas you were posted at had been left vulnerable, and one shadowed movement in the groups peripheral had caused the whole plan to collapse.

Of course they'd had a fucking surveillance quirk amongst their ranks. Eyes everywhere, literally.

"Fuck!"

The toe of your boot catches against a concrete slab, uplifted from the ground by the growth of an old tree root. Something thick wraps tightly around your waist and keeps you balanced — the capture weapon — and Shinsou's hand grabs your own with haste as he forces you to keep moving. "Don't stop," he says, the words strained and breathless behind his mask, "we're almost out of their territory".

A booming sound cuts over his voice, the bass felt deep in your chest, then followed by a fast pressured gust of air barely missing the skin of your arm. Takei Goro, Villain name: Arsenal. He could fire bullets made of bone from the tips of his fingers.

Shinsou's grip remains firm and you try not to panic, willing the muscles in your thighs to carry you just a little further. The only consolation was that at present you were all on equal ground, but if a member were to rush to one of their storage units and follow in a vehicle the odds would undoubtedly be in their favour.

"Persona. We... need a... plan..." you adjust your grip to interlink your fingers, squeezing to get his attention as you weave through the streets. The initial location wasn't optimal, barely any narrow alleyways to slip into given that it was an open dock and most of the buildings had withered; but with a final turn you'd be coming into a commercial street. It's a small mercy that the place is mostly empty aside from a few strays, but they all knew better than to get involved.

Skidding to a brief halt, you are suddenly yanked into the shadows as Shinsou lumbers you behind the wall of a dumpster. He feels so much taller here, forearms braced either side of you, shielding you from view as much as he possibly can. His body is firm under the fabric and mesh of his hero suit, mouth agape as he pants, shoulders rising and falling where his chin tucks to his chest in exertion.

Heat creeps up your neck, and you almost forget where you are, or how you'd ended up there. Another shot rings out, accompanied only by frantic footsteps. They clearly knew of Persona somehow, knew of his quirk, and so they were remaining eerily silent as a precaution. "I recorded one of their vocals before they found us. The guy with the eyeballs. I can scale to the roof and lure them across the street—"

Another shot. "He stayed behind, remember?" you return the whisper, instinctively curling your hands into his shirt to keep him closer, "they'll know it's you".

The noise was nearing the entrance of the alley, you could sense it lifting the soft hair at the back of your neck, adrenaline coursing readily through your system. You needed to do something, and sooner rather than later. Think.

There were other people further down, some homeless and some aimlessly walking back from whichever bar they'd been in. Neither of your faces had been seen but Shinsou had very distinct violet hair that they'd link to Persona on sight, and it wasn't well hidden even at this distance away from the streetlamps.

Without any further forethought, you reach up to unlatch the clasp at the back of his mask, catching it as it falls loose around his neck. His expression pinches slightly in confusion, eyes frantically flickering from your actions to the head of the alleyway. It isn't until you begin tugging down the zip of your heavy duty jacket that he finally asks with urgency: "what're you doing?"

The jacket was often an addition for your winter uniform, rather than for summer. But on missions such as this one it was helpful for keeping you concealed, oversized to disguise your frame and with a large hood that hung over your face. The sleeves likely would not fit Shinsou on a regular day out of costume, never mind over all the layers he already had on, but it was better than nothing.

You flinch as another shot is fired into the air, Arsenal roaring in frustration, the baritone reverberating through the narrow space between your bodies. Given no time to explain, you roll up onto the balls of your feet to hook your jacket over his head, resting the lapels over his shoulders to hide the capture weapon.

A strangers silhouette shifts into the light and you grasp the hoods fabric, stretching it to obscure his face. "Sorry. You can hit me after this," you rasp, and before he has any chance to reply you are pulling him into a kiss.

To his credit, Shinsou adjusts easily. After a sharp inhale of surprise you feel as the tension softens, the distress waning as he melts into your touch and his weight forces you back against old brick. He tilts, slotting your lips together slowly, as if he were indulging it — as if he had all the time in the world.

Admittedly, you get a little lost in it. Something strums at your centre of gravity as he sighs into your mouth, your tongue tentatively licking into his, hips cradling hips and breaths stuttered. In the distance you hear two men speaking in low tones, an edge of frustration in their voices.

"Find them?"

"Nah, just a couple'a fuckin' kids fooling around".

The voices fade as they walk away, but you can't bring yourself to let go just yet, and Shinsou isn't stopping either. You try to rationalise it, reason that the members could still come back to check again, but it's futile. You were both still alive, you were grateful, you felt good in his arms. The soft pull of your lip between teeth, the groan building in his sternum, the hands pawing at your waist — it felt good.

Eventually he pulls away, a quiet wet sound as you separate, a string of saliva connecting your mouths bowing as it thins. You can barely see his expression but his cheeks feel warm. The moment is suspended, fragile, and you didn't want to shatter it. "I think they're gone," you whisper, "sorry again for... for springing that on you. I couldn't think of anything else".

"Huh?" he mutters, head lifting to look towards the main street. Now illuminated by the dim light, you can see just how flushed he is, dusted with pink and orange hues. "Oh".

"Oh?" you repeat, laughing at the bashfulness weaving into his features as he nervously rubs the back of his neck. "You forgot we were being pursued?"

"No! I just," he pauses to lick his bottom lip, half-lidded eyes lingering on your face in search of something, "got caught up in it. That's all".

You'd known him for years, had been partnered together on numerous other missions. Persona was level headed and thought fast on his feet, he didn't get caught up; but then again, neither did you.

At that moment, the communication device latched to your tool belt begins to blink. You weren't sure of the time but you knew it had to be long past when you'd promised to check in, and in all likelihood the police would have been notified of the gunshots.

"We should report back," you exhale. Shinsou visibly swallows, and nods.

"Yeah".

Whatever this was, it would have to wait.

[workersolidarity]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚨

BEATINGS AND BULLETS: ZIONIST COLONISTS AND OCCUPATION FORCES CONTINUE ABUSING AND ASSAULTING PALESTINIAN RESIDENTS OF "ISRAEL"

📹 Scenes from the Old City of Jersusalem today, Wednesday, June 12th, detailing the abuse inflicted on Palestinian citizens of the Israeli entity, including women, by the Israeli occupation army.

Meanwhile, in another example of the apartheid violence in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, a Palestinian civilian and his son were injured today following a shooting by an Israeli colonist in the Old City of Jersusalem (occupied Al-Quds).

According to local reporting, a group of armed Zionist colonists attacked a Palestinian-owned commercial store in the Bazaar market of the Old City of Jersusalem, one of whom fired live-bullets towards the store owner and his son, striking and wounding them before transporting the pair to a local hospital.

Witnesses told media correspondants that, following the attack, the Israeli occupation forces closed the store and further abused local residents, while the colonists continued attacking the shop, along with its owner, his family, and passers-by.

Similarly, in another attack, Zionist colonists smashed the windows of a Palestinian-owned civilian vehicle while a child was inside, also in occupied Jersusalem.

Residents told local reporters that the Israeli colonists tossed stones towards Palestinian civilian vehicles near Bab Al-Khalil (Jaffa Gate) in the Old City.

#source1

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews