QUESTION OF THE WEEK

01. if you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a kangaroo have?
02. can a detainee be a prisoner?
03. if you invade a country, can the civilians there lawfully kill you?
04. did Auschwitz contain detainees?
05. what makes a combatant unlawful?
06. do you need to wear a uniform to be a lawful combatant?
......recgonizable at a distance? What distance?
07. if you invade a country, is that a war crime?
08. is it unlawful to be in a theater of war?
09. were minutemen unlawful combatants?
10. how many detinees of war turned out to be prisoners of war?
11. do you need to be in a long chain of command to be a lawful combatant?
12. is the commander-in-chief a lawful combatant?
13. is the president a civilian?
14. can the president finger people to be killed by his agents?
15. if a combatant is not in a chain of command, why torture him?
16. if a combatant IS in a chain of command, how is he an unlawful combatant?
17. Do the geneva Conventions preempt a functioning civil judicial structure?
18. why does an army general run a coaling station?
19. would you rather be paid in gold or in cardboard?
20. can prisoners be held, lawfully, incommunicado? detainees?
21. who said "they transported us beyond the seas to be tried for pretended offences"?
22. does the US have authority over the Princess Cruise lines, engaged in the Cuban trade?

The Guantanamo Lease is invalid

more

Climate change

1. A local Metric for Climate Change.
https://bit.ly/2024PlayTarget
2. Making more of The Transmission Grid
https://bit.ly/2024PlayTransmission
3. The Mechanism of Climate Change.
https://bit.ly/2024PlayMechanism
4. Cleaning China
https://bit.ly/2024PlayChina

Daily Load Curve, suggestion

Level the load on the transmission grid. Every year, require that the elctrical distribution company offer a new ten year tariff that has the goal and the effect of lowering the peak load on the transmission grid by 10%. This headroom will serve to delay the need for any new peaker (gas) plants, or new tranmission lines and encourage occasionally connected micro grids. A market based solution.

The Elephant in the climate change story. CCS

1. The ocean exchanges CO2 with the atmosphere
2. As he ocean warms, it gives off more CO2 to the atmosphere.
3. Take CO2 out of the ocean and the ocean will take CO2 out of the air.
4. Getting CO2 out of the ocean is easy to do on a small scale.
Doing it on a relevant scale is another story.

Wikipedia mischaracterizes the "agreement" paragraph

Is Roe constitutional? (yes)

Generally the Constitution gives the structure of the government and the roles of each of the branches, so that the likeliest place to find something specific about abortion is in the Bill of Rights.

The main body of the Constitution, with two exceptions, say what the new Federal Government is allowed to do, and only in the Bill of Rights do we see what things the new Federal Government may not ever do; acts that the Federal Government may not do when it is acting under color of law.

Note that the Federal Government does not always obey the law. The Dred Scott decision ignored the precedent in Yick Wo v Hopkins, the Chinese laundry case of San Francisco, which stood against the "yellow peril" panic of the time, and they instead relied on an earlier case, Plessy v Furgeson, to assert "separate but equal", which became "separate and inferior" for a hundred more years of black suppression and which struck down the Missouri Compromise, and made the Civil War more likely. This was clearly an error since Dred Scott was not a runaway slave but was taken by his master onto the free soil of Michigan, thereby becoming a free man by law. Of course there is more to this case.

The "Lochner Era" was likewise a period of judicial usurpation that argued that people could make any labor agreement they wanted. The unequal bargaining power between the workers and the owner made no difference. And unions were discouraged when their members were not killed. (The Ludlow Massacre.) Citizens United is a current similar example of the court ignoring the obvious, and allowing corruption to infect all branches of the government, despite Ward v. Rock Against Racism.

These remarks are only to point out that the judicial branch is not immune from the spirit of the times and it can take a while for the Constitution that revolutionaries wrote to be defended properly by today's bourgeous technocrats.

It should be recognized that the amendments are not statutes. The acts that they prohibit the new Federal Government from doing are indeed prohibited. But they are also principles; they have implications, or as Roe said, "penumbras". The prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments was not intended to allow cruelty "for no reason"; ie cruelty when in pre-trial detention, or to allow police to chase protesters to hit them with clubs, shoot them in the back, or run over them with their cruisers.

The First Amendment attempts to stop the government from deciding meta-physical questions. And if they feel forced to make some such decision (like when is a foetus a person), that they do it on a very tentative basis, and as a practical matter no more based on morality, which is subjective, than which side of the road to drive on. And it should be a decision that essentially everyone can live with, although there might be a lively discussion as to which opinion is correct.

So we allow gambling even though some people are destroyed by it, and we allow alcohol even though some people are destroyed by it, and we allow war even though some people are destroyed by it, even in our families. The veterans of Stalingrade, who when they get together, just sit, for what can be said about an unthinkable abomination?

Roe, in its original tri-mester formulation, seems to come as close as can be done to placate "both sides". The only claim that the general population can make against a woman who seeks an abortion is that she is participating in a conspiracy to commit aggravated genocide, or at least murder. But this relies on the determination of when a new person comes into being. This is a social decision not a scientific one. Science can say that the flesh is human and is alive and has a new genome, but this is far from the central question of personhood, which is as hard as the problem of consciousness. Some may hold that a person should be recognized as coming into existence at conception for tax purposes, but this is far from settling the issue for parents who may have bought furniture for the new baby and named her and are already thrilled about her joy.

Can the courts responsibly come into the home and into the family by forbidding abortion. No one favors abortion aside from the occasional drunk party boy who tells the girl she has no choice, or the macho upper class serial abuser. Or the Chinese government with the one-child policy and sex selection of the past.

The third amendment seeks to establish the right of the family to have dominion in the home. Not unlimited to be sure, but not to be invaded by those who care nothing for the thoughts of those who live inside.

Roe may not be perfect, but it is at least some protecion against sexual abuse, or rape, if not fully fair to the woman. Two of the judges who voted for overturning Roe should have recused themselves. Thomas and Cavinaugh.

PLAYLIST

1. city design
bus stops, walkways, chairs
The Coolest Urban Design Ideas From Around The World
https://dailytimewaste.com/movies/tw/117848240/the-coolest-urban-design-ideas-from-around-the-world/

2. the chemistry of life / how your body works
hydrocarbons, proteins, amino acids
https://youtu.be/nM-ySWyID9o

3. climate change WALLACE-WELLS
https://youtu.be/17aE91SBMoY

4. Buffalo city of refuge
https://youtu.be/GE3N1f2XgGQ

5. UB radiative cooling and super white paint
https://www.popsci.com/science/modern-air-conditioning-obsolete/

6. Life according to Robin Williams
https://youtu.be/FnrVk2InT3Y

7. Jimmy Dore Occupy the Capitol
https://youtu.be/FnrVk2InT3Y

8. Zeynab Day Occupy the Capitol
https://youtu.be/bw67l2brym0
https://youtu.be/HUQC8ax0ODo

9. April Goggins, Anacostia

https://twitter.com/i/status/1433989308524998660

0. Bad Faith on the eviction moratorium
https://youtu.be/hK6SvKjExyc

1. RICHARD WOLF on the economics of thetexas abortion law


2. ROBERT lUSTIG. You cant fix healtcare until you fix health. UntiL You fix diet. SUGAR


3. Sapolsky on post menopausal estrogen supplementation. NIH study



4. Earthrise. The Power of Love

videos

Rape
Strong Towns
Bernie
¥Prince

AOC alludes to Venezuela

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Mountain top removal

1) Mountains of coal have been turned into CO2
2) CO2 makes it harder for Earth to cool down
3) Are we allowed to make Earth hotter on purpose?
The people living on the margins have not agreed to have their habitat, their weather, their lives, disrupted. It is time to stop CO2 emissions, and time to start reversing the damage we have already done.

You say that you can't reverse the damage you have already done,
and you need to do more damage?
Unfortunately, we can't allow that to happen.

Case 1: Juliana vs the US: the kids are complaining.
the court is flummoxed.
Case 2: Mosquito migration sickens thousands in Bangladesh
It's not just people who are migrating. Disease is migrating too.

What?

We look at each other, embarrassed. Nobody knows what to say.
Do we need glaciers?
Do we need oceans, coral?
Yes? No?

It's us?

Q: How are Americans making Earth hotter?
A: CO2

Earth's climate is delicately balanced, for starters. It does not take much, we know now, to change things. The climate has always changed slowly, all by itself, and usually these were large changes, quite beyond the ability of humans to adapt to. It has been, for the most part, very much hotter. Our current pleasant climate is not the norm. This may be the first "climate crisis" that humans have experienced. Luckily, we are causing it ourselves. May our civilization please survive this one to someday have a second one.

Units of time

The farther back in time we go, the less detail we know about the climate, and the more we speak in generalities. For example we know that one day a meteor changed the climate and killed the dinosaurs. But we know when that happened only within a million years.

The usual units of measure for time are the day, the month and the year, which are good for human history, but not for geologic history. The units of measure that are used for Earth's geologic history are billions (3 commas) of years, and millions (two commas) of years, and thousands (one comma) of years.

The age of Earth and the solar system is the only period that needs 3 commas, billions (4.5 billion)

The age of living things (called the phanerozoic) uses 2 commas, millions. The Cambrian explosion was about 500 million years ago.

The phanerozoic, is divided into three parts - the old part, the middle part, the recent part. The old part is the largest, the middle part is smaller, and the recent part is smaller still. The names for the parts are the Paleo(old)zoic, the Meso(middle)zoic, and the Cenozoic. Since the Cenozoic goes up to the present, it is too big to see ourselves, so this recent part is subdivided into parts three(tertiary) and four(quaternary), at about the time of Lucy, which is also at the start of the Ice Ages. The most recent ice sheet retreat starts the current pleasant stable inter-glacial period, which we call "the Holocene". No idea where that word came from.

You can click on this chart to expand it

We have ice cores that go back a million years. Ice cores contain bubbles that are a historical sampling of the atmosphere. We can measure CO2 concentration directly, in the bubbles.

The last ten thousand years, called the Holocene, have been delightful. The stable climate has allowed for the growing and storing of wheat, and for the development of civilization, and for the internet. The ice has retreated to the poles. This period would be called an inter-glacial, except it does not look like the ice will be coming back any time soon.

Climate Change. Might our climate change, change for the worse? There have already been many natural extinction "events", where most life died. The mechanism is thought to be monster volcanic CO2 emissions from the Siberian Traps. The atmosphere and oceans warmed. A warm ocean lost its oxygen, killing sea life, and became over run with thermophilic organism that vented poisonous SO2 into the air, causing a mass extinction. Could mankind wreck the climate?

Well yes. The sun is busy trying to fry us to a crisp, while Earth, like a blueberry pie fresh from the oven, is trying like mad to cool off. Earth would like to get to absolute zero, like its pal Pluto. It is a delicate balance. But man pours great amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. CO2 makes it harder for Earth to cool. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the harder it is for Earth to cool, so the hotter Earth becomes.

Climatologists warn us that we humans have been messing with the climate, and we have done that because cheap power has made us richer than kings. (Could we be happy being richer than Barons?) Atmospheric CO2 levels, which for a million years varied between 200 and 300 ppm, are now above 400 and are rising, swiftly.

Two degrees, in context
For the last 2000 years, Anno Domini, the Greenland average surface temperature, as best we can tell, has varied one degree up or down. Climate scientists are creating scenarios that include temperature increases of eight [8] degrees. Brave New World.

We are running an unplanned experiment on the only world we have, betting all the marbles, and the one blue marble we live on, on a course of action that benefits some, but puts at risk everyone and everyone's kids. Plentiful cheap energy is the goose that lays a golden egg, but there is a downside. We have been slowly destabilizing the climate.

You have humans. Luckily, it doesn't last long.

What shall we do? A couple of options.
1) Business As Usual, and
2) Apollo-13.
Business as usual means the First World will off-load the damage and the risk of damage onto everybody else, and we will muddle through.
Apollo-13 means stop all emissions of CO2. Get in the Lunar Lander, and have Mission Control try to calculate a plan within the energy budget that allows us to parachute back to a safe Earth.
Thoughts and prayers.

Political action, united political action, seems to be the only hope for avoiding major damage. To others, but to ourselves as well.

Here are some "actions" that are delusional.
There is talk about "clean coal" or about "carbon capture" but this is a fantasy, far from ready to be used at scale, even though all IPCC plans assume it. Just think of the numbers: to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, by just 1 ppm, you need to remove 8 billion metric tons of CO2, and we would like to remove 100 ppm. And stash it some place. Here are two good people, from COP21, Paris 2015, talking about that.

All the same, "What shall we do?"
1. Stop burning gasoline(walk) and natural gas(dress warmly.)
2. Stop eating meat! Fix Agriculture. Shut down CAFOs
3. Reduce energy use. Weatherize.
4. Join Extinction Rebellion.
5. Do not pollute the air, water, or soil.
6. Speak up. Tell your kids. Be an extremist. Join the community.
7. Shut down fossil power plants
8. Create serious time-of-day tariffs, to use the market to level demand.

Let's re-enact the American Revolution; live like they lived.
Low carbon.

Spoiler alert.

Q: Why are these men smiling? A: They don't know. They have been lied to. The "body count" problem.

Grasses v. trees for removing CO2. Skip the first 4 minutes.


Grasses and removing CO2. Another talk

David MacKay, Solutions, by the numbers

More of his thoughts. Note @15:00 - CCS is a fantasy.

Is the Science Settled? Pondering what that means.

The history of CO2? How we came to believe it was CO2.

Carbon Capture 8 billion tonnes of CO2 is 1 ppm. 800 billion tonnes is 100ppm.

Steven Schneider 2009

Ocean heating delays atmospheric heating

The way you hold steady the energy content of any volume in space is to ensure that any energy gained is matched by energy lost. In the context of Earth, and Earth's climate, it means that the sun is busy heating up Earth during the day, and at night, largely, Earth is busy getting rid of all that heat. But this interest with differences in heat is only with differences of heat at the surface of Earth; what happens in the molten core is of no interest. And, as for the surface, the interest is only with air temperature. Air temperature is what gives rise to the Annual Global Mean Surface Air Temperature, and that is the variable that we seem to care about, and track.

In the "climate change" scenario, when you add CO2 to the atmosphere, it upsets this balance between energy gained and energy lost, by reducing Earth's ability to cool down. But as Earth gets hotter, its ability to radiate heat away is increased [that's just Stephan-Boltzmann], so that a balance can again be restored, although now at a higher temperature.

But this way of looking at the mechanics of climate change is incomplete. It is true enough that the change in energy is equal to energy gained minus energy lost, for Earth, as a unit of analysis, or for the atmosphere, as a unit of analysis. And it is true enough that when the atmosphere loses heat to outer space, heat is lost from both the atmosphere and from Earth. What is not mentioned is that when the atmosphere loses heat to the ocean, that heat is not lost to Earth. This upsets the equilibrium of Earth, even if the Annual Global Mean Surface Air Temperature does not reflect it.

For the atmosphere over the ocean, the problem with the equilibrium of Earth, as measured by Annual Global Mean Surface Air Temperature, is even clearer. Some solar radiation over the ocean is reflected and not absorbed, so that has no effect on the energy content of the ocean, or of the air, or of Earth. But solar radiation that penetrates into the ocean and is absorbed, loses heat by conduction, not initially by infrared radiation, so that this solar radiation tends to warm the ocean. That warming has been reported, and measured, and that warming causes expansion of water, leading to mild sea level rise. But that is not the point. The point is that the heat is retained, not radiated away into space. It is upsetting the equilibrium of Earth; Earth has gained energy, and this will, at some point, change the Annual Global Mean Surface Air Temperature.

The claim that increases in CO2 levels have a long term pressure on temperature implies that some mechanism exists to delay Earth coming to equilibrium, and this stashing of energy in the ocean, temporarily, might be that mechanism. Also a warmer ocean can hold less CO2, so it may become a CO2 source.

Of course, a warmer ocean melts ice. This is another place Earth can dump energy for a while, because melting ice is a state change, not a temperature change. So the ice caps, and the melting of the ice caps, hide the full warming effect of the increase in CO2.

We do have a way to see delayed effect on air temperature that will be caused by our stashing energy into the ocean as opposed to radiating it into space. That way is during an el Nino event. It becomes harder to dump energy into a warmer ocean, and in that case the Annual Global Mean Surface Air Temperature departs from baseline by an additional 50%. Instead of a .4 degree rise, one sees a .6 degree rise. This allows us to begin to estimate the delayed warming effect of CO2 when the entire ocean, in its normal state, is warmer.

This graphic, while specific, is incorrect. It says heat into Earth equals heat out. Don't we wish this were true. Some of that heat lost is "lost" into the ocean. Not lost from Earth into space, sadly.

CO2 by the numbers

THE KEELING CURVE
Can you see where renewables kicked in? No?

Mona Loa Research Station
=
CO2 concentrations do go down. It is not always up.

=
Tons of CO2 in the atmosphere
The atmosphere "weighs" [5.2 x 1000**5] metric tons
(5.2 quadrillion metric tons)
CO2 is 410 ppm or .410/1000 molecules by count
converting count to weight: (.410/1000) x (44/28.8) = .627/1000
explanation of 44/28 factor. CO2(44) is heavier than N2(28)
[5.2 x 1000**5] x [.627 x 1000**-1] = [3.26 x 1000**4]
410 ppm CO2 = 3.26 trillion metric tons

1 ppm of CO2 is about 8 billion metric tons
6 ppm of CO2 is about 48 billion metric tons
40 billion metric tons is 5 ppm (2019 emissions)
250 ppm of CO2 is about 2.0 trillion metric tons (pre-industrial)

Conversion from tons of Carbon to tons of CO2: (44/12) or 3.66
Conversion from tons of CO2 to tons of Carbon: (12/44) or 0.27

See James Lovelock. He is clearly unaware that man has emitted 2 trillion metric tons in the last 250 years, a blink geologically.
A billion metric tons he calls a gigaton
A trillion metric tons he calls a teraton.
=
CO2 world emissions since 1750: 2,120 billion metric tons

Not all of that ended up in the atmosphere.
It looks like 1.3 trillion metric tons, about 60%, did.
calculation: 1.3 trillion metric tons = 3.3 (410ppm) - 2.0 (250ppm)
I think the claim that CO2 never comes out of the air is too strong a claim.
Could we get the split between fossil CO2 and biologic CO2? Maybe nuclear testing in the air has made that impossible, with the creation of unnatural amounts of C14.
=
Is this true? Or false.

How long CO2 stays in the atmosphere is a crucial issue. The flip side is how fast does it clear?

H2O by the numbers

a Flood requires over 100 trillion metric.tons of water
1. [360 x 1000**2] sq.km is the size of Earth's ocean surface
360 million square kilometers
2. [.3 x 1000**-1] km is one foot in kilometers
3. [360 x 1000**2] sq.km x [.3 x 1000**-1] km
is the volume of a one foot rise in sea level
or [108 x 1000**1] cu.km, 108 thousand cubic kilometers, a Flood

4. [1 x 1000**1] kg
is the weight of a cubic meter of water, a metric ton
5. [1 x 1000**3] kg
is the weight of a cubic kilometer of water, a billion metric tons

6. [108 x 1000**1] cu.km x [1 x 1000**3] kg/cu.km
is the weight of a one foot rise in sea level
or [108 x 1000**4] kg, or 100 trillion metric.tons

So a Flood is a melt, from 100 trillion metric.tons up to a quad

Article in USA TODAY, April 2019 here
says "Since 1961, the world has lost 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow, the study reported." Ten trillion tons in 60 years means, if melt continues at that rate (it may increase) that a Flood will happen gradually in ten times that, or 600 years.

The Thwaits glacier in antarctica is currently the hot glacier, but note that the 50 billion metric tons mentioned as the loss in that year is well below the 100 trillion metric tons mark for Flood. The loss this year is reported as 250 billion metric tons, or 2.5 trillion metric tons in 10 years, or 25 trillion in 100 years, or Flood level in 400 years.
But remember that Thwaits is not the only source of melt. Pine Island is a similar glacier, also melting into the Amundsen Sea. Alpine glaciers melt as much. A warmer ocean expands 5% by volume. and there is Greenland.

7. Glacier Retreat
The glacier used to be able to push away the ocean. No longer. There is quite a bit of glacier that rests on land, but the land is below the current sea level. This will soon be "ice shelves", and then "icebergs", as the warmer water erodes the bottom level of ice.

8.Advice from Hugh, Cambridge College Lecture Series


9. Why higher global average surface temperature can be so bad

Extinction Rebellion

Whatever you do, don't do nothing.

Statements against doing anything.

Q1. The globe is not warming
A: Does ice melt at 32F?
Alpine glaciers have left locations that are now above 32F.

Q2. There is so little CO2. It couldn't be that.
A: Does CO2 block infrared?
What is the history of infrared radiation measurements from space?

Q3: Saturation, adding more does not matter.
A: What is the history of infrared radiation measurements from space?
Do those measurements show that it does not matter? MORE

Q4. 1934 was so warm
Warm in the USA. MORE

Q5. The climate is always changing
The last half of the holocene has been quite stable, hasn't it?
Or, do you mean the weather is always changing?

Q6. It's not mankind
Where did we lose you?
CO2 is going up. We are doing that. Correct??
CO2 prevents Earth from cooling off by blocking infrared. Correct?
If additional CO2 means that Earth cannot become cooler by infrared radiation, then the atmosphere is hotter. The next day, the Earth gets hotter again, until the atmosphere reaches a temperature, where, because of its higher temperature, it is able to radiate away as much more heat as the heat blocked by the additional CO2.
That temperature becomes the new average global temperature. Correct?

Q7. 97% of scientists agree that the climate changes. So what?
No. By 2001 the IPCC managed to establish a consensus, phrased so cautiously that none of the government representatives ventured to dissent. It was much more likely than not, the panel announced, that our civilization was headed for severe global warming. MORE

Q8. Climate change is good.
By 2010 impacts long predicted were turning up, sooner than many had expected — acidification of the oceans, unprecedented deadly heat waves, record-breaking floods and droughts, heat-related changes in the survival of sensitive species. MORE

Q9. CO2 is plant food.
It is plant food that is causing climate change.

Q10. The models are rigged.
Retreating alpine glaciers is not a model. It's opening your eyes.

Q11. I don't believe it.
But I do believe that the alpine glaciers are melting.
?And the Northwest Passage acoss the Bering Sea?
?And the Great Barrier Reef bleaching?
?And the flooding of streets in Miami Beach?
?And the wildfires in California? Earlier snowmelt has led to hot, dry conditions.

Questions, good ones

1. How long does CO2 stay in the atmosphere
It makes a big difference. If it stays 100 years, then each year 1% of the 400ppm drops out, or 4ppm. If 25 years, that's 16 ppm. 400, 1ppm.
Mona Loa data shows CO2 concentration going up and down seasonally. Surely, in natural seasonal variation, down must be greater than up, since some carbon is "sequestered" in the tree rings.

2. How much of emitted CO2 goes into the Ocean?
If it goes in the ocean, it does not go into the atmosphere.

3. How much heat goes into the Ocean?
How long does it take for the ocean to get hot enough to reject all attempts to stash heat in the ocean? I suppose when the ocean reaches atmospheric temperature. But the ocean can't change temperatures as fast as the atmosphere can. The atmosphere can drop 20 degrees in the blink of an eye, as you know.
El nino, which is a larger than usual hot patch in the pacific, blocks heat from going into the ocean. If the air can't cool down, it stays hotter. The standard problem.

4. How much energy will the world need in 2030?
How many 1G nuclear plants would we need to build each year? Many.

5. Solar radiation to land seems so different from solar radiation to ocean.
Different level of re-radiation from ocean, as ocean is cooler than land. Delayed reaction.

6. They say, here, "Without this natural greenhouse effect (but assuming the same albedo, or reflectivity, as today), the average surface temperature of the Earth would be about 60°F colder."
This means, doesn't it, that 300 ppm has a 60°F temperature effect.

7. Simplest solution is to consume less. A good discussion here: [1]

Malenkovitch cycles

Here is a geologist talking about climate science. He explains how the Milankovitch cycles caused the ice ages. One lesson is how delicately balanced the climate system is, and is affected by what seems like a small change.

The point that is quite surprising is that Earth presents essentially the same size disk to the sun all the time, and the only thing that changes from the viewpoint of the sun, is the location of the pole in that disk. This changes the mix of land and sea presented to the sun, and this small cyclic variation over millennia, is enough (apparently) to cause ice sheets to advance or to retreat, assuming that the CO2 level is low enough to allow Earth to cool, so that average global temperature falls below 32F for "long enough" periods, in enough places.

The latest version of the ROCLA video

Version 4 - is the latest revision 11/15/2018
Version 3

Yanqui, Go Home

The US occupies Guantanamo without a legal basis.
The lease contract for Southern Guantanamo Bay, negotiated in 1903, after the Spanish American War, is no longer valid, if it ever was valid. When President Teddy Roosevelt signed the lease, the US and Cuba were military allies and the President was a decorated veteran of the war for Cuban Independence.

The first paragraph of the lease, labelled "AGREEMENT"[1] repeats the obligation, imposed on the United States by the Treaty of Paris, “To enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for [the Cuban Government’s] own defense…”. The United States has refused to protect Cuba, its independence, and continues to try to dominate Cuba. This is a material breach of contract, and allows Cuba to repudiate the lease, which Cuba does each year by not cashing the check that the US sends to Cuba. The fact that the US sends a check to the communist government in Cuba is a recognition that the communist government in Cuba is the government to which the obligations of the lease are due, including the obligation to protect.

For more, see this.

FOIA delays

How can you connect the dots, if they hide all the dots?

The commander in chief is not in the military

By law: US code § 893
See Ridley v Warner 522 F.2d 882 (9th Cir. 1975)
Section 973(b) provides:

"Except as otherwise provided by law, no officer on the active list of the Regular Army, Regular Navy, Regular Air Force, Regular Marine Corps, or Regular Coast Guard may hold a civil office by election or appointment, whether under the United States, a Territory or possession, or a State. The acceptance of such a civil office or the exercise of its functions by such an officer terminates his military appointment."

So election to the presidency, rather than change a civilian into a military man, would do the exact opposite: change a military man into a civilian.
Were the president to be in the active duty military, he could not, under DoD Directive 1344, participate in political campaigns or other activity, or comment on public policy.

Eight is enough

on the Supreme Court. Eric C Seagall

Past time

Gisella Gonzales

CIMAVax, CUBA
Dr. Gisela Gonzalez has spent years researching the vaccine which the Cuban government approved for the use of the general public in 2008. Gonzalez and her team have worked on developing the CimaVax EGF vaccine at the Cuban Center of Molecular Immunology since the early 1990s.

Were we wrong?

Can I get a witness?

El contrato de arrendamiento nuevamente

luke nephew - hunger strike

Citizenship and can you be killed by the state.

Blogs: Collections of thoughts

These are other blogs that I have started at one time or another.
I put them here to free up space on my bookmarks bar.

1. 2X+7
A dozen posts in 2014 on The Doctrine of Discovery, on trial defenses, on fracking, on lack of action.
http://twoxplusseven.blogspot.com/

2. TimePlaceManner
A Dicsussion of issues at the White House sidewalk
http://timeplaceandmanner.blogspot.com/

3. 6.26
An examination of one arrest at the White House
http://june26whitehousesidewalk.blogspot.com/

4. The Lakewood Harold
A list of actions at Hancock about drones, with links to other sources.
http://lakewoodharold.blogspot.com/

5. Speaking of Korean
An attempt to learn Korean writing, and what happened at the Tsunami in Japan
http://speakingkorean.blogspot.com/

6. Cancer
http://2016prostatecancer.blogspot.com//

Reality

In Jail

LTE Buffalo News, pub. November 10th

The U.S. has breached Guantanamo agreement The United States leased Guantanamo from Cuba after helping Cuba become independent from Spain. The 1903 lease for Guantanamo restated the understanding, first made in Article VII of the Platt Amendment, that, for its own defense, the government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations. We explicitly undertook the responsibility to protect Cuba, which was a reaffirmation of our duty under the Treaty of Paris. The invasion in 1961 and the ongoing blockade are material breaches of that understanding. We have no legal right to occupy Cuban lands by virtue of a lease that we have unilaterally abrogated.

Buffalo News

Yanqui, go home

the spiral galaxy

Are spiral galaxies rotating?
The very center probably is, but the arms are shooting out.

probably not.

Farmworkers and immigrants. LASC WNY

El pueblo, unido

Cuba will never be defeated

Regarding acquiescence, as applied to the Gunatanamo lease

The US often takes an action that is not in compliance with the lease, and later claims that Cuba acquiesced. And at the same time the US repeats that "promises must be kept", or as often repeats it in latin "pacta sunt servanda", as if to emphasize the long standing acceptance of this principle as starting in the times of Rome. Yet this principle is understood to be true in every agreement, and it is explicitly stated for this lease agreement: the contract can normally be modified only by the mutual agreement of the two parties. Action followed by acquiescence does not meet the standard set in the 1934 treaty of relations, or necessarily for any agreement. A claim of breach of contract can always be raised. Some might say that silence means acceptance, but silence clearly does not mean acceptance where one party has the nuclear bomb and has a history of meddling in the affairs of the other, has an active blockade, and there is an ex-pat community that is constantly urging invasion and recapture of the lands taken by the state via eminent domain.

Cuba - reasons that the lease is not now in force

I said "in the trial" when I meant to say "in the lease"

Cuba

Guantanamo, the Flotilla

Sign up here

Holguin ICAP

Lupe Isabel Fernandez Ramirez(L) and Yamila(R). icaphlg@icap.cu

Appendix 10 of the Michael Strauss Book

Instruction to change the payment amount in 1973 and again in 1974
Click the image to see the full size, which is a composite of scans of the two pages.

UB North, student Union

CLOSE THE BASE

Freedom Square

The Unknown Knowns

The things we look away from, pretend we don't know, but we know, ignore, don't act on appropriately, because ... we just can't face

Co Housing

The Old Urbanism: Jane Jacobs

Location location timing [ here ]

They will come, whether you build it or not.

Colvin

Co Housing

1. Arboretum, Madison Wi

LIKE:
DONT: Cars at curb

2. Troy Gardens, Madison Wi

LIKE:
DONT:

3. Nomad, Boulder, Co

LIKE:
DONT: The look

4. Cambridge, Cambridge, Ma

LIKE:
DONT:

5. Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Ma

LIKE:
DONT:

6. Elderspirit, SW Virginia

LIKE:
DONT: Outside to commons

Michael Moore goes to Havana

In SICKO.

October 14th
Rosanne dies, in Tampa.

NFTA changes Utica bus route

La Nova Pizzeria has a pizza slice parking area. The Utica bus route normally gets from Ferry to Utica by driving through a neighborhood to pick up passengers. This requires a sharp turn onto New Hampshire from Ferry. Now they saunter down to Richmond and take the big street to get to Utica, leaving passengers waiting at the bus stops.