The all-electric championship racing series Formula E has been a little slow to build an audience, but with the third season starting this fall, it continues to bring in fans. A likely factor contributing to this is the participation of several big car manufactures. The first season saw every team using the same vehicle, a Renault Spark SRT_01E, but season … Continue reading
Why the virtual-reality
hype is about to come
crashing down
Christoper Mims,
Wall Street Journal
While VR seems to be all the rage this year, WSJ’s Christopher Mims argues that the bubble is about to burst. Mims says that it’ll be the limited cont…
The State Department issues a report — and Rick hears echoes…
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The Battle of Jutland
British fleet enroute to the Battle of Jutland, May 30, 1916
At the onset of World War I, there were a series of naval battles throughout the world’s oceans that saw the Royal Navy largely destroy the German Navy’s surface combatants outside of the Baltic Sea. For the bulk of the conflict, the war at sea revolved mostly around anti-submarine warfare. Germany used its U-boat fleet to sink Allied shipping in the hope that it could starve Great Britain and drive it out of the war. The British in turn deployed the Royal Navy to protect the convoys of merchantman bringing in essential supplies and to hunt down and sing the German U-boats.
The most significant large scale fleet action of the war would finally come in the spring of 1916. The Battle of Jutland/Battle of Skagerrak was one of the epic naval battles of all time. A popular aphorism at the time was that the Admiral of the Fleet, John Rushworth Jellicoe, “was the only man who could lose the war for Great Britain in an afternoon.” The Battle of Jutland would offer an opportunity to do just that. It opened on May 31, 1916 and ended with both Britain and Germany claiming victory.
The Commander of the German High Seas Fleet, Admiral Reinhardt Scheer, was intent on making a sortie against the British coast in a demonstration of German naval power. He was confident that his plans were unknown to the main British battle fleet based at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, and that he would be able to carry out his sortie and return to Germany before the British Fleet could engage him.
His confidence was misplaced. The Royal Navy had broken Germany’s naval codes. Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, able to read Scheer’s messages, knew exactly what he was planning. Scheer was not looking for a decisive naval action, simply a propaganda victory to showcase German naval strength. The Royal Navy, offered the opportunity to ambush the German Fleet, quickly prepared for their most important fleet action since Trafalgar.
On May 30 the Grand Fleet put to sea. The 1st Battlecruiser Squadron under the command of Admiral David Beatty, leading the way from the Firth of Forth with six battle cruisers, four fast battleships, fourteen light cruisers and twenty-seven destroyers. The main British force, consisting of twenty-four battleships, three battle cruisers and fifty-one destroyers under Jellicoe’s command, came from the Moray Firth and Scapa Flow.
On the same day more than one hundred warships of the High Seas Fleet left German ports. The German fleet was split into a main force under Scheer and a scouting force under Admiral Franz Hipper consisting of five battle cruisers, five light cruisers, and 30 torpedo boats. German torpedo boats were roughly the equivalent of a Royal Navy destroyer. The German Fleet also deployed Zeppelins to patrol over the North Sea.
Positions of British and German fleets at the Battle of Jutland, May 31, 1916
Beatty’s orders had been to scout ahead of the main British fleet to a point 230 nautical miles, east of Britain and then turn north to join Jellico’s main battle fleet. At 2:20 p.m. the following day, May 31, the British and German cruiser squadrons sighted each other off the Danish coast at Jutland and opened fire.
Having made contact with the British Fleet, Hipper, turned his German cruiser squadron south to re-join Scheer’s main force. In a running battle, with Beatty charging after Hipper, the British Admiral made a classic military blunder. He split his forces; signaling his faster cruisers to steam ahead and engage Hipper while his slower battleships would follow. Meanwhile, as if anticipating his subordinate’s poor decision, Jellicoe had detached three of his fastest cruisers to rush to Beatty’s aid.
As Hipper and Beatty fought their way south, the British lost the battle cruisers Queen Mary and Indefatigable to superior German gunfire. The loss prompted Beatty to remark to his Flag Captain, Ernie Chatfield, on the bridge of the HMS Lion, “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.” Just after 4:30 p.m. he received an unwelcome message from his scouting destroyers: the main German High Seas Fleet of sixteen battleships, six older pre-Dreadnought battleships, six light cruisers and thirty-one torpedo boats was surging towards him.
Under a screen of destroyers, Beatty now turned north in order to link up with the approaching Jellicoe. As he steamed north at full speed, fighting a rear guard action with significant losses, the three fast cruisers detached earlier from Jellicoe were steaming south. They missed Beatty’s retreating force through a navigational error. Instead, in foul weather, which helped screen them, they arrived off the right flank of the German main force. In one of those fortuitous events on which great battles sometimes turn, they caught the German fleet by surprise; badly mauling the screening cruisers.
German HighSeas Fleet enroute to the Battle of Jutland, May 30, 1916
It was now the turn of the Germans to become confused. Scheer received an erroneous report from his right flank that an “enemy force of numerous battleships” had been sighted. In response, he turned to meet the threat. This put him perpendicular to the main body of the approaching British fleet. Shortly after 6:00 pm. the main forces of the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet engaged.
Though initially obscured by smoke from Beatty’s retreating warships, Jellicoe managed, with his greater speed, to “cross the T” of the German main fleet twice, sending broadside after broadside at the column of enemy ships. The “crossing of the T” was a classic naval maneuver where an attacking force approached perpendicular to an enemy fleet, allowing it to bring all its naval guns to bear on the lead elements of its opponent.
Scheer finally ordered the High Seas Fleet to retreat and to steam south to its German ports. Jellicoe attempted to overtake it before it could reach the safety of its own minefields. As night fell, despite a series of bitterly fought individual battles, the bulk of the German ships managed to evade Jellicoe’s fleet and reach safety.
The British had lost fourteen ships, while eleven German vessels had been sunk. A total of 8,500 sailors had perished. Both sides claimed a victory. Though British naval supremacy had been severely dented, the German High Seas Fleet never again ventured out in force to challenge the Royal Navy during World War I.
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There is a Sanders phenomenon. It is real and the factors that have prompted its emergence need to addressed and understood.
When this year’s presidential primary began, many dismissed the Democratic Party contest as a “done deal”. It was assumed that Secretary Clinton would be the inevitable nominee–with the primaries and caucuses being a bothersome but required pro forma affair that Clinton would have to endure, until she had accumulated enough delegates to be declared the nominee.
One year ago, Clinton was leading the rest of the Democratic field by between 50 to 60 points with none of her opponents believed to be serious challengers–especially the 74 year old socialist Senator from Vermont. Back then, Sanders support came largely from a core group of progressive activists who were driving his campaign. A year later, much has changed with the gap between Clinton and Sanders, among Democrats, having been narrowed to single digits. When the preferences of all voters (Democrats, Republicans, and Independents) are considered and Clinton and Sanders are matched separately against the GOP’s nominee, Donald Trump, a very different picture emerges. The average of this month’s polls show Trump beating Clinton by slightly less than 1 point. The same polls averages show Sanders beating Trump by about 11 points. And polls in key battleground states show much the same–with Clinton and Trump running neck and neck and Sanders beating Trump in every state.
That’s what happened, but the question that needs to be answered is why? Several factors point the way.
Part of Secretary Clinton’s problem is that she is running for president in a year when voter distrust of and even anger at the political and economic establishments has come to define the national mood. Many voters do not believe that politicians and corporate leaders consider the public’s wellbeing in their decision-making. Given this setting, Clinton’s claim of experience and her long-standing ties to Wall Street investors have become liabilities.
In the contest between Clinton, the ultimate “insider”, and Sanders, the ultimate “outsider”, Sanders has a decided edge.
Then there are the matters of authenticity and trust. Polls demonstrate that voters, especially the young and the growing number of those who declare no affiliation with either party, are drawn to Sanders because they see him as authentic and they trust him. Among voters under 45, Sanders beats Clinton by a margin of 2 to 1. And when all voters are asked who they trust more, Sanders wins by 3 to 1.
These two factors, distrust of the establishment and the yearning for a leader who is authentic and can be trusted, form the underpinnings of the Sanders’ phenomenon. The “meat on the bones” are the issues he has championed.
America is, without a doubt, a wealthy nation. The GDP and the performance of the stock market, despite an occasional dip, appear to suggest a healthy economy. But in spite of this, real incomes for the middle class have been stagnant for decades leaving most Americans struggling to make ends meet.
When Sanders points out that the top 1% in the US control more of the nation’s wealth than the bottom 90% and when he notes that the American middle class controls a smaller percentage of our nation’s wealth than the middle class in any other industrialized country, that message resonates. As does his broader message of economic justice and a reordering of political/economic priorities. While Sanders’ calls for “health care for all”, tuition-free higher education, and his proposal to pay for these programs by imposing stiffer taxes on the wealthiest 1% are dismissed as unworkable and “socialist”, they have been embraced by young and working class voters who are hungry for change. And when he criticizes the corrupting influence of “big money” in our politics, voters respond in agreement.
As this election is entering its final round, it is clear that the Sanders phenomenon must be taken seriously. Despite the view of media pundits and the Democratic establishment that the contest is over (a form of voter suppression) and calls that Sanders should withdraw from the race, he continues to demonstrate electoral strength–winning 2 out of the last 3 and 12 out of the last 20 states.
At this point, Sanders can legitimately claim the support of about one-half of the Democratic Party’s base. This cannot be dismissed. Nor can his observation that he outperforms Clinton with Independents and fares better against the GOP in national and battleground state polls.
Democrats would be making a mistake to ignore both the “meta issues” of distrust of the establishment and the voters’ desire to have a candidate they can trust, as well as Sanders’ far-reaching agenda for political and economic reform.
I believe that should he win in California, Sanders can make a strong case urging the party’s super-delegates to support his candidacy. It is this group–many of whom had endorsed Clinton before this election had even begun–that have made her margin over Sanders appear to be insurmountable. But even if he does not win, what he represents cannot be dismissed or reduced to any single issue, as many of the press reports on his platform picks attempted to do this past week. What Sanders represents and the far-reaching change in domestic and foreign policy he has advocated and that many voters have endorsed should not be ignored.
Responding to voters deeply felt needs, Sanders has given birth to a true progressive movement that, if understood, embraced, and, most importantly, sustained, can, as he has noted, bring revolutionary change to America. It is a phenomenon.
Follow @AAIUSA for more.
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Donald Trump told voters in drought-plagued California on Friday that he had a solution to the water crisis: Open up the water for farmers, because “there is no drought.”
“We’re going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told a crowd filled with farmers in Fresno. “It is so ridiculous where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea.”
California is now in its fifth year of drought, which has taken a heavy toll on agriculture in particular. Despite an El Niño event that saw an increase last year in snowpacks that supply about one-third of California’s water, 86 percent of the state is still considered to be in drought.
Trump insinuated that state officials are mismanaging water policy, at the cost of farmers and their crops. Farmers have sharply criticized the state’s irrigation policies, after cuts to water allotments forced them to leave more than a million acres of farmland uncultivated last year.
Water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which flows into the San Francisco Bay and onto the ocean, has been a particularly contentious issue. The delta is a key source of water to cities and farms in California’s fertile Central Valley region. Some farmers there claim politicians are bending to environmental interests and prioritizing the habitat of fish and wetlands over farmland, creating a “man-made drought.”
Trump aligned with those concerns Friday when he said state officials and environmentalists are trying “to protect a three-inch fish,” presumably referring to the threatened Delta smelt.
“If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water, so that you can have your farmers survive so that your job market will get better,” the reality TV personality told the cheering crowd.
Trump said he had listened to farmers before the rally and many feel that the real reason they aren’t getting water is because it is being diverted to the sea. Scientists are concerned that the drought and water diversions away from the estuary could push the smelt to extinction, and imperil other wildlife. As it has federal protections, officials have tipped more water toward the smelt’s habitat, which eventually runs into the ocean. Former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz suggested when he sided with farmers this month that officials should just play music to increase the smelt’s libido, rather than send it more water.
“They don’t understand it,” Trump said. “There is no drought, they turn the water out into the ocean.”
He did not go into detail about how officials would open up the water, nor what science supports the claim that the drought is not real. But he did tout himself as a champion of the environment.
“I’ve received many, many environmental rewards, really. Rewards and awards,” Trump said. “I have done very well environmentally. I’m all for it.”
“My environmental standard is very simple, I’ve said it to everybody,” he added. “I want clean water. Clean air, clean water.”
The businessman was campaigning in California ahead of the state’s June 7 primary.
His dubious environmental claims come after he tapped Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a drilling advocate and climate change skeptic, as his energy advisor this month. And he has vowed to renegotiate the Paris climate agreement. Trump said on Thursday he would throw out a “tremendous number” of federal regulations — “probably 75 percent of which are absolutely terrible.”
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Fifteen ex-military officials were found guilty by an Argentine court on Friday of conspiring to kidnap and assassinate leftist dissidents as part of the Operation Condor program.
The ruling was hailed by rights activists.
Condor was coordinated by dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia to hunt down and kill exiled opponents in the 1970s and ’80s.
Former Argentine dictator Reynaldo Bignone, 88, the highest ranking figure on trial, was sentenced to 20 years in jail. Fourteen of the remaining 16 defendants got eight to 25 years behind bars. Two were found not guilty.
Some individual crimes committed under Operation Condor had already been the subject of previous trials. Friday’s verdict was the first to focus on participation in the plan itself.
“This ruling, about the coordination of military dictatorships in the Americas to commit atrocities, sets a powerful precedent to ensure that these grave human rights violations do not ever take place again in the region,” Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch, said in a phone interview.
Friday’s court decision cited the disappearance of 105 people during Argentina‘s 1976-1983 dictatorship.
“It determines not only that state terrorism in Argentina was an criminal conspiracy but that it was coordinated with other dictatorships,” said Luz Palmas Zaldua, a lawyer with the Center for Legal and Social Studies (Cels), which represented many of the plaintiffs in the case.
“They got together to maximize efforts to persecute political opponents of each of the dictatorships, and to ‘disappear’ or eliminate those who were considered subversive,” she told reporters after the ruling was read out in court.
Operation Condor, named after the broad-winged birds that inhabit the cordillera mountain range on the Chile-Argentine border, was coordinated from a joint information center at the headquarters of Chile’s notorious secret police in Santiago.
In a state visit to Argentina in March, President Barack Obama said the United States was too slow to condemn atrocities by the dictatorship, but he stopped short of apologizing for Washington’s early support for the military junta.
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By Kica Matos
Judge Andrew Hanen wants everyone to know he is really upset with President Obama’s immigration policies. He has not only issued opinions that have been noted for their anti-immigrant hostility, but last year he issued an injunction that stopped President Obama’s 2014 immigration executive orders from moving forward (the orders, which would have affected an estimated 5 million immigrants, are on hold pending a Supreme Court ruling that will likely be issued next month).
As if that weren’t enough, Judge Hanen took things even further last week, issuing an order that shocks the conscience and calls into question his judicial temperament. It also paints him as a nativist bully who is using his powers as a federal judge and the familiar tactics of anti-immigrant activists to threaten immigrant youth.
Judge Hanen’s latest order mandates the federal government to provide him with the personal information of an estimated 100,000 young immigrants who received deferral from deportation under executive orders issued in 2012. He made it clear that he would be willing to eventually release any or all of this information to state officials requesting it “on a showing of good cause”.
For residents of New Haven, CT, Hanen’s order have a ring of familiarity, as similar tactics were deployed against the city – not by a judge, but by nativist organizations’ intent on derailing one of the city’s immigration programs.
In 2007, the city embarked in an effort to create municipal identification cards for all city residents irrespective of their immigration status. Thousands of residents, including the undocumented, lined up to apply for the cards. Opposition to this initiative was swift and frightening. City officials received hate mail and death threats. Immigration advocates were followed, harassed and heckled. The hate radio jock and Holocaust denying racist conspiracy theorist Hal Turner suggested that it would be the “perfect opportunity for [sic] drive by shooting using a machine gun…on the lines of Illegal Aliens standing there!”
The nativists escalated their efforts by filing a state Freedom of Information request demanding the names, addresses and photographs of everyone who applied for a New Haven ID card. They were supported by the Immigration Reform Law Institute – the same anti-immigrant group that has been advocating on the side of the plaintiffs in the Texas case. (IRLI is the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a hate group.) After a series of hearings, the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, citing the hundreds of threats of violence received by the city, determined that it would be against public safety to release the names of the ID card holders.
In both of these instances, the tactics were almost identical and the motives clear – to intimidate and terrify immigrants and push them back into the shadows. In Judge Hanen’s case, his bizarre type of judicial activism seeks to deter immigrants from coming forward should the Supreme Court rule against him and quash his injunction.
But there is one major difference — unlike those in New Haven, Judge Hanen is not an anti-immigrant zealot affiliated with nativist organizations – he is a federal judge who is sworn to administer justice and faithfully and impartially discharge his duties. In abusing his powers as a judge, Hanen’s actions now threaten to imperil the lives of an estimated 100,000 young and law abiding immigrants.
It is one thing for a group of anti-immigrant zealots to threaten teens and young adults to foist their agenda on the country. It is wholly something else for a federal judge to do so.
Unless he is stopped, the madness of Judge Hanen will lead to tragic results.
Kica Matos is the Director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice, Center for Community Change Action.
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SAN DIEGO, May 27 (Reuters) – Donald Trump brought his message of walls and deportations to the doorstep of America’s busiest border crossing on Friday as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee greeted supporters in San Diego, amid one of the largest counter-protests organized against him.
The scene inside the San Diego Convention Center during Trump’s speech was relatively placid, while outside demonstrators opposed to his controversy-ridden White House bid marched and chanted, carrying signs criticizing his rhetoric against illegal immigration.
Waving U.S. and Mexican flags, more than 1,000 people turned out for anti-trump rallies in San Diego, a city on the U.S.-Mexico border whose San Ysidro port of entry sees nearly 300,000 people a day cross legally between the countries.
San Diego is considered a binational city by many who live and work on opposite sides of the border, and about a third of the city’s population is Latino.
During Trump’s speech on Friday, some protesters outside the convention center scaled a barrier and lobbed water bottles at police. One man was pulled off the wall and arrested as others were surrounded by fellow protesters and backed away from the confrontation.
After the convention center emptied, clusters of Trump supporters and anti-Trump demonstrators began to mix in the streets, many exchanging shouted epithets and some throwing water bottles at one another.
Police in riot gear declared the gathering an unlawful assembly and ordered the crowd to disperse, herding the crowd out of the city’s hotel and restaurant-filled Gaslamp Quarter.
San Diego police said on Twitter that 35 arrests were made during the protest. No property damage or injuries were reported, police said.
“Fantastic job on handling the thugs who tried to disrupt our very peaceful and well attended rally,” Trump tweeted to police afterwards.
Trump has weathered months of blowback from all ends of the political spectrum for his immigration policy, which calls for the building of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and deporting the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the United States.
Critics have said his plan is needlessly cruel and impossible to implement. At Trump’s campaign stops, attendees often chant “build the wall.”
While Trump is running unopposed in the June 7 California Republican primary, his stance on border control and deportation seems unlikely to resonate with the electorate at large in a state where political fallout from a Republican-backed crackdown on illegal immigrants 20 years ago cost the party dearly.
Friday was not the first time Trump has been greeted by civil unrest in California, which is home to the largest Latino population in the country. Late last month, a visit to the California Republican convention set off days of protests in the area, leading to several arrests.
Shortly before taking the stage in San Diego, Trump issued a statement ruling out a one-on-one debate with second-place Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, who was also in California, killing off a potentially high-ratings television spectacle.
The suggested debate, an idea first raised during a talk show appearance by the New York billionaire, would have sidelined likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton but given Sanders a huge platform ahead of California Democratic primary.
A day after saying he would welcome a Sanders debate, Trump called the idea “inappropriate,” declaring that he should only face the Democrats’ final choice.
“I will wait to debate the first-place finisher in the Democratic Party, probably Crooked Hillary Clinton,” Trump said in a statement.
Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, expressed disappointment on Friday, and sought to goad Trump into reconsidering.
“Well, Mr. Trump, what are you afraid of?” he said in a video clip posted on ABC News’ Twitter account.
Trump suggested broadcast networks were unwilling to go along with his demand that at least $10 million raised from the encounter be donated to charity.
“I’d love to debate Bernie,” he told a rally in Fresno, California. “But the networks want to keep the money for themselves.”
Sanders is trailing Clinton in the race to secure their party’s nomination, but opinion polls show he is slicing into her lead in California.
Clinton has shown no interest in debating Sanders before the California primary, which will be part of a final slate of nominating contests. It is possible she will clinch the nomination by winning New Jersey earlier that day, making the outcome in California superfluous.
The former U.S. secretary of state has said she is looking forward to debating Trump later this year ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.
Clinton leads Trump by 4 percentage points in the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. Democrats nationally remain evenly split between Clinton and Sanders.
(Additional reporting by Alana Wise in Washington and Chris Kahn in New York, Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Writing by James Oliphant; Editing by Alistair Bell and Leslie Adler)
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SpaceX has done it again. For the third time in a row, the Falcon 9 rocket has delivered its payload in the upper atmosphere and returned to earth with a successful vertical propulsion landing on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. This time SpaceX released the best angle yet of the landing—from the rocket itself all the way from space.
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