#Security Chief Jobs in Iron Curtain Security Services

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Iron Curtain Security Services Jobs 2020 for Security Staff 2020 Job Advertisement Pakistan Iron Curtain Security Services Private Limited Lahore, Pakistan is seeking experienced candidates for the posts of Security Guard, Security Supervisor, Driver, Clerk, Security In Charge, Security Chief. You can apply online at vacancy after registering at site. Telephone: 042-37182236 Source link

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Events of the Chernobyl disaster

Events of the Chernobyl disaster

Chernobyl Disaster Events of the Chernobyl disaster, this is a visual illustration of the inner workings of the reactor and the key events of the Chernobyl disaster. The power plant had four nuclear reactors brought online over six years.  The steam turbines were located in the adjacent turbine hall.  Unit four had been making electricity for 3 years at the time of disaster in 1986.  The reactor was the RBMK 1000 type, 1960's design and the legacy of the nuclear power race where trying to be first meant undesirable shortcuts were made.  Technological best practices and good ideas were not shared across the Iron Curtain and Chernobyl paid the price. https://youtu.be/7safrZnIUKM

Safe reactor that could not explode

what caused Chernobyl disaster The answers are many but we summaries it to Ignorance of the Plant ManagerRush to test the plantPoor Safety DesignCold War race The propaganda was that it was a safe reactor that could not explode, which gave a false sense of security. The uranium fuel was only slightly enriched resulting in a much larger reactor core. Western reactors are stable by design as they heat up the nuclear reaction slows which is what you want. 

Faulty Design

Faulty design of the reactor

Chernobyl was the opposite where at low power, increased heat accelerated the reaction setting it up to run away with itself.  The technical term is positive void coefficient. The pumps and steam systems which fed the turbines were paired on either side and circulated enough coolant water to prevent overheating of the fuel. The radioactive fuel was enclosed in a steel drum with a top and bottom lid. This was the radiation shielding which safeguarded the plant workers. Almost 2,000 vertical channels were arranged inside graphite bricks.

Events of the Chernobyl disaster clock

Events of the Chernobyl disasterThe saga of disaster

Huge Reactor size

Graphite was favored material for sustaining a nuclear chain reaction and low-grade uranium. These channels contained the uranium fuel assemblies and the control rods.  The uranium pellets shown here in red were Stacked inside steel tubes. They heated the water which turned the turbines to produce electricity.10% of the channels held control rods shown here in green.  Moving them in and out of the core did the job of the brakes and accelerator of the reactor. The RBMK core was huge.  This is the relative size of the Fukushima core which is 17 times smaller. Chernobyl had rudimentary containment. Here it is compared to the Japanese Fukushima reactor housing to the same scale. Fukushima had three containment layers.  The pressure vessel, the steel lining and the outer concrete layer.  The Chernobyl reactor had just one layer. The reactor was serviced from the reactor hall above. https://youtu.be/Y3PDt03sTaI

Refueling problem

 Refueling could be done while full power. This was a big advantage of the RBMK design. It was only possible because there was no pressure vessel. This can be likened to driving without a seat belt which is convenient but not wise. Most western reactors may only be refueled during a reactor shutdown. The control room is located outside the reactor building in the lower levels of the turbine Hall. It was accessed from the golden corridor that connected all units and was 600 meters long. It is ironic that this reactor blew up while testing if the reactor was safe. The control staff were under pressure to get the test done because the next chance for the test would be in a year. It is unthinkable that activating the emergency shutdown detonated this explosion.  A design error meant the shutdown mechanism briefly spiked the reaction before slowing it.  In the operating configurations of that evening this sent the reactor supercritical in seconds. The design fault in the AZ-5 shutdown system was not communicated to the Chernobyl controllers. The chief engineer who had poor knowledge of reactor science recklessly bypassed multiple auto safety systems and the reactor blew up.

Chernobyl reactor explosion exposed Radiation into environment

https://youtu.be/YjuVrYTkTqE Vast amounts of radiation were released directly into the atmosphere. Radioactive debris lay strewn all around the site. Large areas of Belarus and Ukraine were made uninhabitable.  The finest radiation was carried much further and detected in low amounts across Europe causing widespread fear and panic.  The reactor lid which weighed 1000 tons was blown up through the roof and landed back in the reactor pit on its side.  To seal the radiation outflow to the outside world an emergency concrete and steel cover was built in a hurry in just 200 days. They called this shield the sarcophagus. It was built in heroic circumstances and never meant as the final solution. https://youtu.be/o495aErAANA

Heroic sacrifice

The cleanup activities at Chernobyl was bravely done by as many as 500,000people called Liquidators.  Most were simply told to be there uncertain how it would impact their life expectancy. They were waging a war against an invisible self-inflicted enemy.  Large quantities of equipment were involved and abandoned after because of contamination. 30 years later the shield was rusting and cracking and leaking radiation.  It was at risk from extreme weather and was going to collapse sooner or later. A new permanent containment arch was constructed a safe distance away and rolled in place on rails in November 2016.The iconic Chernobyl ventilation stack was in the path of the new cover and was taken down and replaced with a smaller one. This new permanent cover is a success story of international cooperation. It took 15 days to roll the new arch in place. It is the largest movable land structure ever made. Finally the air we all breathe is properly sealed off and safe from this nuclear menace.  The arch has equipment for dismantling and decommissioning this atomic nightmare. It's a Hercules task to summaries Events of the Chernobyl disaster

Chernobyl HBO miniseries

Chernobyl HBO miniseries watch it to experience the trauma of residents and ignorance of Russian Administration. https://youtu.be/n7aMcKinrWY

Conclusion

Chernobyl was the result of a flawed reactor design, human stupidity and the erosion of safety culture.  The fundamental failings of the Soviet system were laid bare at Chernobyl.  The Soviet Union unraveled soon after. Ukraine was left to carry this burden of historical proportions and to this day continues to be played as a political football by Russia.  The rest of Chernobyl's reactors continued to run after disaster.  Unit 2 burnt in 1991and was abandoned.  The last reactor was switched off in 2000 after European insistence.  Russia to this day still operates 10 RBMK reactors at three locations and plans to run the last one till turn 2034.  These units were retrofitted with safety modifications. This is the cursed town of Pripyat .It was a model town of 50,000 where the power plant staff lived.  It was a privilege to work and live here and in many ways it was the Soviet dream until it was evacuated the day after the explosion. Countless lives were devastated here forever by this tragedy. The Chernobyl nightmare that dragged on for so long finally has a workable long-term plan but the cleanup will still run for decades. Chernobyl has become an ever more popular tourist stop and hopefully it will retain the title of the worst nuclear power disaster in history. The Pripyat amusement park was days away from its May Day opening when it was hastily opened early as a diversion for residents concerned about the obvious damage to the power plant which would have been visible from the top of the ferris wheel. Later in the day they were instructed to evacuate for three days unaware they would never return. Read the full article

[racingtoaredlight]

Opening Bell: January 27, 2017

This week, President Donald Trump at a White House reception launched into a story which he claimed was relayed with him by professional golfer and Florida resident Bernhard Langer from Election Day last November. The story was billed by Trump as the reason for his proposed nationwide probe into alleged voter fraud. Deciding to launch a massive investigation based upon hearsay evidence from a German citizen living in the United States is hardly sound, but what makes this even more amazing is that late yesterday Langer claimed that he never told Trump the story at all, but had heard it from someone else and then passed it along to another friend who must have mentioned it to the White House. To say that President Donald Trump’s first week in office has been “interesting,” would be the understatement of the century so far.

Also this week, Trump signed an Executive Order decreeing that the federal government should begin marshaling resources to start the construction of a wall on the United States-Mexico border “within months.” Trump has since early in his campaign pledged to make Mexico pay for the wall and yesterday Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that funding would be collected by assessing a 20% tax on Mexican imports to the United States. These announcements caused Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to cancel a summit meeting with Trump that had been planned to take place soon in Washington. Trump’s border plan also includes a massive hiring increase of Border Patrol officers and customs agents. Within days of this announcement, the chief of the Border Patrol, former FBI careerist Mark A. Morgan, was removed from his position by the acting Commissioner for Customs and Border Protection. Morgan had been in conflict with the Border Patrol’s powerful union. Morgan was on the job for barely six months and was the first chief to come from outside the Border Patrol’s ranks.

Trump’s immigration Executive Orders this week drew swathes of criticism from Democrats, but also from some Republicans who represent districts adjacent to the border. Rep. Will Hurd represents the Texas 23rd District, which stretches from the western suburbs of San Antonio down to the upper Rio Grande Valley and across most of West Texas and the Big Bend to the suburbs of El Paso; a district larger than some states. Hurd has come out against the wall, calling it extraordinarily impractical, and defeated Democratic challenger Pete Gallego last November by promising voters in his majority Hispanic district to stand up to Trump. Another issue which observers have questioned of the Trump administration plan: does he realize the number of ranches and oil and mineral leases that exist near the southern border from Southern California to South Texas? Asserting eminent domain in order to construct a large, obtrusive wall, will not sit well with many land and leaseholders in the four border states.

Yet another Trump Executive Order which is already causing controversy: newly sworn-in CIA Director Mike Pompeo—whose first day in the office was Tuesday—was not consulted or notified ahead of time that President Trump would sign orders tasking the CIA with reopening so-called “black sites” around the world and with resuming the use of interrogation techniques like water boarding. Pompeo only learned of both orders when he saw them reported on in the news. At his Senate confirmation hearings days before his confirmation on Monday, Pompeo stated in no uncertain terms that he was against the use of both black sites and of interrogation techniques not found in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which is significant because the Army’s Field Manual does not allow physical abuse of prisoners. Meanwhile Trump himself declared in an interview with ABC’s David Muir this week that he believes that “torture works,” notably eschewing the term “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the Bush administration.

A document obtained by the Huffington Post this week appeared to indicate that the Trump administration’s goal in Syria will be to use both U.S. military and State Department resources to establish “safe zones” in Syria and its neighboring states. The Obama administration deliberately avoided this and other ideas, such as “no-fly” zones, in order to avoid the potential for a messy confrontation with Russia, which is conducting an independent air campaign in Syria.

In the least bemusing Trump news of the week, he has nominated former hedge fund manager Philip Bilden to be Secretary of the Navy. Bilden was an intelligence officer in the Army Reserve from 1986-1996 and, like Trump’s pick for Army Secretary Vincent Viola, comes from the world of finance. Trump’s pick for Air Force Secretary, former New Mexico Rep. Heather Wilson is an Air Force Academy graduate and well known for her technical expertise in defense administration and acquisition.

Hey, how about a story about questionable political judgment that does not involve Donald Trump? A week ago, I linked a story about a secret trip to Syria by Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. She returned to Washington after seven days and revealed that she had met directly with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Criticism of Gabbard’s trip was bipartisan, though Republicans were more vocal. House leadership across both aisles indicate that they were not forewarned about the trip by Gabbard’s office and no one is entirely certain who paid for it. Gabbard received further criticism when she declared that the American bombing campaign was not helping moderate freedom fighters, but instead was assisting ISIS and other radical terrorist groups. This talking point has been bandied about multiple times by Assad’s government since the air campaign began two years ago.

Steven L. Hall, a former 30 year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Services, writes about the scope of the victory by Russian intelligence services in hacking American political organizations and significantly affecting the 2016 campaign. Hall, who spent much of his career behind the Iron Curtain in Warsaw Pact territory, provides fascinating insight into Russia’s goals and views when it comes to offensive use of intelligence assets.

While in office, former President Barack Obama famously used a Blackberry smartphone which was secured from outside attacks. Just prior to his inauguration, President Donald Trump was forced by the secret service to give up his Android smartphone for a new, highly-secured phone with a brand new phone number which only a handful of people are allowed to have. This story talks about what security steps and methods were probably used by the Secret Service to secure this new phone for Trump.

A long-planned Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conference on climate change and the environment, which was cancelled only days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, is now back on. The conference cancellation caught the attention of former Vice President, and noted climate change communicator, Al Gore who worked with non-government organizations to sponsor the event—reduced from three days to one—and host it at the non-profit Carter Center in Atlanta.

Seven days into the Trump administration, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics does one last deep dive analysis into the results of the 2016 Presidential election. This time it is by the Center’s Rhodes Clark. If you’re into deep statistical analysis, this is your election recap.

Foreign Policy magazine has two stories which looks at those Executive Orders which seek to reduce American involvement in international organizations like the United Nations and its place on the world scene. FP is traditionally interventionist in its leanings—though perhaps less hawkish than individuals like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham—and so you can imagine that FP takes a dim view of Trump’s less-than-internationalist views.

Fifty years ago today, the crew of Apollo 1—astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee—were killed in a fire which broke out inside the pressurized crew capsule during a test run on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. While the capsule itself remains locked away in NASA storage, probably never to see the light of day again, the hatch from the capsule will be displayed by NASA today. The hatch, which in ideal conditions required 90 seconds and a technician with a specialized wrench to open from the outside, was partly blamed for the astronauts’ deaths; had crews been able to open the hatch more quickly, they might have been able to extinguish the fire which fueled toxic fumes in the capsule which killed all three men.

Finally this week, once upon a time Pennsylvania had a thriving lumber industry. Now the state is more closely linked to coal production and steel manufacture, though neither of those industries dominates the state as they once did either. The New York Times has an interesting pictorial retrospective on Pennsylvania’s extinct timber industry.

Welcome to the start of Trump week 2: Electric Boogaloo.

[paulbenedictblog]

%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

News Make your own fabric mask at home with this sewing pattern from a designer - The Washington Post

News

On Friday, President Trump announced that the Products and services for Illness Adjust and Prevention now recommends folks within the US attach on face coverings in public to unhurried the unfold of the unconventional coronavirus. The further public health measure is now not another option to social distancing but is primarily to terminate those that grasp the virus — and could now not comprehend it — from spreading it to others.

The Washington Submit talked to Grace Jun, assistant professor of style at Parsons School of Assemble and chief executive of Launch Fashion Lab, who wrote this sample after consulting with the Unusual York Metropolis Mayor’s Office for Folks with Disabilities and the NYU Langone Medical Center. “Accessible create,” Jun talked about, “is better create.”

This sample is designed to be sewn with a machine, but it surely can be hand-sewn, too.

Acquire the stitching sample to print at home here.

TOOLS

Fabric scissors or a rotary cutter

Ruler or ruler tape

Pins or clips

Sewing machine

Thread (polyester works effectively for further strength)

Iron or heavy books

No longer major: security pin

MATERIALS

Two gadgets of 12-proceed-prolonged and 7.25-proceed-broad 100 p.c cotton cloth (tight-weave cotton or quilting cotton). If that you just might perhaps well perhaps well be judge, exercise two different colours to point the mask’s inside of and outside.

One fragment of 12-proceed-prolonged and 7.25-proceed-broad interfacing or lightweight, breathable, stiff cloth.

Fourteen inches of 1/8-proceed flat elastic, stretch fable or further cloth for ties.

STEP ONE

News Cut your gadgets and impress sew strains

Cut three cloth rectangles 12 inches prolonged and 7.5 inches broad:

Two cotton cloth gadgets

One interface fragment

Stack the fabric: The terminate layer grasp to be a thicker/quilting cotton (crimson within the photos above), the center layer grasp to be the interface fragment, and the final layer beneath grasp to be a softer cotton (white within the photos above).

[Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.]

Value all of the sample strains on the head layer of arena topic. Cut along the stable line through all three layers so that you just grasp three gadgets of equal size.

Cut two gadgets of elastic, every at the least seven inches or longer to enable for an adjustable fit.

STEP TWO

News Sew the darts

Fold your cloth stack in half of with the head layer on inside of (crimson within the photos) so that you just is liable to be stitching your triangular darts on the white/inside of layer. Clip or pin collectively.

Sew one 1/2-proceed trudge on what's going to became the head of your mask — in your nostril. Sew but every other 3/4-proceed trudge on different aspect for the chin. Picture that these can be adjusted to be smaller or bigger to fit the wearer.

You have to perhaps well prick the darts begin or press them flat.

STEP THREE

News Sew the zigzag crooked strains

Sew along the crooked dotted sew strains with a zigzag sew.

STEP FOUR

News Sew the head and bottom outside edges of the mask

Fold the head and bottom edges (prolonged aspects) of the mask toward the within along the marked seam allowance and press and pin or clip. Sew on top of the fold to shut. (This will leave a raw edge. You have to perhaps well manufacture your edges sooner than sewing to manufacture if desired.)

STEP FIVE

News Sew the zigzag horizontal strains

Sew along the horizontal dotted sew strains with a zigzag sew.

STEP SIX

News Join elastic straps to mask

Fold the aspects of your cloth tabs over 1/2 an proceed or more and stitch 1/4 an proceed from the edge to form a tunnel for the elastic. Feed the elastic during the tunnel (a security pin connected to 1 dwell will abet with threading). Are attempting on for size, and alter the length as major. Sew or tie the ends of the elastic collectively.

In making this sample, Jun faded a tightly woven quilting cotton cloth or a cotton cloth with a high thread depend. A 2013 scrutinize published within the journal Anguish Medication and Public Health Preparedness discovered that effectively-fitting, selfmade masks fabricated from cotton T-shirts present some security from droplet transmission, the style wherein the coronavirus is unfold.

Jun has also designed a companion mask fabricated from vinyl, which would create it easy to wipe down and disinfect. The glance-through vinyl would also leave one’s mouth considered when communicating with any individual who’s listening to impaired.

— Phoebe Connelly, Joanne Lee and Suzette Moyer

News Grace Jun explains how she created her mask sample

In Unusual York Metropolis a couple weeks ago, at the epicenter of this nation’s coronavirus crisis, Grace Jun got an urgent mobile phone call from a friend who major a face mask. The conversation was once now not beautiful a case of one friend venting to but every other. Jun specializes in adaptive create — constructing merchandise that can be faded by folks with loads of disabilities. And her buddy, Christina Mallon-Michalove, has a motor neuron disease that now not handiest compromises her respiratory but also has frightened her fingers and shoulders.

After sending her one in all the final disposable masks she had, Jun obtained to work on something reusable.

She designed a face covering — one which can be stitched up at home, one which objectives to give a better fit for a significant wider vary of faces than the customary pleated vary. Jun’s mask isn’t clinical-grade and it doesn’t replace the solutions about social distancing from the Products and services for Illness Adjust and Prevention. However now that the White Home has issued steering urging folks to build on face coverings in public, Jun presents what she hopes is a more inclusive, form-it-yourself option — one which she advises can be stitched from washable cloth, and even a transparent bathe curtain, which would create it easy to wipe down and disinfect. The glance-through vinyl would also leave one’s mouth considered when communicating with any individual who’s listening to impaired.

Jun’s sample, which is bigger than the customary, is mighty by its straightforward, vertical pleats. They accelerate alongside the bridge of the nostril and the chin, and are intended to create it more straightforward to customize the fit. There’s also distinctive crooked stitching at the head and bottom that Jun says would enable the mask to exercise the jawline with out compromising breathability. The mask can be secured to the head using materials ties or elastic hair bands.

“Even in case you don’t grasp a stitching machine, I enjoy someone could create it,” Jun says. “In case you might perhaps well perhaps’t sew, you might perhaps well perhaps exercise staples or security pins.”

There are loads of iterations of face coverings accessible online: undeniable cotton, floral prints, even sequined ones — which could perhaps well be a better dose of style than one surely wants from something that's optimistically very, very fast. There are myriad YouTube tutorials on the arrangement in which to create them.

Jun’s consideration of how a mask interferes with lip-studying is a pure extension of her day job. As an assistant professor at Parsons School of Assemble, she teaches a direction in clothing disclose that asks college students to incorporate the wants of customers who exercise wheelchairs, some of whom grasp cramped exercise of their fingers or who don’t grasp a broad deal of handbook dexterity. Jun can be the executive executive of Launch Fashion Lab, an incubator for accessible and trendy clothing designs, wearable expertise and different universally usable merchandise. Mallon-Michalove is on the board of the nonprofit, which was once established in 2014.

What’s the arrangement in which forward for adaptive create? That’s the inquire of that Launch Fashion Lab poses. “There surely isn’t a tangible example except you create it,” Jun says. This health crisis has magnified a host of financial, racial and social disparities. Jun didn’t desire the wants of disabled folks to hasten wholly unacknowledged.

“In case you glance at some of those gadgets, the disabled community is mainly the most omitted. And that entails getting older,” Jun says. “We’re all going to face the incapacity of getting older.”

A mask doesn’t grasp to be but every other hurdle.

— Robin Givhan

[thisdaynews]

What Would Bernie Bomb?

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/what-would-bernie-bomb/

What Would Bernie Bomb?

Bernie Sanders’ top foreign policy adviser has an unusual résumé for someone in that role. Matt Duss comes from the progressive blogosphere, not the foreign service. He worked for Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign, and he joked after it was over that he and his colleagues will “get jobs in the Bush administration.” AsThe Nation’sDavid Klion wrote earlier this year, “No one besides Sanders has hired an adviser with such a clear track record of defying the Blob”—the mass of conventional thinkers in Washington’s foreign policy establishment.

But Duss sounded quite Blob-like earlier this month when I asked him what Sanders would do if he faced a humanitarian crisis such as imminent genocide. Would a President Sanders consider using American military force without the support of Congress and the broader public? “If there’s a situation in which, as president, Senator Sanders feels that he needs to act,” said Duss, “and he’s spoken to the experts, and he’s engaged with as many people as he possibly could, and comes to that decision point, he’s going to do what he feels is right.”

Story Continued Below

Coming from the foreign policy adviser to any other candidate, this statement wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. But Sanders has tried to position himself as a radical alternative to all his hawkish rivals in both parties. In a recent online video, he made “no apologies” for his “opposition to war.” In a major address before his official entry into the presidential race, he pledged to turbocharge American diplomacy with the help of a “global progressive movement.” In Congress, he has led the effort to end all U.S. involvement in the Yemen civil war, insisting that Congress must take back from the president its “constitutional responsibility over war making.” After running in 2016 on reshaping the American economy, it seems Sanders has now given himself the even more audacious task of dismantling the military-industrial complex.

And yet, as Duss’ comment indicates, Sanders is not a pacifist and his opposition to war is not absolute. He has supported military operations on humanitarian grounds. He’s campaigning as a peace candidate, but it’s not implausible that he could end up a war president.

During the 2020 campaign, Sanders has talked about foreign policy far more than any other major presidential candidate—even Joe Biden, whose foreign policy experience is unmatched in the Democratic field. That’s a shift from Sanders‘ 2016 bid, when he campaigned heavily on his democratic-socialist domestic agenda, leaving himself vulnerable to charges he wasn’t prepared to be commander in chief. Before beginning his second presidential run, Sanders laid out a foreign policy vision that is nothing less than transformational—rejecting the entire “mindset” that “military force is decisive in a way that diplomacy is not.” When MoveOn.org invited presidential candidates to share a single “big idea” at a California forum last month, Sanders did not highlight single-payer health insurance, his signature domestic policy proposal. He chose “ending endless wars.”

But despite Sanders’ bold foreign policy principles, the complete picture of how a President Sanders would exercise his powers overseas remains blurry. Not only has Sanders neglected to offer much policy detail for how he would achieve his peacemaking objectives, but he also has failed to explain how his antiwar rhetoric squares with some of his past positions. Most notably, he supported the 1999 American bombing operation in Kosovo. Even though Sanders has criticized the high cost of the F-35 fighter jet program, he supported the Air Force’s decision to base some of those F-35s in his home state of Vermont, protecting more than 1,000 jobs tied to the military-industrial complex.

Sanders supported what became known as the Global War on Terror at the outset, voting to authorize military force against “those nations, organizations or persons” connected to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Like many of his fellow Democrats, he has since become a skeptic of the forever war. In a 2017 address at Westminster College in Missouri, the site of Winston Churchill’s 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech, Sanders condemned the strategic framework of the war on terrorism as “a disaster” because of its “heavy-handed military approach,” and singled out drone strikes for their “high civilian casualties.” And Sanders has long expressed his unease with giving a president too much unilateral authority to deploy weapons of war. He often advocates for a strict interpretation of the War Powers Resolution, the post-Vietnam law that denies the president the power to engage in more than 60 days of military “hostilities” without formal congressional authorization.

Yet during his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders’ counterterrorism rhetoric was more muted. He said on multiple occasions that while errant drone strikes are “terrible” and “counterproductive,” drones have also “done some good things,” and “taken out people who should be taken out.” And so, he said, he would continue to use drones, “very selectively and effectively.” When asked about that shift in tone by Sanders since 2016, Duss argued that President Donald Trump has “dialed up” the use of drones. How exactly Sanders would dial it down is not yet clear. Duss informed me Sanders would initiate “a comprehensive review” of American counterterrorism policy—after his inauguration.

Sanders is hardly the first candidate in history to punt the specifics on a complicated, controversial matter to some sort of blue-ribbon commission. But Sanders has been deferring to such a future commission for years, since his 2016 campaign. Three years later, his attacks on the counterterrorism status quo have dramatically intensified, but he appears to have failed to come up with an alternative strategy.

What does Sanders actually believe?

***

Rhetorically, at least, Sanders’ critique of the Global War on Terror resembles the Republican attacks on Obamacare: Promise to “repeal and replace” it without having the “replace” part figured out.

In fairness to Sanders, he has never pretended there are easy answers to complex foreign policy challenges. In a 1999 town hall, then-Congressman Sanders described the Kosovo crisis as “enormously complicated, enormously difficult.” In a 2015 primary debate with Hillary Clinton, he said Syria “is a complicated issue. I don’t think anyone has a magical solution.” In 2016, in an interview with theLos Angeles Times, Sanders said pressuring Middle Eastern regimes to do more on counterterrorism, was “not easy.” This year, while speaking to a reporter forThe New Yorkerabout foreign policy, he sounded positively daunted: “Look, this is very difficult stuff … I most certainly do not believe that I have all the answers, or that this is easy stuff. I mean, you’re dealing with so much—my God.”

Voters may find this shocking bit of honesty for a presidential candidate either refreshing or unsettling. Perhaps more wannabe presidents should have the humility to acknowledge that they don’t know everything. But maybe that humility should be reflected in a realistic, detailed foreign policy agenda.

Sanders made that point himself in the 2016 primary, when he chided Hillary Clinton, and in effect, the Blob, about the decision to remove Moammar Gadhafi from power in Libya: “Regime change is easy; getting rid of dictators is easy,” he said. “But before you do that, you’ve got to think about what happens the day after.”

Back in April 1999, then-Congressman Sanders was on the House floor giving a three-minute speech about the military intervention taking place in what was then known as Yugoslavia. In the first 90 seconds, Sanders gave the familiar argument that military operations—like that one—without congressional authorization are unconstitutional. But for the second half of his remarks, he shifted his focus. Without expending a word to satisfy his own constitutional concerns, Sanders defended the NATO bombing as necessary on moral grounds to stop “ethnic cleansing,” the war’s euphemism for atrocities targeting ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

The Kosovo operation is a 20-year old episode, but it’s a rare example of Sanders openly, if not quite transparently, grappling with his conflicting principles—and presidents often have to do that. Sanders voted for a resolution, preferred by the Clinton administration, which “authorized” the operation without codifying that the authorization was legally required under the War Powers Act. (Sanders, and nearly all of his colleagues, voted against a formal declaration of war.) And when even that resolution failed in the House on a tie vote, Sanders did not insist the operation end on the basis of its constitutional illegitimacy. Five days later at a Montpelier, Vermont, town hall, he passionately supported the bombing.

Twenty years later, when it comes to defending NATO allies if attacked, the Blob will be happy to know Duss was unequivocal that Sanders would respond militarily: “Shared security is something Senator Sanders strongly believes in, and the principle of collective defense is at the core of NATO’s founding treaty. It’s important for friends and foes alike to have no doubt that the United States will honor this commitment.”

Beyond that, Duss told me that cases of “genocide or of mass atrocities” would “weigh heavily” on the mind of Sanders as president. And he laid out the questions Sanders would pose: “Does this meet the level of an emergency, an imminent atrocity? Does it immediately impact the security of the people of the United States? And if it doesn’t, does that imminent atrocity, rise to the level of a global norm which we have interest in enforcing and upholding? And finally, and very important, what are the chances for creating a better outcome having taken this step of introducing U.S. military forces into the situation?”

These are all essential questions, and they are reassuring to Democratic foreign policy experts, even some progressive ones, who want Sanders to leave the door open for military force. Ploughshares Fund President Joseph Cirincione, an anti-nuclear weapons activist who informally advises Sanders, told me: “I think Senator Sanders would not hesitate to use military force to defend the country from attack, to defend our vital interests, to prevent atrocities like genocide. But he’s made clear that military force should be the very, very last option.”

For a small but noticeable anti-Bernie strain on the far left, that wiggle room for military strikes makes Sanders a hypocrite. For example, Ajamu Baraka, the last vice presidential nominee for the Green Party, said in an interview that Sanders’ openness to military action amounts to “saying one thing publicly but then appearing to have a different position that is reflected sometimes in his legislative decisions, and I think the Kosovo situation was a very important example of that.”

But most of the anti-interventionist left aren’t quibbling about the smattering of past disagreements with Sanders such as Kosovo. They are mostly enthralled at how Sanders’ campaign rhetoric is broadening the foreign policy debate. In particular, they are bowled over by how, earlier this year, Sanders used the War Powers Resolution to move a bipartisan bill through Congress demanding Trump end American military involvement in the Yemeni civil war, where the U.S. has supported Saudi Arabia’s intervention. Although the bill was vetoed, the fact that it got to Trump’s desk both legitimized the War Powers Resolution and bolstered Sanders’ case that he can get things done in Washington.

Most of the activists with whom I spoke put more emphasis on Yemen than Kosovo when gauging how a President Sanders would involve Congress in his foreign policy. Robert Naiman, policy director at Just Foreign Policy, raved over email: “Sanders was the first to introduce a privileged resolution invoking the War Powers Resolution to force a vote to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in the war and lead it to completion, passage by Congress. That never happened before in the whole history of the War Powers Resolution since 1973.”

But Sanders’ proud defense of his Kosovo stance to his antiwar allies should not be ignored. He thundered at the May 1999 Montpelier town hall: “What do you do to a war criminal who has led, for the first time in modern history, the organized rape as an agent of war, of tens of thousands of women? What do you do to a butcher who has lined up people and shot them? Do you say to them, ‘You have won Mr. Milosevic. We are not going to stand up to you. We are going home’?” Sanders once put the end of genocide ahead of a strict adherence to the War Powers Resolution, and his foreign policy adviser has now left the door open to him doing it again as president.

Before President Barack Obama’s 2011 intervention in Libya, another instance of the use of American force to try to stop genocide, Sanders initially indicated support for military action. Sanders co-sponsored a Senate resolution that urged “the United Nations Security Council to take such further action as may be necessary to protect civilians in Libya from attack, including the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Libyan territory.” The Security Council did just that, setting in motion a multilateral military operation.

Nine days after hostilities began, however, Sanders wasn’t stoutly defending the Libyan operation, as he had with Kosovo. He was betraying squeamishness about how long the operation would last, telling Fox News: “Everybody understands Gadhafi is a thug and murderer. We want to see him go, but I think in the midst of two wars, I’m not quite sure we need a third war, and I hope the president tells us that our troops will be leaving there, that our military action in Libya will be ending very, very shortly.” After the death of Gadhafi and the subsequent destabilization of Libya, Sanders took a far dimmer view of the operation. He said four years later in a primary debate with Hillary Clinton, “Yes, we could get rid of Gadhafi, a terrible dictator, but that created a vacuum for ISIS.”

The common thread in Kosovo and Libya was Sanders’ impulse to stop genocide, mitigated by his strong desire to limit the duration of any hostilities. If you are mainly concerned about getting bogged down in quagmires, you will be comforted by Sanders’ discomfort with prolonged military action. However, those that are more comfortable with direct military action are unnerved that Sanders generally doesn’t talk about the nuances of his views on the campaign trail.

“If the anti-war rhetoric becomes too unequivocal, a leader may compromise their ability to rally popular support in the event that they judge intervention necessary,” said Suzanne Nossel, a former State Department official in the Obama administration, in an email exchange. “If Bernie Sanders is serious about leaving himself leeway to act militarily where necessary, it would be useful to articulate that idea to his supporters in the context of the campaign.”

***

Nossel’s concern is indicative of the skepticism Sanders receives from many inside the Blob.While the left loves Sanders’ principles and his outsider posture, the Blob worries about his lack of details and experience in crisis situations. Mieke Eoyang, a former congressional staffer who once advised Congresswoman Pat Schroeder and Senator Ted Kennedy on defense issues, argues that Sanders was largely absent from serious legislating about foreign policy matters throughout the bulk of his congressional career.

Now vice president for the National Security Program at the centrist organization Third Way, Eoyang worries that, despite the occasional examples of supporting military force, Sanders possesses “a real reluctance to use American power.” “The president has to make choices about how to exercise American power,” she told me, “and there are serious negative consequences that flow from inaction as well as action. So you have to choose from a bunch of imperfect outcomes. And I have not seen Bernie, over the course of his career, being willing to select from imperfect outcomes.”

But Blob members are not solely fixated on what, and whether, Bernie would bomb. They also question his faith in people-to-people public diplomacy. “The devil is always in the detail,” warns Bishop Garrison, a former foreign policy adviser on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign who founded the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, a “post-partisan” think tank. Asked what Sanders’ highly ambitious goal of building a “global progressive movement that speaks to the needs of working people” to counter “a growing worldwide movement toward authoritarianism, oligarchy and kleptocracy” means in practice, Duss said, “The goal here is to promote the idea that progressives at the civil society level need to be reaching out, and meeting, and working, and networking and coordinating with each other much more energetically than we have been doing up until now, because we see right-wing forces doing that.”

Duss went on: “Building a global community is not just about relationships between governments, but it’s about relationships between peoples. As president, he would have a foreign policy that worked to protect political space where civil society groups from different countries under different forms of government can build relationships.”

To Garrison, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom with two Bronze Stars, this seemingly heartwarming approach is fraught with danger. “One could argue you’re talking about interfering with the ongoing political efforts of a society, on a grand and global scale across different sovereign nations. That’s not diplomacy.” While Garrison was supportive of civil society groups that invest in “local populations,” he worried that Sanders’ vision “sounds like you’re going go in and start an uprising somewhere.”

Jonathan Katz, a former State Department official in the Obama administration who has been sounding the alarm about “democratic backsliding” within the NATO alliance, is more positive about the civil society push, and urged Sanders to show some specific figures for how much money he would “be willing to put into an effort to promote democracy” abroad. (Duss in turn said it has not been decided yet if a budget proposal, delineating how much money would be cut from the military and redirected elsewhere, would be released during the campaign.)

But Katz, now a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund, cautioned against a pro-democracy outreach strategy rooted in a left-versus-right framework of the kind that Sanders seems to envision. “More often than not,” Katz said, “in the cases of countries where you have democratic backsliding, it’s not because people on the right or the left don’t want democracy. It’s usually a leader that comes in—an oligarch, an authoritarian—that starts to use and manipulate the system for his or her own good, or to benefit a small group around them.” He added, “Bernie is narrowly pointing to progressives in terms of a global democracy fight. I like the idea of a global democracy fight. But it’s got to be inclusive … Otherwise, you’re pitting groups against each other, potentially.”

***

Duss may have given me a Blob-like response when asked about Sanders’ criteria for going to war, but I would not suggest he’s become a card-carrying member. When you talk to Duss, he’s far more likely to say “military violence” than “military power.” He told me Sanders’ counterterrorism strategy review would “take a much more aggressive look at how we are using military violence.” Such language doesn’t preclude the use of the military. But Duss, and more important, Sanders, routinely send the signal that they harbor an extreme distaste for the use of force.

Even so, Sanders has views about military intervention that are more complicated than his campaign rhetoric. And that may explain why he hasn’t delved into much detail about foreign policy. Once a candidate wades into the sea of international crises and hypothetical threats, eventually the possibility of military force arises. Any discussion of that risks making Sanders look more like a conventional commander in chief than a revolutionary one.

Read More

[nhlabornews]

Today in labor history for the week of August 14, 2017

August 14 President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, providing, for the first time ever, guaranteed income for retirees and creating a system of unemployment benefits – 1935

Members of the upstart Polish union Solidarity seize the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk. Sixteen days later the government officially recognizes the union. Many consider the event the beginning of the end for the Iron Curtain – 1980

Former AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland dies at age 77 – 1999

August 15 To begin what proved to become one of the world’s longest construction projects, workers lay the foundation stone of Germany’s Cologne Cathedral, built to house the relics of the Three Wise Men.  The job was declared completed in 1880—632 years later – 1248

The Panama Canal opens after 33 years of construction and an estimated 22,000 worker deaths, mostly caused by malaria and yellow fever.  The 51-mile canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans – 1914

Populist social commentator Will Rogers killed in a plane crash, Point Barrow, Alaska. One of his many classic lines: “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts” – 1935

(Workplace Jokes: Only SOME of Them Will Get You Fired!: Did you hear the one about the supervisor and the new employee who bump into each other in a bar?  Maybe, but maybe not.  In either case, you can find it and a couple hundred other great workplace jokes in this new collection, the only one of its kind.  You won’t find working people as the butt of jokes here… it’s more likely to be the boss, the banker, the yes man and the union-busting lawyer.)

President Richard M. Nixon announces a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents in an attempt to combat inflation – 1971

Gerry Horgan, chief steward of CWA Local 1103 and NYNEX striker in Valhalla, N.Y., is struck on the picket line by a car driven by the daughter of a plant manager and dies the following day. What was to become a 4-month strike over healthcare benefits was in its second week – 1989

Eight automotive department employees at a Walmart near Ottawa won an arbitrator-imposed contract after voting for UFCW representation, becoming the giant retailer’s only location in North America with a collective bargaining agreement. Two months later the company closed the department. Three years earlier Walmart had closed an entire store on the same day the government announced an arbitrator would impose a contract agreement there – 2008

August 16 George Meany, plumber, founding AFL-CIO president, born in City Island, Bronx. In his official biography, George Meany and His Times, he said he had “never walked a picket line in his life.” He also said he took part in only one strike (against the United States Government to get higher pay for plumbers on welfare jobs). Yet he also firmly said that “You only make progress by fighting for progress.” Meany served as secretary-treasurer of the AFL from 1940 to 1952, succeeded as president of the AFL, and then continued as president of the AFL-CIO following the historic merger in 1955 until retiring in 1979 – 1894 Homer Martin, early United Auto Workers leader, born in Marion, Ill. – 1902

Congress passes the National Apprenticeship Act, establishing a national advisory committee to research and draft regulations establishing minimum standards for apprenticeship programs. It was later amended to permit the Labor Department to issue regulations protecting the health, safety and general welfare of apprentices, and to encourage the use of contracts in their hiring and employment – 1937

National Agricultural Workers Union merges into Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen – 1960

Int’l Union of Wood, Wire & Metal Lathers merges with United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners – 1979

August 17 IWW War Trials in Chicago, 95 go to prison for up to 20 years – 1918

Bakery & Confectionery Workers Int’l Union of America merges with Tobacco Workers Int’l Union to become Bakery, Confectionery & Tobacco Workers – 1978

Year-long Hormel meatpackers’ strike begins in Austin, Minn. – 1985

August 18 Radio station WEVD, named for Eugene V. Debs, goes on the air in New York City, operated by The Forward Association as a memorial to the labor and socialist leader – 1927

(The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs: Eugene V. Debs was a labor activist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who captured the heart and soul of the nation’s working people. He was brilliant, sincere, compassionate and scrupulously honest. A founder of one of the nation’s first industrial unions, the American Railway Union, he went on to help launch the Industrial Workers of the World—the Wobblies. A man of firm beliefs and dedication, he ran for President of the United States five times under the banner of the Socialist Party, in 1912 earning 6 percent of the popular vote.  Many union activists and labor scholars see Debs as the definitive labor leader.)

Founding of the American Federation of Government Employees, following a decision by the National Federation of Federal Employees (later to become part of the Int’l Association of Machinists) to leave the AFL – 1932

August 19 First edition of IWW Little Red Song Book published – 1909

Some 2,000 United Railroads streetcar service workers and supporters parade down San Francisco’s Market Street in support of pay demands and against the company’s anti-union policies. The strike failed in late November in the face of more than 1,000 strikebreakers, some of them imported from Chicago – 1917

Founding of the Maritime Trades Dept., AFL, to give “workers employed in the maritime industry and its allied trades a voice in shaping national policy” – 1946

Phelps-Dodge copper miners in Morenci and Clifton, Ariz., are confronted by tanks, helicopters, 426 state troopers and 325 National Guardsmen brought in to walk strikebreakers through picket lines in what was to become a failed 3-year fight by the Steelworkers and other unions – 1983 Some 4,400 mechanics, cleaners and custodians, members of AMFA at Northwest Airlines, strike the carrier over job security, pay cuts and work rule changes. The 14-month strike was to fail, with most union jobs lost to replacements and outside contractors – 2005

August 20 The Great Fire of 1910, a wildfire that consumed about 3 million acres in Washington, Idaho and Montana—an area about the size of Connecticut—claimed the lives of 78 firefighters over two days.  It is believed to be the largest, although not deadliest, fire in U.S. history – 1910

Deranged relief postal service carrier Patrick “Crazy Pat” Henry Sherrill shoots and kills 14 coworkers, and wounds another six, before killing himself at an Edmond, Okla., postal facility.  Supervisors had ignored warning signs of Sherrill’s instability, investigators later found; the shootings came a day after he had been reprimanded for poor work.  The incident inspired the objectionable term “going postal” – 1986 —Compiled and edited by David Prosten

Today in labor history for the week of August 14, 2017 was originally published on NH LABOR NEWS

[dirjoh-blog]

I have read a lot about this remarkable man and hero and I was reluctant to write an article about him, because I just didn’t think I would do him justice. However since it is the 72nd anniversary of his disappearance I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at some elements of his life, including his disappearance.

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg led one of the most extensive and successful rescue efforts during the Nazi era. His work with the War Refugee Board and the World Jewish Congress saved thousands of Hungarian Jews.

On 17 January 1945, during the Siege of Budapest by the Red Army, Wallenberg was detained by SMERSH on suspicion of espionage and subsequently disappeared.

Raoul Wallenberg was born on August 4, 1912, in Stockholm, Sweden.

After studying in the United States in the 1930s and establishing himself in a business career in Sweden, Wallenberg was recruited by the US War Refugee Board (WRB) in June 1944 to travel to Hungary. Given status as a diplomat by the Swedish legation, Wallenberg’s task was to do what he could to assist and save Hungarian Jews.

  Beginning in 1938, the Kingdom of Hungary, under the regency of Miklós Horthy, passed a series of anti-Jewish measures modeled on the so-called Nuremberg Race Laws enacted in Germany by the Nazis in 1935.

Like their German counterparts, the Hungarian laws focused heavily on restricting Jews from certain professions, reducing the number of Jews in government and public service jobs, and prohibiting intermarriage.

Before Wallenberg’s arrival, the Swedish embassy in Budapest was already issuing travel documents to Hungarian Jews – these special certificates functioned as a Swedish passport.

The papers had no real authority in law but the Swedes managed to persuade the Hungarian authorities that people holding them were under their protection.

When Wallenberg arrived, he decided that the certificates needed to look more official so he redesigned them. He introduced the colours of the Swedish flag, blue and yellow, marked the documents with government stamps and added Swedish crowns. It was known as a Schutz-Pass or protective pass.

After the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross movement seized power with the help of the Germans on October 15, 1944, the Arrow Cross government resumed the deportation of Hungarian Jews, which Horthy had halted in July before the Budapest Jews could be deported. As Soviet troops had already cut off rail transport routes to Auschwitz, Hungarian authorities forced tens of thousands of Budapest Jews to march west to the Hungarian border with Austria. During the autumn of 1944, Wallenberg repeatedly—and often personally—intervened to secure the release of those with certificates of protection or forged papers, saving as many people as he could from the marching columns.

On 29 October 1944, elements of the 2nd Ukrainian Front under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky launched an offensive against Budapest and by late December the city had been encircled by Soviet forces. Despite this the German commander of Budapest, SS Lieutenant General Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, refused all offers to surrender, setting in motion a protracted and bloody siege of Budapest.

At the height of the fighting, on 17 January 1945, Wallenberg was called to General Malinovsky’s headquarters in Debrecen to answer allegations that he was engaged in espionage.

Wallenberg’s last recorded words were, “I’m going to Malinovsky’s … whether as a guest or prisoner I do not know yet.”Documents recovered in 1993 from previously secret Soviet military archives and published in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet show that an order for Wallenberg’s arrest was issued by Deputy Commissar for Defence (and future Soviet Premier) Nikolai Bulganin and transmitted to Malinovsky’s headquarters on the day of Wallenberg’s disappearance. In 2003, a review of Soviet wartime correspondences indicated that Vilmos Böhm, a Hungarian politician who was also a Soviet intelligence agent, may have provided Wallenberg’s name to the SMERSH as a person to detain for possible involvement in espionage.

On 6 February 1957, the Soviet government released a document dated 17 July 1947, which stated “I report that the prisoner Wallenberg who is well-known to you, died suddenly in his cell this night, probably as a result of a heart attack or heart failure”

However newly published diaries of the first KGB chief,Ivan Serov, state that the Swedish diplomat was liquidated on Stalin’s orders in a Soviet prison in 1947.

Behind the diaries’ publication is Vera Serova, the KGB chairman’s only grandchild. Four years ago, Serova, a retired ballet dancer, wanted to renovate her grandfather’s Moscow dacha, which she inherited. The workmen found the journals in suitcases hidden inside the garage wall; they were disappointed that the treasure turned out not to be money or jewels but only papers. “I have no doubts that Wallenberg was liquidated in 1947,” the ex-head of the former Russian secret police and intelligence agency writes in his diaries. Wallenberg was killed in a Soviet prison and Serov quotes his predecessor, Viktor Abakumov, as saying the order to kill Wallenberg came from the top: Joseph Stalin and then-foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov.

It is still not clear why he was killed.In May 1996 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released thousands of previously classified documents regarding Raoul Wallenberg, in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

A communique sent on 7 November 1944 by the OSS, (the predecessor of the CIA) branch in Bari, Italy which apparently acknowledged that Wallenberg was acting as an unofficial liaison between the OSS and the Hungarian Independence Movement (MFM), an underground anti-Nazi resistance organization.This particular disclosure has given rise to speculation as to whether, in addition to his efforts to rescue the Hungarian Jews, Wallenberg may have also been pursuing a parallel clandestine mission aimed at politically destabilizing Hungary’s pro-Nazi government on behalf of the OSS. This would also seem to add some credence to the potential explanation that it was his association with US intelligence that led to Wallenberg being targeted by Soviet authorities in January 1945.

Several other humanitarians who had helped refugees during World War II disappeared behind the Iron Curtain in the period 1949/50.

On 29 March 2016, an announcement was made by the Swedish Tax Agency that a petition to have Wallenberg declared dead in absentia had been submitted. It stated that if he does not report to the Tax Agency before 14 October 2016, he will be declared dead legally.

Wallenberg was declared dead in October 2016. Consistently with the approach used in cases where the circumstances of death were not known, the Swedish tax agency recorded the date of his death as July 31, 1952, five years after he went missing.

His name has been honoured in several countries across the globe.

  The disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg. I have read a lot about this remarkable man and hero and I was reluctant to write an article about him, because I just didn't think I would do him justice.