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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Boeing’s deliberately defective fleet of flying sky-wreckage

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (May 2) in WINNIPEG, then Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Boeing's 787 "Dreamliner" is manufactured far from the company's Seattle facility, in a non-union shop in Charleston, South Carolina. At that shop, there is a cage full of defective parts that have been pulled from production because they are not airworthy.

Hundreds of parts from that Material Review Segregation Area (MRSA) were secretly pulled from that cage and installed on aircraft that are currently plying the world's skies. Among them, sections 47/48 of a 787 – the last four rows of the plane, along with its galley and rear toilets. As Moe Tkacik writes in her excellent piece on Boeing's lethally corrupt culture of financialization and whistleblower intimidation, this is a big ass chunk of an airplane, and there's no way it could go missing from the MRSA cage without a lot of people knowing about it:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-30-whistleblower-laws-protect-lawbreakers/

More: MRSA parts are prominently emblazoned with red marks denoting them as defective and unsafe. For a plane to escape Boeing's production line and find its way to a civilian airport near you with these defective parts installed, many people will have to see and ignore this literal red flag.

The MRSA cage was a special concern of John "Swampy" Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who is alleged to have killed himself in March. Tkacik's earlier profile of Swampy paints a picture of a fearless, stubborn engineer who refused to go along to get along, refused to allow himself to become inured to Boeing's growing culture of profits over safety:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

Boeing is America's last aviation company and its single largest exporter. After the company was allowed to merge with its rival McDonnell-Douglas in 1997, the combined company came under MDD's notoriously financially oriented management culture. MDD CEO Harry Stonecipher became Boeing's CEO in the early 2000s. Stonecipher was a protege of Jack Welch, the man who destroyed General Electric with cuts to quality and workforce and aggressive union-busting, a classic Mafia-style "bust-out" that devoured the company's seed corn and left it a barren wasteland:

https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis

Post-merger, Boeing became increasingly infected with MDD's culture. The company chased cheap, less-skilled labor to other countries and to America's great onshore-offshore sacrifice zone, the "right-to-work" American south, where bosses can fire uppity workers who balked at criminal orders, without the hassle of a union grievance.

Stonecipher was succeeded by Jim "Prince Jim" McNerney, ex-3M CEO, another Jack Welch protege (Welch spawned a botnet of sociopath looters who seized control of the country's largest, most successful firms, and drove them into the ground). McNerney had a cute name for the company's senior engineers: "phenomenally talented assholes." He created a program to help his managers force these skilled workers – everyone a Boeing who knew how to build a plane – out of the company.

McNerney's big idea was to get rid of "phenomenally talented assholes" and outsource the Dreamliner's design to Boeing's suppliers, who were utterly dependent on the company and could easily be pushed around (McNerney didn't care that most of these companies lacked engineering departments). This resulted in a $80b cost overrun, and a last-minute scramble to save the 787 by shipping a "cleanup crew" from Seattle to South Carolina, in the hopes that those "phenomenally talented assholes" could save McNerney's ass.

Swampy was part of the cleanup crew. He was terrified by what he saw there. Boeing had convinced the FAA to let them company perform its own inspections, replacing independent government inspectors with Boeing employees. The company would mark its own homework, and it swore that it wouldn't cheat.

Boeing cheated. Swampy dutifully reported the legion of safety violations he witnessed and was banished to babysit the MRSA, an assignment his managers viewed as a punishment that would isolate Swampy from the criminality he refused to stop reporting. Instead, Swampy audited the MRSA, and discovered that at least 420 defective aviation components had gone missing from the cage, presumably to be installed in planes that were behind schedule. Swampy then audited the keys to the MRSA and learned that hundreds of keys were "floating around" the Charleston facility. Virtually anyone could liberate a defective part and install it into an airplane without any paper trail.

Swampy's bosses had a plan for dealing with this. They ordered Swampy to "pencil whip" the investigations of 420 missing defective components and close the cases without actually figuring out what happened to them. Swampy refused.

Instead, Swampy took his concerns to a departmental meeting where 12 managers were present and announced that "if we can’t find them, any that we can’t find, we need to report it to the FAA." The only response came from a supervisor, who said, "We’re not going to report anything to the FAA."

The thing is, Swampy wasn't just protecting the lives of the passengers in those defective aircraft – he was also protecting Boeing employees. Under Sec 38 of the US Criminal Code, it's a 15-year felony to make any "materially false writing, entry, certification, document, record, data plate, label, or electronic communication concerning any aircraft or space vehicle part."

(When Swampy told a meeting that he took this seriously because "the paperwork is just as important as the aircraft" the room erupted in laughter.)

Swampy sent his own inspectors to the factory floor, and they discovered "dozens of red-painted defective parts installed on planes."

Swampy blew the whistle. How did the 787 – and the rest of Boeing's defective flying turkeys – escape the hangar and find their way into commercial airlines' fleets? Tkacik blames a 2000 whistleblower law called AIR21 that:

creates such byzantine procedures, locates adjudication power in such an outgunned federal agency, and gives whistleblowers such a narrow chance of success that it effectively immunizes airplane manufacturers, of which there is one in the United States, from suffering any legal repercussions from the testimony of their own workers.

By his own estimation, Swampy was ordered to commit two felonies per week for six years. Tkacik explains that this kind of operation relies on a culture of ignorance – managers must not document their orders, and workers must not be made aware of the law. Whistleblowers like Swampy, who spoke the unspeakable, were sidelined (an assessment by one of Swampy's managers called him "one of the best" and finished that "leadership would give hugs and high fives all around at his departure").

Multiple whistleblowers were singled out for retaliation and forced departure. William Hobek, a quality manager who refused to "pencil whip" the missing, massive 47-48 assembly that had wandered away from the MRSA cage, was given a "weak" performance review and fired despite an HR manager admitting that it was bogus.

Another quality manager, Cynthia Kitchens, filed an ethics complaint against manager Elton Wright who responded to her persistent reporting of defects on the line by shoving her against a wall and shouting that Boeing was "a good ol’ boys’ club and you need to get on board." Kitchens was fired in 2016. She had cancer at the time.

John Woods, yet another quality engineer, was fired after he refused to sign off on a corner-cutting process to repair a fuselage – the FAA later backed up his judgment.

Then there's Sam Salehpour, the 787 quality engineer whose tearful Congressional testimony described more corner-cutting on fuselage repairs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP0xhIe1LFE

Salehpour's boss followed the Boeing playbook to the letter: Salehpour was constantly harangued and bullied, and he was isolated from colleagues who might concur with his assessment. When Salehpour announced that he would give Congressional testimony, his car was sabotaged under mysterious circumstances.

It's a playbook. Salehpour's experience isn't unusual at Boeing. Two other engineers, working on the 787 Organization Designation Authorization, held up production by insisting that the company fix the planes' onboard navigation computers. Their boss gave them a terrible performance review, admitting that top management was furious at the delays and had ordered him to punish the engineers. The engineers' union grievance failed, with Boeing concluding that this conduct – which they admitted to – didn't rise to the level of retaliation.

As Tkacik points out, these engineers and managers that Boeing targeted for intimidation and retaliation are the very same staff who are supposed to be performing inspections of behalf of the FAA. In other words, Boeing has spent years attacking its own regulator, with total impunity.

But it's not just the FAA who've failed to take action – it's also the DOJ, who have consistently declined to bring prosecutions in most cases, and who settled the rare case they did bring with "deferred prosecution agreements." This pattern was true under Trump's DOJ and continued under Biden's tenure. Biden's prosecutors have been so lackluster that a federal judge "publicly rebuked the DOJ for failing to take seriously the reputational damage its conduct throughout the Boeing case was inflicting on the agency."

Meanwhile, there's the AIR21 rule, a "whistleblower" rule that actually protects Boeing from whistleblowers. Under AIR21, an aviation whistleblower who is retaliated against by their employer must first try to resolve their problem internally. If that fails, the whistleblower has only one course of action: file an OSHA complaint within 90 days (if HR takes more than 90 days to resolve your internal complaint, you can no have no further recourse). If you manage to raise a complaint with OSHA, it is heard by a secret tribunal that has no subpoena power and routinely takes five years to rule on cases, and rules against whistleblowers 97% of the time.

Boeing whistleblowers who missed the 90-day cutoff have filled the South Carolina courts with last-ditch attempts to hold the company to account. When they lose these cases – as is routine, given Boeing's enormous legal muscle and AIR21's legal handcuffs – they are often ordered to pay Boeing's legal costs.

Tkacik cites Swampy's lawyer, Rob Turkewitz, who says Swampy was the only one of Boeing's whistleblowers who was "savvy, meticulous, and fast-moving enough to bring an AIR 21 case capable of jumping through all the hoops" to file an AIR21 case, which then took seven years. Turkewitz calls Boeing South Carolina "a criminal enterprise."

That's a conclusion that's hard to argue with. Take Boeing's excuse for not producing the documentation of its slapdash reinstallation of the Alaska Air door plug that fell off its plane in flight: the company says it's not criminally liable for failing to provide the paperwork, because it never documented the repair. Not documenting the repair is also a crime.

You might have heard that there's some accountability coming to the Boeing boardroom, with the ouster of CEO David Calhoun. Calhoun's likely successor is Patrick Shanahan, whom Tkacik describes as "the architect of the ethos that governed the 787 program" and whom her source called "a classic schoolyard bully."

If Shanahan's name rings a bell, it might be because he was almost Trump's Secretary of Defense, but that was derailed by the news that he had "emphatically defended" his 17 year old son after the boy nearly beat his mother to death with a baseball bat. Shanahan is presently CEO of Spirit Aerospace, who made the door-plug that fell out of the Alaska Airlines 737 Max.

Boeing is a company where senior managers only fail up and where whistleblowers are terrorized in and out of the workplace. One of Tkacik's sources noticed his car shimmying. The source, an ex-787 worker who'd been fired after raising safety complaints, had tried to bring an AIR21 complaint, but withdrew it out of fear of being bankrupted if he was ordered to pay Boeing's legal costs. When the whistleblower pulled over, he discovered that two of the lug-nuts had been removed from one of his wheels.

The whistleblower texted Tkcacik to say (not for the first time): "If anything happens, I'm not suicidal."

Boeing is a primary aerospace contractor to the US government. It's clear that its management – and investors – consider it too big to jail. It's also clear that they know it's too big to fail – after all, the company did a $43b stock buyback, then got billions in a publicly funded buyback.

Boeing is, effectively, a government agency that is run for the benefit of its investors. It performs its own safety inspections. It investigates its own criminal violations of safety rules. It loots its own coffers and then refills them at public expense.

Meanwhile, the company has filled our skies with at least 420 airplanes with defective, red-painted parts that were locked up in the MRSA cage, then snuck out and fitted to an airplane that you or someone you love could fly on the next time you take your family on vacation or fly somewhere for work.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/01/boeing-boeing/#mrsa

Image: Tom Axford 1 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_sky_with_wisps_of_cloud_on_a_clear_summer_morning.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Clemens Vasters (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:N7379E_-_Boeing_737_MAX_9.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

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olderthannetfic · 3 months ago

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Any way you could recommend some sort of intro guide to fantasy for dummies to me?

I'd like to have a couple of magic related elements in my fics sometimes, but I'd like to sort of, sidestep the world building part if possible.

So is there some kind of bare bones universal structure I could borrow from as a reference point for like, a magic system? I don't want to embarrass myself by showing i know so little of the rules I'm breaking them all over the place. And I know tons of people have fun figuring out how things work mechanically, so I'd love being able to outsource from them so to speak because that's not what up my street at all.

Hah! There are so many versions of "fantasy". Right now, I'm brainstorming for a very elaborate secondary world fantasy that's heavily inspired by wuxia but not claiming to actually be wuxia. I'm trying to figure out what Western elements I want to work in and how I can come up with names that don't make me cringe.

There is no one bare bones guide and there cannot be because different subgenres have nearly nothing to do with each other. In fact, even calling it collectively "fantasy" and thinking that these subgenres belong in one category together depends on location and era.

If you want to know about magic systems... oh dear... I'm going to have to recommend... you all know it's coming... Brandon Sanderson's lectures. There are some on Youtube.

But before you go look at a guide, I think it's important to understand the parameters and discourse around this subject. Sanderson is the poster boy for unnecessarily complex systems that appeal to the kinds of guys who fill out wikis of canon minutia and complain that the grain harvest and export policies don't make sense in derivative fantasy doorstop #57. This kind of fan annoys the bejesus out of people who care about theme and allegory. Also the many people who've noticed that Sanderson's books would probably be better at 200k than 400. >;D

Sanderson himself is much less of a dumbass about the topic, thankfully. He talks about how there are systems that work like real world science: put in X grams of magic thing one and Y grams of magic thing two, and you get a predictable potion result. But there are also systems that are more numinous. In the same book, you may find magic that's your most boring physics homework and magic that's essentially a religious experience where strict categorization and the logic of the laboratory have no place. There can also be systems that are unknowable and systems that your characters don't understand but that the audience grasps are perfectly logical to an expert.

If you're using magic as set dressing in fic, decide what the vibe is and pick a system that supports that. Don't bother going full Sanderson.

Fairy tale: Magic works on feels. Twu wuv will revive dead people for no reason, and you do not need to justify anything as long as it feels right. Hanahaki fic rarely bothers to explain the science. We all know it isn't about that.

Harry Potter: Unholy mix of fake-science and rule-of-funny. You should probably pick only one to copy. If it's fake science, just write about the characters half remembering chemistry class and replace all the words with technobabble.

For another example of rule of funny, check out The ABCs of Spellcraft by Jordan Castillo Price, a gay romance series where all of the magic is puns and stupid wordplay and the general tone is extremely silly. In book 1, a villain tells his magically compelled goon to take the hero outside and "pound" him. The hero takes one look at all those muscles and is like "You know, that instruction can be interpreted multiple ways!"

Some systems are full of stupidass levels out of a video game with actual numbers. This gives fans of stories about leveling up a massive boner, but it is undesirable in most fic. Instead, treat magic like intelligence or learned skills: You know some people are naturally smarter and some people have learned more, but measuring it with a precise number is both impossible and obnoxious.

Decide if your magic is hereditary or learned. Western fantasy is full of hereditary magic, including magic with a simple on-off setting: you're either magical or you're not. Eastern fantasy tends to go with highly variable natural aptitude but systems that anyone can theoretically learn.

Decide if your magic is extremely literal and science-y, even if the characters don't know how their laptop works, or if it's more of a metaphor for love or social forces or if it's just a witchy aesthetic because who doesn't love a coffee shop with a punny name and pentagrams on the cups?

A lot of backdrops for shippy fic are vibes-based only. They don't stand up to the world building police, and they don't need to.

Just don't tag the fic as 'magical realism' unless you actually know what that means and are actually writing that.

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imsobadatnicknames2 · 3 months ago

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When it comes to benefits from economic imperialism, is puerto rico also included among those who receive these economic benefits? Genuinely curious, I don't know much about the economic situation in Puerto Rico compared to the rest of América Latina

Have in mind that not being from there and I'm not like EXTENSIVELY well-read about US-Puerto Rico relations, but from what I've read the short answer is no.

I do think Puerto Ricans have a small privilege over other Latin Americans by virtue of being granted US citizenship (considering that just being a US citizen confers a non-trivial amount of passport privilege); but in the economic sense Puerto Rico is subject to the same kind of exploitative economic relationship that other Latin American countries have with the US, where the conditions enable American businesses to extract a staggering amount of wealth from the territory by operating there (either through labor outsourcing or exploitation of natural resources) in a way that benefits American investors and not the local economy, except this relationship is exacerbated by Puerto Rico's all but explicitly colonial status as an unincorporated US territory which allows American interests to create and maintain these conditions, and the fact that Puerto Rico is subject to the decisions of the US federal government while being denied any say in US politics.

I think a very straightforward example is the issue of how laws such as the Jones Act benefit certain sections of the US working class while having extremely negative consequences for Puerto Rican people. Puerto Rico, being a small island nation, is heavily reliant on importing goods and resources that can't be produced locally. The Jones act, among other things, requires all ships transporting goods between US ports (including those in territories like Puerto Rico) to be american-owned, operated, and built. Due to protecting the US maritime transport industry from foreign competition (and also due to codifying seamen's rights to compensation in the case of injury working on a US-flagged ship) it enjoys the support of US maritime worker unions, but it also increases the cost of imported goods in Puerto Rico by an estimate of 30%, which massively increases the cost of living for Puerto Ricans. (Which you know. I support labor unions, and the law does benefit maritime workers in the US, but it's an example of the way the influence that the American government wields over Puerto Rico is used to create conditions that benefit certain sectors of the US economy at the cost of the quality of life of people in Puerto Rico)

Another example is how Puerto Rico has become a tax haven for American companies and wealthy individuals under the guise of attracting investment. On top of already low property taxes, currently under Act 60 certain export industries are allowed to operate in Puerto Rico at a 4% corporate tax rate, and entitled to a 75% exemption from property taxes, 100% from passive income taxes, and 50% from municipal taxes, while US citizens who become new Puerto Rico residents as "individual investors" can apply for a 100% exemption from most income taxes.

Also there is the whole deal of disaster capitalism and American companies benefitting from natural disasters in Puerto Rico, such as firms like Whitefish Energy securing extremely profitable contracts to rebuild Puerto Rico's electrical grid after Hurricane María, or private equity firms like Blackstone swooping in to buy the affected hostels, homes, and farmland at extremely cheap prices.

Ultimately, I think the simple fact that US economic projects have turned Puerto Rico into what is considered a "high-income economy" while the poverty rate in the territory is currently 43% (more than double the poverty rate of the poorest US state) should be a pretty good indicator that Puerto Rico, despite nominally being part of the US, is on the receiving end of US economic imperialism and wealth extraction.

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probablyasocialecologist · 1 year ago

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Migrant worker programs are a form of neoliberal insourcing, the flipside of neoliberal outsourcing. The denial of permanent residency is precisely what creates an extranational segmentation of labor. Even though migrant workers are laboring alongside citizens, their labor power and social relations are organized to oxymoronically position them as “foreign.” This maintains a global division of labor pools, reinforces a border within the international working class, and segments migrant workers as “Third World” workers. Like the outsourced workforce in export processing zones and maquiladoras, migrant workers are subject to suppressed wages and intense labor discipline. Hence, insourced and outsourced labor are two sides of the same capitalist coin: deliberately deflated labor power imbricated with hierarchies of race, caste, gender, sexuality, and citizenship. Critically, migrant worker programs make it clear that borders do not collapse under neoliberal globalization; rather, border imperialism segments labor and acts as a spatial fix for capital accumulation. Migrant workers therefore represent the ideal, insourced workforce; they are commodified and exploitable, flexible and expendable.

Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

#border and rule #migration #neoliberalism

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sgiandubh · 1 year ago

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When you do not know a thing about the issue at stake...

...perhaps it's better to remain silent.

Some of you know, others don't - and that's fine - but my main field of expertise is labor law.

I just read this in anger and disbelief:

Look, lady. I don't care who the hell you are, what you do for a living or why you felt entitled to answer those insistent questions on your side of the fandom. I suppose you are North American and have no idea of how things work on this side of the pond. It is fine: I might know what a Congress filibuster is, for example, but I'd be severely unable to judge the finer points of competence sharing between Fed and state level.

The difference between you and me?

I keep my mouth shut and/or do my own research before opening it in public.

Have you no shame to write things like: 'It was discovered clothing factories in Bulgaria and Portugal made it and how workers were exploited, mostly women, because these factories were in special economic zones in these countries exempt from EU employee rights and regulations.'

HOW DARE YOU? What strange form of illiterate entitlement possessed you to utter such things with confidence, comfortably hidden behind a passive voice ('it was discovered')?

Portugal joined the EU in 1986. Bulgaria (and my country) joined the EU in 2007. I have given 5 relentless years of my life to make this collective political project a reality, along with hundreds of other people my age who chose to come back home from the West and put their skills to good use for their country. In doing so, I rejected more than 10 excellent corporate job offers in France and China. To see you come along and write such enormities is like having you spit in my face.

Article 4 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (aka The Treaty of Rome) is formal and clear, as far as competence sharing between the EU and its Member States goes (the UK was still, back then, a full member of the EU - it quit on February 1st 2020):

That means that ALL the EU regulations are being integrated into the national legislation of the Member States. This is not a copy/paste process, however. And because it is a shared competence area, the Member States have a larger margin of appreciation into making the EU rules a part of their own. While exceptions or delays in this process can be and are negotiated, the core principles are NEVER touched.

Read it one hundred times, madam, maybe you'll learn something today:

THERE ARE NO SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION. THE WHOLE FUCKING EUROPEAN UNION IS A SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE, THIS IS WHY IT IS CALLED THE SINGLE MARKET.

What the fuck do you think we are, Guangzhou? We'd wish, seeing the growth statistics!

Now, for the textile industry sector and particularly with regard to the Bulgarian market, a case very similar to my own country. Starting around 1965, many big European textile players realized the competitive advantage of using the lower paid, readily available Eastern European workforce. In order to be able to do business with all those dour Communist regimes, the solution was simple and easy to find: toll manufacturing.

It worked (and still does!) like this:

The foreign partner brings its own designs, textiles and know-how into the mix - or more simply put, it outsources all these activities. The locals transform it into the finished product, using their own workforce. The result is then re-exported to the foreign partner, who labels it and sells it. In doing so, he has the legal obligation to include provenance on the label ('made in Romania', 'made in Indonesia', 'made in Bulgaria' - you name it).

The reason you might find less and less of those 'made in ' labels nowadays at Primark and more and more at Barbour, Moncler and the such is the constant raise of the workers' wages in Eastern Europe since 1990 (things happened there, in 1989, maybe you remember?). We are not competitive anymore for midrange prêt-à-porter - China (Shein, anyone?), Cambodia and Mexico do come to mind as better suppliers. To speak about 'exploited female labourers in rickety old factories' is an insult and a lie. They weren't exploited back in the Eighties, as they are not now (workers in those factories were and still are easily paid about 50% more than all the rest) and the factories being modernized and constantly updated was always a mandatory clause in any contract of the sort. Normal people in our countries rarely or ever saw those clothes. You had to either be lucky enough for a semi-confidential store release or bribe someone working there and willing to take the risk, in order to be able to buy the rejected models on the local market.

If I understood correctly, you place this critical episode at the launch of the limited SRH & Barbour collection, for the fall of 2018. How convenient for you, who (I am told by trusted people) were one of the most vocal critics of S during Hawaii 2.0!

And as far as Barbour goes, it never pretended to manufacture everything in the UK only:

This information is absolutely true. You can read the whole statement, signed in October 2017 by one of their Directors, Ian Sime, here: https://www.barbour.com/us/media/wysiwyg/PDF/Ethical_Statement_October_2017.pdf

And a snapshot for you:

Oh, and: SEDEX is a behemoth in its world, with more than 75.000 companies joining as a member (https://www.sedex.com/become-a-member/meet-our-customers/). Big corporations like TESCO, Dupont, Nestle, Sainsbury's or Unilever included.

I am not Bulgarian, but I know all of this way better than you'll probably ever do. The same type of contracts were common all over Eastern Europe: Romania, Poland, the GDR (that's East Berlin and co, for you) and even the Soviet Union. I am also sure your Portuguese readers will be thrilled to see themselves qualified by a patronizing North American as labor exploiters living in a third-world country with rickety factories.

You people have no shame and never did. But you just proved with trooping colors you also have no culture and no integrity. More reasons to not regret my unapologetic fandom choice.

I expect an angry and very, very vulgar answer to this, even if I chose to not include your name/handle. The stench of your irrelevance crossed an ocean.

#fandom #shitshow

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sudaca-swag · 7 months ago

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https://www.tumblr.com/sudaca-swag/767116058622590976/seeing-small-countries-that-have-never-done-damage?source=share

i don't necessarily disagree but...north korea are helping funding russia's invasion and war on ukraine, where they are killing civilians and taking their land? And how do these europeans countrys you mention main income come from weapon...i'm swedish and i did not realize that was our main income nor that we are colonizing any country.

If you think for one second that north Korea is at the scale of economical and political power to be able to single handedly supply Russia like say the US does with Israel you're wrong, in any case at most they would be an outsourced factory to jump around international regulations for the Russian government, and if you think that Europe and the US arent benefitting immensely from the weapon economy regarding the Ukraine-Russia conflict you're very wrong, they're in no hurry to close that gold mine. So let's better talk about what actually moves the wheel which are the billions and billions of US dollars and European riches going into funding wars and genocides across the world directly from the hand of western politicians.

And as for the Sweden comment, here's an article from last may from Le Monde, Sweden is the 13th largest arm export country and is unfortunately looking to climb up the ladder faster no matter how green they pretend to go amongst their citizens for votes, I suggest you read it because it says some very interesting things about those in power in your country and their ties to said war industries, and how war around the globe is the joint group effort of rich countries coming together for even more profit. I'll put some of the article down here since it's locked past the first paragraphs, but if you Google "Sweden arm industry" you will be surprised at the huge amount of articles like this written about this, you should check them out they're quite short: "Certain Nordic nations have emerged as significant suppliers of security technologies and weapon systems internationally. Simultaneously, these countries are widely perceived and labelled as the ‘do-gooders’ in global affairs. This perception is supported by many characterisations of the Nordics as ‘agents of a world common good’ and ‘moral superpowers’ ".

And here's some more data from 2022: In 2014, it was the third largest weapons exporter per capita at $53.1 per capita, behind only Israel at $97.7 and Russia at $57.7. From 2009 to 2019, it was the world’s ninth largest arms exporter in U.S. dollars with a cumulative value of $14.3 billion. In the same time period, it ranked eighth in arms as a percentage of total exports. Swedish factories produce not just small arms, but advanced systems like fighter aircraft, missiles, tanks, submarines, corvettes, and air-defense platforms.

"While Western countries nominally define themselves by individualism and meritocracy, Sweden highlights the viability of dynastic, family-oriented elites in creating and maintaining powerful industrial societies. Sweden is in fact an exemplar of a unique European model of governance and political economy, but one that cleverly and counterintuitively wraps elite-led industrial strength intended to support military capacity in an egalitarian and pacifist packaging"

"Saab's share price has soared, more than tripling since February 2022. Orders have exploded. The Swedish manufacturer invested €150 million in its production capacity. Nothing like this had happened since the group began manufacturing Carl Gustafs in 1948, according to Michael Höglund, head of the Land Combat division. Several factories will be built in Sweden and abroad, notably in India. The aim is to quadruple deliveries of anti-tank weapons and ammunition by 2025, from 100,000 to 400,000 units a year.

Johansson said the war in Ukraine was a formidable "showcase" for Saab. In 2023, the group's orders, already up in 2022, climbed by 23%, as did its sales, which reached 51.6 billion Swedish krona (€4.5 billion), while its profit grew by 51%, ending at 3.4 billion krona.

Over the past year, the manufacturer, which employs over 21,000 people worldwide, including 16,000 in Sweden, has increased its workforce by almost 2,500 and is continuing to recruit. And it's not the only one. The entire Swedish arms industry is abuzz – a sector that brings together around 200 companies, some 60 of which are foreign-owned. In 2022, these companies, with sales of 48.5 billion krona, employed over 28,000 people. "We don't yet have the result for 2023, but it should be much higher," said Robert Limmergard, director of the Swedish Security and Defense Industry Association.

Demand is largely fuelled by Sweden, whose military spending is set to reach 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2024. Finally integrated into NATO on March 7, the kingdom is pulling out all the stops to replenish its armaments stocks, after decades of disengagement. "We have placed orders for equipment, both in Sweden and abroad, for 19 billion krona in 2021, 36 billion in 2022 and 52 billion in 2023," said Göran Martensson, director of the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration (FMV). Exports have also risen by 18% in 2023, placing Sweden 13th in the world.

Saab was founded in 1937. "The company was formed on a handshake between the chairman of our board of directors at the time, Marcus Wallenberg [grandfather of the current president, whose family is still the group's majority shareholder], and the prime minister," said CEO Johansson.

SOFF director Limmergard: "Companies don't like me to say it, but in the late 1980s we had an Ikea-style arms industry. We had to produce high volumes, easy-to-understand and easy-to-use weapons that had to be functional and cheap. It was this tradition that enabled us to gain international market share and maintain a large industry, with companies that have since succeeded in specializing in niche markets, sometimes with the help of foreign investment."

The main bottleneck is the production line. It's impossible to increase deliveries of weapons and ammunition if suppliers don't keep up. For the Carl Gustafs, there are around 200 suppliers, some of whom have several customers, all of whom have increased their orders. This is the case, for example, with Norway's Nammo, one of Europe's largest ammunition manufacturers, with whom Saab has just signed an agreement. "We have jointly decided to develop our own warhead molding capacity. Meanwhile, they will be refocusing on artillery ammunition, which will give us greater production capacity together," said Höglund."

#you can unlock it putting the link in archive.ph #boluda tag

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pattern-recognition · 2 years ago

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i don’t have the time to articulate this idea in a throwaway tumblr dot com post but it’s revolting how much art has been destroyed by imperialism. obviously this comes as no great revelation, the systematic destruction and suppression of art is an integral facet of the destruction and suppression of people. specifically thinking of palestine though I always feel furious when i see the architecture of cities like Gaza leveled. the destruction of ancient buildings and cultural sites are the most obvious examples, but even the loss of modern architecture is an incredible loss. the high rise apartment blocs, shops, homes, bakeries, cafes, etc are, if they were allowed the proposer without the strangulation of imperialism, superior to anything you’ll see in a U.S. city from the perspective of providing a truly dynamic, adaptable, and cohesive habitat for people to live. I had similar thoughts seeing the destruction of cities in Ukraine, all of that Soviet era planned architecture that had such a optimistic vision for the future behind it leveled to the ground by the effects of neoliberalism. the same goes for textiles too, which i seem to talk about ad nauseam. reading all the articles on places like Hirbawi, the last kufiya factory in the west bank, which speak not only to the forced de-industrialization of palestine but also of syria, iran, iraq, etc, and the beautiful and idiosyncratic quilt patterns from different regions in palestine from that one documentary i posted earlier are all examples. nothing is new under the sun, and it’s all part of the imperial leviathan that not only destroys the potential for prosperous industry, and the industrial aspect should not be forgotten for a simplistic argument that it’s purely the burial of something nondescript and patronizing like ‘ancient culture,’ that creates fundamentally better material conditions for proletarian organization, but replaces them with parasitic import/export economies, atomized living conditions, and overly complex ‘labor saving’ technology, all tailor made to stifle class consciousness and impede cohesion of working people. the biggest crime of imperial capitalism isn’t that you’ll find young men wearing polo shirts and jeans across the world, it’s that they’re all made on the behest of (mostly) western corporations in outsourced factories, distrusted around the globe through the anarchic, wasteful, explorative, and pollutive neoliberal system when the alternatives are so much more practical and human

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mariafos · 2 years ago

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Integrate cutting-edge technologies, expert knowledge, and scalable solutions to unlock new horizons in logistics management. Prepare your business for success in an ever-evolving industry by leveraging the power of BPO outsourcing and embarking on a journey of innovation and growth.

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darkmaga-returns · 3 months ago

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4/2 ASTROLABE LINKS:

Normal People vs WWII Veterans | Facebook

(20) ₩₳Ɽ ₱₳₮Ⱨ on X: "The Mexicans have 24 hours to respond-- https://t.co/doflLNfMxQ" / X

(23) Holden Culotta on X: "Mike Rowe: “For every five tradespeople that retire this year, two replace them.” “It’s been that way for 12 years.” “I don’t need to be a mathematician, this is bad arithmetic.” “7.2 million able-bodied men today, in their prime working years, are not only unemployed …… https://t.co/STTPJhZn5D" / X

(24) Eric Daugherty on X: "THIS is why MAGA won in November. This man right here. Midwest, manufacturing. The forgotten men and women will not be forgotten any longer. "I grew up just north of Detroit, Michigan in Macomb County, known as the home of the Reagan Democrats. My first vote for president was https://t.co/o6ScTLAa7a" / X

(26) Collin Rugg on X: "JUST IN: Trump pulls out his Reciprocal Tariff chart to explain how his new tariffs will be imposed on each country. The announcement came on the highly anticipated Liberation Day. Trump said he is going easy on countries by issuing discounted reciprocal tariffs. China: 34% https://t.co/QoZSdw0yru" / X

(26) Rapid Response 47 on X: ".@POTUS: "In the coming days, there will be complaints from the globalists, the outsourcers, special interests, and Fake News... Never forget that every prediction our opponents made about trade for the last 30 years has been proven totally wrong. They were wrong about NAFTA, https://t.co/45IpfY1MOi" / X

(26) Eric Daugherty on X: "🚨 BREAKING - it’s official: Donald Trump signs reciprocal tariffs on countries across the world. Liberation Day. https://t.co/2WyH9Tlp2D" / X

(26) First Squawk on X: "SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: POST WORLD WAR TWO INSTITUTIONS ARE 'NO LONGER FIT FOR OUR TIMES AND OUR ECONOMIC SITUATION'" / X

(26) D.Sauce (TIE) on X: "@mattgaetz Sooooo What shell companies were processing commerce via Madagascar ?" / X

(26) Autism Capital 🧩 on X: "🚨 THE LIST: The Complete United States Reciprocal Tariffs List 💰 https://t.co/MritYslBU0" / X

(26) Prison Mitch on X: "🇺🇸 🦅 https://t.co/jevrmxD2xb" / X

(26) Ryan Petersen on X: "Buried in today's Executive Order on tariffs is a bombshell: Duty free "de minimus" shipping is being eliminated from ALL countries as soon as the systems are ready." / X

(28) Battle Beagle on X: "https://t.co/BeuJmAxcSK" / X

(28) Charlie Kirk on X: "President Trump's tariffs aren't random. They're detailed and thought out. The US Trade Representative has produced a 400-page report chronicling every single tariff and trade restriction imposed on America, everywhere in the world. If a country doesn't like today's" / X

(28) Tom Shafron on X: "@orthonormalist If this is correct then the admin is doing a great disservice by not publishing the formula. If that's really how it works and everyone knew it, it's really quite brilliant. It incentives countries to increase their imports of US products in order to increase their exports." / X

(28) Eamon Javers on X: "One big point amid all the headlines: I was texting with press secretary Karoline Leavitt during the event and she confirms that the 34 percent tariff on China is ON TOP of the previous 20 percent. So that means the rate on China will be *54* percent when these tariffs take" / X

(29) Geiger Capital on X: "*SCOTT BESSENT: “The equity market selloff is a Mag7 problem, not a MAGA problem” Insanely hard quote. https://t.co/4pODIIwJ7j" / X

(30) Aesthetica on X: "These stats are insane https://t.co/F2vmJqiRyV" / X

(30) Nate Hochman on X: "Pat Buchanan on trade, 1998: "To me, the country comes before the economy; and the economy exists for the people." https://t.co/JGGsbSWBLN" / X

(30) Howard Lutnick on X: "Trump’s been right on trade for 35 years. Washington sold out our workers. That ends today. https://t.co/x9ojY7OQkH" / X

(30) zerohedge on X: "Is Trump's plan to reshore manufacturing already working: biggest increase in manufacturing jobs since October 22, which was followed by a 2 year manufacturing recession. https://t.co/7iyA11BSRr" / X

(31) Peter Schiff on X: "About 98% of American footwear is imported. There is no way these shoes can be supplied domestically anytime soon, so prices will rise by the full amount of the tariffs. The result will be fewer shoes sold at higher prices. On the bright side, the shoe repair business will boom." / X

(31) Autism Capital 🧩 on X: "🚨NEW: The US Senate passed a bill with a 51-48 vote to repeal Trump's tariffs on Canada. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul voted for the bill. What does this mean? The bill needs to also pass the House and if that passes it goes to Trump to sign. Trump can then veto the bill and" / X

(32) The Patriot Oasis™ on X: "🚨 #BREAKING: per CNN, Democrats in Congress now have a whopping 21% approval rating. Democrats are self-combusting 🔥 https://t.co/SdyvFEuanj" / X

A Modest Defense of Nationalism – Modern Age

(35) Sam Stein on X: "Absolute BLOODBATH at HHS/NIH/CDC this morning. Generation of scientists, health care officials being wiped out https://t.co/ikJjcOiqhp" / X

(35) Eric Daugherty on X: "LMAO! Who knew Senator Jim Banks was so funny! WORKER: "I was a worker at HHS. I was fired...are you gonna do anything?" BANKS: "You probably deserved it. Because you seem like a clown." 🤣🤣🤣 https://t.co/wipsueD7sD" / X

(22) Senator Jim Banks on X: "#NewProfilePic https://t.co/B7Cl8oMEoI" / X

(22) Senator Jim Banks on X: "Thanks, AB. I’m honored!" / X

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arminthada · 10 months ago

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hello claire, love your blog! i want to ask you a question about vietnamese fandom of thai pop culture, is it very big or just dedicated? i did notice that i often can find something translated into vietnamese (especially if we are talking about tpop interviews) while i can't find eng subs for it, and i started noticing it even more after a couple of weeks ago you pointed out another vietnamese blogger who has more access to obscure thai BLs than non-vietnamese bloggers. i am curious now, what's up with that? thank you in advance!

hiiiii $￣︶￣*$)

i loveeee getting questions about thai pop culture and vietnamese fandom. for the short answer, i would say that it's both a combination of dedicated fandom and a sizable fandom. but please bare with me in my lengthy elaboration of this phenomenon...

i think the first form of 'thai pop culture' that was popularised and successfully exported to viet nam was thai lakorns. in a similar vein to older makjang korean dramas, thai lakorns had very soap opera and dramatic plots that were intriguing to viewers (mostly older grandmas who were at home). it was as if at a certain point, when vietnamese tv channels were running out of kdramas to buy the airing rights to, they looked to their neighboring countries dramas (notably, vietnamese networks were also buying rights to filipino, indian, spanish telenovelas so it wasn't just thai lakorns that they were outsourcing).

and so this was like around early 2010s, which also coincided with the emergence of thai bl series. even though i have absolutely no statistics to back this argument up, i would say that the familiarity that a portion of vietnamese audience had with thai lakorns, thai television, thai language also made it easy for them to get into thai bl series. with a number of thai-vietnamese lakorn fansubbers who were already subbing for thai series, they also took on the fansubbing for thai bl series, since they knew there was a niche but large audience who wanted to watch those series.

that being said, i wanted to make a distinction here because i wouldn't say that the vietnamese lakorn audience are the same audience who watch thai bls or they are the same fujoshi fandom who consume all things queer love/boys' love/girls' love related. but there is definitely a huge overlap between the fujoshis/sao y audience and the lakorn audience, which ended up as a very niche yet dedicated audience -> which was the biggest motivation for thai subbers to take on the subbing for thai bl series and anything related for certain thai actors who had been in bl series which are often lakorns that they've done before.

and i think you're referring to this post of mine about me finding out that @nonkul is a fellow vietnamese which allow us to have more access to "obscure lakorns". rather than this having to do with thai fansubbers for bl series/bl series related content/"bl actors" content, i think there's just more of vietnamese networks which are committed to outsourcing thai lakorns to air them (especially ones with big lakorn names attached to it like mai davika, baifern pimchanok, james jirayu, yaya urassaya, tor thanapob, film thanapat, esther supreeleela...). there are many local vietnamese networks who provide their own streaming services like tv360, fptplay... so they would often go to these film/tv series festivals to "shop" for thai series, allowing them to provide them exclusively in viet nam on both tv or their streaming site.

but to go back to the main subject of your question which is thai pop culture/tpop interviews, i would say that it's very much the result of 2-3 dedicated fansubbers with an equally dedicated audience who are willing to engage/interact with the content put out by the fansubbers. i've also come across a number of former kpop fans converted into tpop fandoms, so i could also see where the dedication-ness is coming from in trying to sub actor-related content.

but that also means that not very actors/ships will get dedicated fansubbers though. i think it mostly depends on how lucky a ship/an actor is to have a long time lakorn/thai series watcher/subber take an interest in them and they'll start basically subbing everything related to a series/ship/actor/group basically. it really does help that a majority of thai lakorn/series watchers have been watching thai series for so long, they're more likely to pick up the language along the way -> it's easier for you to see vietnamese translations for these kinds of content from thai actors/singers.

i know there are a lot of assumptions and generalised statements in my answer and it may not be the case for all the vietnamese fansubbers out there so please just take this with a grain of salt as it's mostly my perspective, after talking to a few fansubbers here and there. ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ

but i was really happy to get this question in my inbox though. i'm always over the moon to be sharing perspective of a vietnamese lakorn/thai series/tpop enthusiast.

#claire opens her goddamn mouth #thai lakorns #thai series #thai pop culture #tpop

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