Does the Mueller report suggest there is hope?

I have come to three somewhat contradictory conclusions in thinking this weekend about the unexpectedly reasonable conclusions announced in the final Mueller report, stating that, despite two years of intense investigation which at times bordered on a witch hunt, there was no collusion between Trump and the Russians to win the election.

1. Robert Mueller is a hack who works hard for the liberal Washington swamp, doing their bidding whenever he can. The summary letter of his report by Attorney General William Barr inadvertently reveals this.

In the first paragraph of Barr’s letter he describes Mueller’s report has entitled “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.” This would imply that Mueller’s goal was to investigate all possible aspects of Russian interference, including collusion that might have also taken place in the Clinton campaign.

However, in the very next paragraph Barr states,
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Rogozin: Investigation into Soyuz sabotage to continue on ISS

In his remarks to journalists today Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin also said that the Russian investigation into the hole that was drilled in a Soyuz capsule last year is not over, and that they plan to do further “experiments” on ISS.

“The samples collected on the ISS are insufficient for final conclusions. Apparently, additional experiments in orbit will be required,” Rogozin said.

What those “additional experiments in orbit” will be was not explained. I suspect he is referring to the security cameras the Russians are installing on their part of ISS, with the hope of catching the saboteur in the act.

What I think is going on here is that they have not been able to uncover who did this on the ground, and are now trying to imply it might have been sabotage by a U.S. astronaut. Rogozin can’t say this outright, because he wants to keep good relations with the U.S. in the partnership on ISS. He can hint at it, however, and let his own press run with it.

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Russia offers to take over ISS if US exits

How kind of them! Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, told journalists today that Russia has formulated a proposal to take over ISS operations completely should the U.S. withdraw from the station.

“This is Roscosmos’ proposal. We believe that we can keep the station in case the Americans decide to withdraw from this project, through other countries and partners. We have technological and technical capabilities to keep the station on the orbit and fully provide both electric energy and water there,” Rogozin said.

Roscosmos’ director general explained that the Russian section may add new modules on the basis of the Science-Power Module (SPM), the first version of which will be launched to the station in 2022. “Here the Russian Federation has a unique opportunity. We can duplicate the SPM. Its design makes it possible to turn into home for other states – there can be the SPM-2, SPM-3, SPM-4, they may grow further, extending the international part of the station. We formulated this proposal, and we suggest our new partners doing it,” Rogozin said. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted text reveals Russia’s real goal. They take over station operations, and then sell to other nations modules for the station. Does the UAE want its own space station manned program? Buy a Russian-built module of your own, get it attached to ISS, and “Voila!” you have a very sophisticated and relatively permanent in-space facility all your own. And Russia will provide you the manned ferrying services!

This idea makes great sense. The Russians could even do it should the U.S. stick with ISS. It allows them to offer something far superior to the private, small, and short-lived separate station modules that a variety of private American companies are developing and offering for purchase or rent.

Of course, NASA could do the same, by allowing our private companies to attach modules of their own to ISS, for their own purposes. Historically, however, NASA’s management has been hostile to private enterprise, and in the past has frequently acted to oppose independent commercial activities on ISS. For example, when Russians wanted to fly Dennis Tito to ISS NASA strongly opposed this, and tried to stop it.

NASA has been changing in the past decades, however, so it could be that if the Russians push this hard, the competition could help the factions in NASA who are favor of private and free competition gain control of station management.

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Electron launch scrubbed, rescheduled for March 26

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab’s launch today of a DARPA satellite was scrubbed when a video transmitter did not work as expected.

“The team has identified a video transmitter 13dB down with low performance,” Rocket Lab tweeted. “It’s not an issue for flight, but we want to understand why, so we’re waiving off for the day.”

Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, added that the rocket was “technically good to fly, as we have redundant links, but we don’t know why the performance dropped and that makes me uncomfortable.”

In an update a few hours later, Rocket Lab said crews aim to replace the suspect video transmitter in time for a second launch attempt Tuesday (U.S. time). The four-hour launch window Tuesday will open at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT).

Rocket Lab had hoped to move to monthly launches beginning in February. While they will probably do so before the year is out, it seems it might take most of the year to get to that pace.

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Swedish Facebook suspends journalist for defending freedom of speech

They’re coming for you next: An independent journalist in Sweden says that she was suspended from Swedish Facebook for seven days for posting an essay supporting British reporter Tommy Robinson and the concept of true freedom of speech, where you defend all opinions, even those you oppose.

Independent journalist and freedom fighter Katerina Janouch wrote a short introduction for an article in her own online magazine “Katerina Magasin.” The article, written by another Swedish writer – Madeleine Rönnqvist Lilja — is about the British freedom fighter Tommy Robinson. In her text, Katerina wrote: “Defending freedom of expression when you agree is a breeze, but if we are to have any freedom of speech worth mentioning, it must also be defended when it is challenged and not all agree.” She then pointed out that it “may be your turn next”.

And Swedish Facebook took Katerina at her word and suspended her.

It would not surprise me if this claim is 100% true. However, the article does not provide detailed information about what Swedish Facebook claimed was the reason, if any, for the suspension, and the source article that does give those details is in Swedish. It is therefore possible that Facebook had some other reason for its actions. I just can’t confirm that.

I must emphasize however that I am trying to be unreasonably fair here. The behavior of large tech companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. has been routinely leftist and increasingly hostile to opposing opinions. Moreover, this is Swedish Facebook, where I expect the political culture is even more leftist and intolerant of opposing views. I would expect them to try an shut down any postings that express strong reservations about Islam, because the left for some reason has apparently decided that Muslims are a protected and oppressed minority that must never be challenged.

For those who are unfamiliar with Tommy Robinson, he is an activist and online writer who has been imprisoned and harassed by British authorities because he has been uncompromising in his reporting of radical Islam.

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Looking at LPs, CDs, and DVDs with an electron microscope

An evening pause: This video is even more interesting than my title above, in that the guy making it used his electron microscope to make an animation showing what it looks like when a record needle is running through the tracks of a record. Most cool.

And since vinyl appears to actually be making a comeback, I think that even the younger members of my readership will know what a record is.

Hat tip Thomas Biggar.

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Mueller submits report, ends investigation

Special Council Robert Mueller today submitted his report to his new boss Attorney General Bill Barr at the Department of Justice, officially ending his two year long investigation that was supposedly aimed at proving collusion between Donald Trump and the Russian government in order to get him elected.

In those two years, Mueller made a few indictments, none of which had anything to do with Trump-Russian collusion. Most were process crimes, created during the investigation against individuals for either not answering questions perfectly or because Mueller went on a fishing expedition until he found something. None would have happened had this faux investigation had not been instigated.

Moreover, according to the news story at the link, Mueller is “not recommending any further indictments” with this submission.

Or to put it more bluntly, this was all a sham, aimed at deposing the legally elected president of the United States.

Meanwhile, evidence of real collusion, involving Obama and Hillary Clinton and the Russians, was ignored, and in fact the FBI took hostile actions against those involved in revealing it.

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The pro-Iran and anti-Israel Democratic Party

Two stories in the past few days illustrate once again the growing fascist and anti-democratic trends within the modern Democratic Party, trends that every registered Democrat should look at with horror.

First there was condemnation by liberal activist groups like MoveOn and Code Pink of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Both also demanded that all Democratic presidential candidate boycott AIPAC’s annual conference. To quote MoveOn’s petition:

“It’s no secret that that AIPAC has worked to hinder diplomatic efforts like the Iran deal, is undermining Palestinian self-determination, and inviting figures actively involved in human rights violations to its stage,” Iram Ali, campaign director at MoveOn Political Action, said in a statement provided first to Politico. Ali said the move should “give a clear insight to 2020 candidates on where their base stands instead of prioritizing lobbying groups and policy people who rarely step outside of D.C.”

None of these claims are true. What AIPAC has done for decades is to support the right of Israel to exist, to oppose Islamic terrorism and the wholesale slaughter of Jews, and encourage the U.S. to work with the only viable democracy in the Middle East, for both Jews and Muslims.

These liberal demands were then followed by the immediate decision by all but one Democratic presidential candidate to skip the conference. What makes this significant is that many of these same Democrats have repeatedly spoken there in the past, and in doing so had expressed positive opinions about the organization.

Now however the Democratic Party increasingly sees Israel and its Jewish population as evil, and instead wish to ally themselves with the Islamic movement, a position that follows the lead of their younger anti-Semitic lawmakers like Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota).

The party’s desire to link itself to radical Islam is demonstrated by the second story today, in which five Democratic presidential candidates announced their endorsement of Iran and the very bad Obama nuclear deal that the U.S. should never have agreed to and that President Trump wisely terminated last year.

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) declared they’d rejoin the Iran deal if Iran abides by it and so did two less-known candidates: Mayor of Miramar, Florida, Wayne Messam and writer and charity activist Marianne Williamson, reported Al-Monitor on March 19.

Note that there is ample evidence, outlined in great detail at the link, that Iran never abided by the treaty, before or after its signing.

Not all the Democratic candidates made this endorsement, but the trend is clear, nonetheless. The Democratic Party now increasingly prefers to ally itself with nations whose leaders routinely chant “Death to America!” and call for the annihilation of Israel.

And this trend makes sense, considering that party’s willingness in the last few years to abandon or even reject the Bill of Rights, preferring to use force and the power of government to impose their will on everyone. For such a party, being fellow-travelers with dictators and tyrants is not difficult.

If you are an ordinary registered Democrat, you need to reassess your loyalty to that party. It is not the political organization you probably think it is.

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Jezero Crater: The landing site for the Mars 2020 rover

Jezero Crater delta
Jezero Crater delta

At this week’s 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, there were many papers detailing the geological, topographical, chemical, meteorology and biological circumstances at the landing sites for the 2020 Martian rovers, Jezero Crater for the U.S.’s Mars 2020 and Oxia Planum for Europe’s Rosalind Franklin.

Most of these papers are a bit too esoteric for the general public (though if you like to delve into this stuff like I do, go to the conference program and search for “Jezero” and “Oxia” and you can delve to your heart’s content).

Oxia Planum drainages

These papers do make it possible to understand why each site was chosen. I have already done this analysis for Rosalind Franklin, which you can read here and here. Oxia Planum is in the transition between the southern highlands and the northern lowlands (where an intermittent ocean might have once existed). Here can be found many shoreline features. In fact, one of the papers at this week’s conference mapped [pdf] the drainage patterns surrounding the landing ellipse, including the water catchment areas, as shown by the figure from that paper on the right.

With this post I want to focus on Jezero Crater, the Mars 2020 landing site. The image above shows the crater’s most interesting feature, an impressive delta of material that apparently flowed out of the break in the western wall of the crater.

This image however does not tell us much about where exactly the rover will land, or go. To do that, we must zoom out a bit.
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