Tag: oppression

Today’s blacklisted American: Forbes terminates journalist for documenting Fauci’s salary

12:51 pm

Adam Andrzejewski, journalist banned for doing good journalism
Adam Andrzejewski, journalist banned for doing good
journalism

The new dark age of silencing: Adam Andrzejewski, a long time journalist for Forbes magazine, was fired when the magazine was pressured by NIH to stop him from documenting accurately the large income that Anthony Fauci and his wife derived from their government jobs.

As Andrzejewski concludes in outlining his blackballing by Forbes:

Two directors, two bureau chiefs, and two top PR officers [from NIH] didn’t send an email to the Forbes’ chief on a Sunday morning because they wanted to correct the record about Fauci’s travel reimbursements. They sent that email to subliminally send a message: We don’t like Andrzejewski’s oversight work, and we want you to do something about it.

Unfortunately, Forbes folded quickly. Within 24 hours of the NIH email to Randall Lane, my regular Forbes editor called and announced new rules. Forbes barred me from writing about Fauci and mandated pre-approval for all future topics.

Then, Forbes went silent and terminated my column roughly 10 days later on January 28.

On the day Forbes cancelled me, the editors bent the knee. A new piece on Fauci published: “Fauci’s Portrait Will Soon Hang In The Smithsonian.”

The shameful part of this story was the way a news organization took the side of government agents, rather than their own journalist. The press is not supposed to be a state-run organization, but a free press intent on uncovering government malfeasance. The people who run Forbes apparently don’t understand this, and are quite willing to become panting toadies to the federal government.

Andrzejewski however understands his role as a journalist far better. In 2011 he founded Open The Books, a non-profit focused on documenting government spending precisely, at all levels from the smallest school district to the largest agency in the federal government. To do this the organization has filed almost 50,000 Freedom of Information requests. As he noted at the link above,
» Read more

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SpaceX raises launch prices

10:55 am

Capitalism in space: Though most of the press has focused on the Starlink announcement on March 22nd that it was raising its subscriber rates, that same day SpaceX announced that it too was raising its prices, increasing its launch fees by 8% to 10%.

The starting prices for a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket will each increase by about 8%. A Falcon 9 launch will cost $67 million, up from $62 million, and a Falcon Heavy launch will now run $97 million, up from $90 million. A footnote on SpaceX’s pricing page notes that “missions purchased in 2022 but flown beyond 2023 may be subject to additional adjustments due to inflation.”

..The company also adjusted its prices for its small satellite rideshare program. Those flights will now start at $1.1 million to fly a payload weighing 200 kilograms to a sun-synchronous orbit, up from a base price of $1 million. SpaceX increased the cost of additional payload mass by 10% as well and will now charge $5,500 per extra kilogram, up from a previous $5,000 per kilogram.

As with the Starlink announcement, SpaceX officials stated that the price increase was due entirely by inflation.

The irony here is that SpaceX could easily raise its rocket prices by 20%, and still be undercutting its entire competition. Even with these increases it is still by far the cheapest game in town.

Nonetheless, when it comes to inflation we have only just begun. The consequences of the Ukraine war, the sanctions against Russia, the Biden administration’s restrictions on domestic oil production, and the various COVID regulations restricting commerce are all still in effect, and are all putting pressure on supply. Prices will continue to rise.

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Biden administration demands that all NASA grantees hire minorities/women

10:44 am

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The Biden administration has proposed a new rule for anyone receiving financial grants from NASA, requiring those grantees to solicit bids for any subcontracting work from minorities and/or women.

The Grants Policy and Compliance Branch (GPC) in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Office of the Chief Financial Officer is soliciting public comment on the Agency’s proposed implementation of a new term and condition that requires recipients of NASA financial assistance to obtain a quotation from small and/or minority businesses, women’s business enterprises or labor surplus area firms when the acquisition of goods or services exceeds the simplified acquisition threshold.

…NASA’s expectation is that this action will result in an increase in contracting opportunities for small and/or minority businesses, women’s business enterprises and labor surplus area firms that contract with NASA financial assistance recipients.

The rule is not yet in effect. NASA is simply seeking public comment. However, the intent of this “equity” regulation is the same as all critical race theory implementations, to favor minorities and women and discriminate against whites and men. And if you don’t believe me, read this further explanation for this new rule at the link:

On January 25, 2021, President Biden issued E.O. 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” outlining a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality. Given that advancing equity requires a systematic approach to embedding fairness in the decision-making process, the E.O. instructs agencies to recognize and work to redress inequities in their policies and programs that serve as barriers to equal opportunity.

Since everyone has the same equal opportunity to compete for bids, this new Biden rule, which is designed to tilt the scale and discriminate in favor of “people of color and others who have been historically underserved”, it is actually creating barriers to equal opportunity. It is also a bald-faced violation of every civil rights law passed since 1964, which required that no one should be discriminated against because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or sex, be they white, black, red, yellow, green, or orange.

But then, this is our Democratic Party, led by Joe Biden. It has eagerly returned to its slave/segregation roots, where it sees race as a person’s only important attribute, with some races deserving favored treatment and other races to be oppressed. Until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s Democrats favored whites and oppressed minorities. Now the party favors minorities and oppresses whites.

Nothing has really changed however. The Democratic Party, led by Joe Biden, remains the party of racism and bigotry.

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Update on the lie that was COVID

4:12 pm

How governments determined policy against COVID
How our governments determined policy against COVID during
the past two years.

Now that the crisis of the day has shifted to the Ukraine War, bringing with it new demands by our so-called rulers to once again panic in order to begin a world war, it pays to look back at the last fake panic, what I like to call the lie that was COVID.

Below are a only few examples of the never-ending new stories daily that illustrate starkly the foolishness and the over-reaction to COVID. Take some time to read them all.

First, was COVID the deadly disease that could kill you, as claimed by our academic and political leaders? In a word, no. The two stories below simply show its harmlessness to children, something that was obvious almost from the beginning of the panic.

In the past two years anyone with any interest in the truth could have easily found and read similar stories. The threat was routinely exaggerated, sometimes to the point of faking data. These two stories are merely the tip of the iceberg. If I wanted I could add twenty, thirty, fifty more and still not list them all.

Both of these stories however illustrate the evil of the next two:

The New York petty tyrant in the first story is not alone. Democratic Party politicians nationwide, from President Joe Biden down to local school boards, have repeatedly shown themselves obsessed with putting masks on little kids, sometimes even by physical and vicious force.

As for the second story, note that it occurred two days ago in Chicago, the first day that Chicago schools had shifted to a “mask-optional” policy. Yet the teacher smacked a mask of the toddler, who ended up coming home crying. His father’s reaction:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Conservatives and the religious blackballed at Disney

12:44 pm

Disney: Hostile to free speech

Persecution is now cool! Even as the corporate management at the Disney company is publicly aligning itself with the gay political agenda, a group of conservative and religious Disney employees have published a letter outlining how this so-called “inclusive” company has made its workplace very hostile to them, forcing many to leave and requiring the letter writers to stay anonymous to protect their jobs.

One of the employees, who works in the Imagineering department designing attractions in Disney theme parks, told The Daily Wire that he’s had three close colleagues leave his division in just the last nine months because of the increasingly hostile work environment. “No matter what department or what segment, we’ve been watching the [diversity, equity, and inclusion] takeover of Disney accelerate to breakneck speeds, and God help you if you get caught standing in front of the train.” [emphasis mine]

The full letter is available here on Google docs. Assuming Google will censor it at some point, the link above has also republished it in full at the bottom of the article. This quote from the letter is especially revealing about the intolerant work atmosphere created by the “woke” Disney employees:
» Read more

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ISS: Breaking up is hard to do

11:00 am

According to this detailed article by Eric Berger at Ars Technica, it will be be very difficult if not impossible for Russia to detach its half from ISS and go its own way.

The article outlines both the technical and legal reasons, and concludes as follows:

In reality, during the coming years, we are more likely to see food riots in Moscow than we are to see a new Russian Space Station or a deep space scientific exploration mission. Some of this will be due to financial concerns, and some of it will come because of a loss of access to technology from the West.

Already, Russia’s main builder of tanks, Uralvagonzavod, appears to have stopped production due to a lack of components. Roscosmos’s big four companies—RKK Energia, RSC Progress, the Khrunichev Center, and NPO Energomash—will likely not be able to keep up production for long for the same reason as the tank factory.

While everything Berger notes is true, I think he underestimates the willingness of rogue nations, as Russia presently is, to break treaties. Also, the agreements Russia has signed expire in 2024, and Russia needs the next few years to launch more modules to have any chance of making its half workable. Whether it can do it is presently doubtful, but not impossible.

This partnership is ending, whether by choice or reality. Expect Russia’s participation in ISS to continually wind down over the next few years.

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Firefly raises $75 million, targets May for next launch attempt

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: In announcing that the company has raised $75 million more in private investment capital, Firefly officials also said that it is now targeted May for its next launch attempt of its Alpha rocket.

The launch was partly delayed because of the federal government’s insistence that a Ukrainian businessman, who had saved the company when it went into bankruptcy, divest his ownership. That has now happened, so Firefly has gotten approval to launch.

Firefly CEO Tom Markusic told CNBC that the company “worked methodically and cooperatively with the government” to both complete the divestment, as well as to add “security protocols” at the company.

With the move complete, Markusic said the company now has “full access to our facilities to go back and launch.” Firefly will next transport its second Alpha rocket from its headquarters near Austin, Texas, to California, and aims to launch as soon as it can.

“We think it’ll take us about eight weeks from here to launch — so in May is our target,” Markusic told CNBC.

The company is also aiming to complete its second test launch two months after the first, assuming all goes well.

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SpaceX switches to newer Starship and Superheavy for orbital test

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: According to Elon Musk, SpaceX has decided that the company will no longer use Starship prototype #20 and Superheavy prototype #4 for the rocket’s first orbital test flight.

Instead, the company will fly two more recently built and upgraded prototypes, rumored to be numbers #24 for Starship and #7 for Superheavy. The company has also decided to switch from the first generation Raptor engines to Raptor-2s.

All these changes likely explain Musk’s announcement that the first orbital launch will not happen sooner than May. The changes also further suggest that SpaceX has realized federal permission to launch from Boca Chica will be further delayed, and thus it might has well push forward in other ways as it waits for the right to launch.

I suspect that if the federal government hadn’t moved in to block operations, it would have flown prototypes 20 and 4 two months ago, just to get some data. Now such a flight seems pointless, as more advanced prototypes are now almost ready to fly.

This decision also reinforces my prediction that no orbital flights will occur out of Boca Chica before summer, and are more likely blocked through November. It also increases my expectation that the first orbital flight might not occur at all in Texas. The longer the Biden administration delays SpaceX’s operations there, the greater the chance the entire Starship/Superheavy launch program will shift to Florida.

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Local state legislators introduce bill to disband Camden spaceport authority

9:14 am

Two Georgia state legislators yesterday introduced a bill to disband the Camden spaceport authority, following a county special election that rejected the spaceport by a vote of 72% to 28%.

Whether the bill becomes law or not will likely not make much difference to the spaceport. It is dead, and the law will merely decide whether it dies quickly, or slowly.

This quote by one of the legislators who introduced the bill, however, should be carved in stone in every statehouse and in the Capitol in Washington:

“It’s hard to ignore how the people vote.”

Too many lawmakers nationwide have forgotten this fact.

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Musk says Starship will be ready for first orbital launch in May

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: In a tweet yesterday Elon Musk said that Starship will be ready for first orbital launch in May, a delay of two months from his previous announcements.

“We’ll have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test,” Musk tweeted in response to CNBC.

While the delay could certainly be because the company needed to prepare enough Superheavy engines, I also suspect it is also because Musk now expects the FAA to not approve the environmental reassessment of Starship’s Boca Chica launch site by the end of March, as has been promised. I predict that sometime in the next few days the FAA will announce another one-month delay in that process, the fourth such delay by that federal agency.

In late-December, when the FAA announced the first delay, I predicted that the first orbital launch of Starship would not happen until the latter half of ’22. I now think that prediction was optimistic. I firmly believe the federal government, controlled by Democrats, will delay that launch until after the mid-term elections in November. It appears to me that the Biden administration wants to reject the environmental reassessment, which would block Starship flights from Boca Chica for years. It just doesn’t want to do it before November, because of the negative election consequences.

I truly hope my cynical and pessimistic analysis is utterly wrong. So far, however, my prediction has proven to be more right than wrong.

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Pushback: Judge rules university officials can be held personally responsible for firing a professor for his political opinions

12:36 pm

Speech that is forbidden at the University of North Texas
Speech that is forbidden at the University of North Texas

A major victory for free speech: A federal judge ruled on March 11th that officials at the University of North Texas can be held personally responsible for firing a professor because they did not like his political opinions.

In his 69-page order of March 11, Judge Sean Jordan, of the United States District Court for Eastern Texas, found that university officials should have known that math professor Nathaniel Hiers’ speech “touched on a matter of public concern and that discontinuing his employment because of his speech violated the First Amendment,” before they fired him for going public with his disagreement with the left-wing concept of “microaggressions.”

The university was claiming qualified immunity for school officials in the case, meaning that the school wanted its officials to be excluded from being held responsible for their actions merely because they were acting in their position as state employees. Jordan denied the claim of qualified immunity and also denied the school’s demand to have the case dismissed outright.

You can read the judge’s order here [pdf].

The background: Hiers, having found flyers in math department’s lounge warning faculty against triggering “microaggessions” in their conversations, responded as shown in the picture above, placing one flyer on the chalk rack of the blackboard and wrote his own opinion of it above.

Ralf Schmidt, the Math department’s head, immediately criticized Hiers for doing this, and within a week fired him without notice.
» Read more

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OneWeb signs deal with SpaceX to launch its remaining satellites, replacing Russia

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: Just 18 days after its contract with Arianespace was suspended because of Russia invasion of the Ukraine, OneWeb has now signed a deal with SpaceX to use its Falcon 9 rocket to launch the remaining 200+ satellites in its satellite constellation.

Few details about the agreement were released Monday morning. “Terms of the agreement with SpaceX are confidential,” OneWeb said in a statement.

OneWeb said the “first launch” with SpaceX is expected before the end of this year, suggesting the company anticipates multiple flights on SpaceX rockets.

It appears that launches could start before the end of this year

There are two big losers in this story. The obvious one is Russia, as it has lost OneWeb as a satellite customer. The second, less obvious, is Arianespace, as it appears it has also lost OneWeb as a customer. It will also have to refund OneWeb any payments the satellite company made for launches that have not occurred, even those that Arianespace had paid Russia for which Russia is refusing to refund.

Though no details have been released about the deal, I would not be surprised if OneWeb got a better price than what it was paying Arianespace. I also suspect that Elon Musk was willing to make this deal with OneWeb, the prime competitor to his Starlink satellite constellation, because he favors the Ukraine in this war.

Finally, this deal will not only make Russia look bad, it will make SpaceX look magnificent. Its PR value cannot be measured for the company.

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Rogozin: Lift sanctions by end of March or else!

10:13 am

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space corporation that runs all of that nations aerospace industry, yesterday demanded that Europe and the U.S. lift its sanctions against Russia by end of March or he would take further action against them.

“We will wait until the end of March. The lack of response or a negative response would be a basis for our decision,” he said, without specifying what kind of decision it would be.

According to the official, the space corporation was not going to yield to the sanctions.

One immediately asks, what happens at the end of March? Why time further space-related actions then?

Well, the only area in which Russia is still cooperating with the west in space is on ISS. At the end of March, Russia will bring home American astronaut Mark Vande Hei using its Soyuz capsule. This suggests that once Vande Hei comes home, Rogozin will announce that Russia will no longer fly any western astronauts to ISS on its rockets or capsules. He might also further announce actions that will accelerate the end of the ISS partnership, including laying out Russia’s schedule for adding modules to its half of ISS and then detaching it from the station.

If so, good. Such an action will bring clarity to the station’s remaining days, forcing NASA to make sure the station can function after the Russian half is gone. It will probably quicken the development of Axiom’s modules to the station, and might encourage the private construction of other modules to pick up the slack left by the Russian exit.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Man who found Hunter Biden’s laptop harassed, threatened, and driven to bankruptcy

12:24 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
A witch hunt: The mainstream media’s modern approach to discourse.

Persecution is now cool! The computer repair shop owner who found and made public Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the election has found himself harassed, threatened, and even driven to bankruptcy because of that entirely legal act.

The Delaware computer repair shop owner who alerted the FBI to Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop before ultimately taking it to Rudy Giuliani says he’s faced harassment from Big Tech, the IRS and other government agencies ever since, and now faces bankruptcy.

“I was getting a lot of death threats,” John Paul Mac Isaac said. “I had to have a Wilmington trooper parked in front of my shop all the time.

“There were multiple situations where people came in and you could tell they were not there to have a computer fixed. And if there were not other people in the shop, I don’t know what would have happened,” he told The Post. “I was having vegetables, eggs, dog s–t thrown at the shop every morning.”

The threats and violence got so severe in November 2020 that Isaac had to shutter his shop and flee Delaware and live in hiding for more than a year. When he later tried to file for unemployment Delaware bureaucrats kept closing his case without resolution so that he received no checks and had use some of the money in his 401K to pay his bills. The Delaware unemployment department only finally acted after he sent a letter to the state’s governor.
» Read more

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ESA makes official the split with Russia

9:32 am

At a press conference yesterday officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) officially announced that the partnership with Russia to launch its Franklin rover to Mars has ended, and the launch will not happen in ’22.

The program is not cancelled, but “suspended.” ESA is looking for alternatives to get its Rosalind Franklin rover to the Red Planet. Earth and Mars are correctly aligned for launches only every 26 months, so the next opportunities are in 2024, 2026, and 2028. Aschbacher said it is not feasible to be ready by 2024, so it will be one of the later dates.

Since Russia had been providing both the launch rocket and Mars lander, ESA cannot simply find a different rocket. It needs to come up with its own lander, or find someone else to build it. For example, one of many new private American companies building lunar landers for NASA might be able do it, though ESA would likely prefer a European company. If it did decide to go with an American company, it would certainly not hire one until it succeeds in completing successfully at least one planetary landing.

The officials also outlined ESA’s need to find new launch rockets for many other missions it had planned to launch on Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket. That need will also be an opportunity for American rocket companies, but more significantly it could be a blessing for Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket. The Ariane 6 has struggled to find customers because of its high cost. The loss of Russia as a launch option will likely drive some ESA business to it.

Roscosmos’ head Dmitry Rogozin in turn announced that it will go ahead with its own Mars mission, using the lander on an Angara rocket

“True, we will lose several years, but we will replicate our landing module, make an Angara rocket for it and carry out this research mission from the newly-built Vostochny spaceport on our own. Without inviting any ‘European friends’, who prefer to keep their tails between their legs the moment they hear their American master’s angry voice,” Rogozin said on his Telegram channel.

Whether Russia will actually do this is questionable. For the last two decades Roscosmos has promised all kinds of numerous planetary missions and new rockets and new manned capsules, none of which has ever seen the light of day. To make such a thing happen now seems even more doubtful.

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Update on the actual state of the Ukraine War

3:31 pm

Much of the reporting about the war in the Ukraine has been either based on individual anecdotal events, or propaganda being churned out by both sides in an effort to influence events and public opinion to their cause.

All of this information is generally useless in determining what is really happening.

A better way to understand the actual state of the war, who is winning and who is not, is to find sources that don’t look at individual events, but try to compile all the reliable and confirmed stories into an overall whole.

One source that does this routinely and with great success is the Institute for the Study of War. I have relied on their maps and reports for a clear understanding of the various Middle Eastern conflicts now for years. One week ago I posted a link to the Institute’s March 9, 2022 update on the Ukraine War, because I believed it provided the best review, well documented and sourced, covering Russia’s entire military operation in the Ukraine, as well as the effort of the Ukraine to fight back. At that time, the known data strongly suggested that though Russia appeared to be very slowly capturing territory, it was also meeting heavy resistance everywhere. Furthermore, Russia’s effort was hampered by a lagging logistics and supply operation. All told, this data suggested that Russia’s take-over of the Ukraine was going to take a lot longer than expected by Putin and his generals, and might even get bogged down into a long quagmire similar to what the Soviet Union experienced in Afghanistan in the late 1970s.

A week has passed, and the Institute has issued several updates since. By comparing today’s March 17th update with last week’s we can quickly get a sense of what has happened in that week.
» Read more

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Pushback: Pilots sue CDC over Biden mask requirement on planes

12:02 pm

How the CDC determines its mask policies
How the CDC determines its mask policies

Don’t comply: Ten pilots from three different American airlines — American, Southwest, and JetBlue — have now sued the CDC over the Biden administrations mask mandate requiring everyone to wear masks on airplanes.

A group of commercial airline pilots filed a lawsuit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in an attempt to lift the federal transportation mask mandate.

In court paperwork, the 10 commercial airline pilots – who work for American JetBlue and Southwest – argued that the CDC issued an order “Requirement for Persons to Wear Masks While on Conveyances & at Transportation Hubs” on Feb. 1, 2020 “without providing public notice or soliciting comment.”

The pilots are asking the court to “vacate worldwide the FTMM (federal transportation mask mandate)” calling the move an “illegal and unconstitutional exercise of executive authority.”

Biden’s edict was first imposed on February 1, 2021, shortly after he took power. It has been extended several times since, the most recent extension keeping it in force through April 18, 2022. At no time, however, has any data been put forth by the CDC demonstrating that the required masks accomplish anything, while we already have decades of data showing that the masks are useless against viruses like the Wuhan flu.

This new lawsuit is the eighteenth filed against the mandate, though it is the first filed by those who work on the planes.

The pilots claim above that the CDC did not follow federal law when it imposed the mandate is almost certainly correct. » Read more

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The world’s two biggest rockets move to their launchpads!

10:02 am

The real cost of SLS and Orion
The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion

The big news in the mainstream press today is the planned rollout from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) of NASA’s SLS rocket this evening in preparation for its dress rehearsal fueling and countdown planned for April 3rd.

This article by Newsweek is very typical. It glows with facts lauding SLS’s gigantic size and the monumental systems designed to slowly transport it the four miles from the VAB to the launchsite.

At a height of 322 feet (ft), making it taller than the 305ft Statue of Liberty, the SLS will be the largest rocket to move to a launchpad since the Saturn V launched on its last mission in 1973, when it carried the Skylab space station into orbit around Earth. Its size has seen NASA dub it a Mega-Moon rocket.

NASA says that the four-mile journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the SLS was recently adorned with the NASA logo, will take between 6 and 12 hours. It will be carried on the back of NASA’s 6.6-million-pound crawler vehicle. [emphasis mine]

If that April 3rd countdown dress rehearsal goes well, SLS will be rolled back to the VAB and then prepped for its first launch, presently scheduled tentatively for May ’22, though more likely in June or July.

For NASA the rollout today is somewhat of a relief. SLS was originally supposed to launch in 2015, making it seven years behind schedule. It has also been enormously expensive, costing close to $30 billion to build, if one does not count the $20 billion cost of the Orion capsule it carries. That the agency finally has this rocket assembled and almost ready to launch, after so many delays and cost overruns, means that NASA might finally be able to prove it is a reality, not simply a boondoggle designed by Congress to funnel cash through NASA to their constituents.

The Newsweek article however strangely ignores the launchpad stacking of another equally gigantic rocket that occurred yesterday. » Read more

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Pushback: Professor sues University of Illinois officials for suspending him for doing his job

12:56 pm

University of Illinois: run by clowns
University of Illinois: run by clowns

Jason Kilborn, a tenured law professor at the University of Illinois who had been suspended and forced to undergo sensitivity training because several unnamed students objected to an exam question that referenced racial slurs and that Kilborn had been using in his tests for a decade, has now sued a number of officials at the university.

University of Illinois Chicago law Professor Jason Kilborn’s recently filed lawsuit accuses administrators of violating his Constitutional rights, as well as defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It seeks damages in excess of $100,000.

Kilborn has been described by students as “top notch.” As his lawsuit against the University of Illinois Chicago moves forward, Kilborn maintains campus leaders engaged in performative retribution against him.

The lawsuit can be read here.

The named officials in the lawsuit are Michael Amiridis, the university’s chancellor, Caryn A. Bills, its associate chancellor, Julie M. Spanbauer, the law schools dean, Donald Kamm, the director of the school’s Office for Access and Equity, and Ashley Davidson, the school’s Title Ix & Equity Compliance Specialist.

I had described Kilborn’s blacklisting back in November 2021, describing in detail how Kilborn’s exam question had been in use for ten years with no objection, and was designed to help his law students uncover facts that would help lawyers defend minorities against racial abuse. I also noted that:
» Read more

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Overview of the impact Russia’s invasion is having on the Ukraine’s space industry

9:57 am

Link here. The summary focuses on the major aerospace regions in the Ukraine, Dnipro and Kharkiv, outlining how they have so far been untargeted by the Russian invasion.

“In Dnipro, Yuzhmash and Yuzhnoye have not been bombed or targeted by missile attacks so far. One of the possible reasons is that Russia’s plan is to take them over as part of their invasion, so they intend to keep these facilities intact,” Usov said. “Because of the Russian attacks in the Dnipro region, these facilities are not operating at full capacities, and they were forced to halt work on their projects. But a share of their employees ensures their operations continue.”

The situation is the same in Kharkiv. No aerospace facilities have been directly targeted, but the war has shut down some operations, while others — especially those partnering with western nations or companies — have gone almost entirely virtual.

The article also describes a Ukrainian startup, Orbit Boy, that is trying to develop an air-launched smallsat rocket in partnership with companies in Poland and Italy. The war is making this development difficult, if not impossible.

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