It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, January 13, 2023
THE BIGGEST FAILURE IN SPACE RACE2.0
Virgin Orbit says issue with rocket's second stage led to mission failure
Aria Alamalhodaei Thu, January 12, 2023
Virgin Orbit, the unconventional rocket company founded by billionaire Sir Richard Branson, said its mission failure earlier this week was due to an anomaly with the rocket’s second stage.
Although the LauncherOne rocket managed to reach space and achieve stage separation, the anomaly prematurely terminated the first burn of the upper stage’s engines, at an altitude of around 180 kilometers, Virgin said in a statement. Due to this engine anomaly, both the rocket components and payload fell back to Earth and were destroyed upon atmospheric reentry.
The mission payload consisted of nine small satellites, including two CubeSats for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense, a first test satellite from Welsh in-space manufacturing startup Space Forge and what would’ve been Oman’s first earth observation satellite.
Virgin Orbit engineers and board members have already begun an analysis of mission telemetry data to identify the cause of the anomaly. The company added that a formal investigation into the source of the failure will be led by Jim Sponnick, former VP for the Atlas and Delta launch system programs at United Launch Alliance, and Virgin Orbit’s chief engineer, Chad Foerster.
The company said the investigation will be complete, and corrective measures implemented, before LaucherOne’s next flight from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port. But how long that will take, and when we’ll next see Virgin’s Boeing 747 and rocket system take to the air again, is far from clear. Virgin said it was in talks with the U.K. government to conduct another launch from the country’s new Space Port in Cornwall for “as soon as later this year.”
That degree of uncertainty is never good for a public company, but it’s likely especially straining for Virgin Orbit, which is facing dwindling cash reserves and a pressing need to ramp up launch cadence to boost revenues. As of September 30, the company had $71 million in cash on hand; by the end of the year, Virgin got an injection of $25 million from Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and $20 million from Virgin Investments Ltd. But these funds will do little but delay the inevitable if Virgin doesn’t return to launch soon. Virgin Orbit clarifies the cause behind its 'Start Me Up' mission's failure to reach orbit
The anomaly that aborted the attempt has been identified as a 'premature shutdown of first burn of second stage.'
Everything was going great until it wasn't in the skies over Cornwall, UK on Monday. Virgin Orbit, the space launch division of Sir Richard Branson's sprawling commercial empire, was in the midst of setting a major milestone for the country and the nation: to be the first orbital launch from European soil. The carrier aircraft, Cosmic Girl, had successfully taken off from Spaceport Cornwall, LauncherOne had cleanly separated from the modified 747 and properly ignited its first stage rocket, blasting it and its payload of satellites into space. But before they could be pushed into their proper orbit by the rocket's second stage, something went wrong. On Thursday, Virgin Orbit leaders provided a preliminary explanation as to just what happened.
"At an altitude of approximately 180 km, the upper stage experienced an anomaly. This anomaly prematurely ended the first burn of the upper stage," the company told Engadget via email. "This event ended the mission, with the rocket components and payload falling back to Earth within the approved safety corridor without ever achieving orbit."
Virgin Orbit has also announced a "formal" investigation into the root causes of the anomaly which will be led by Jim Sponnick, who developed the Atlas and Delta launch systems, and Chad Foerster, Virgin Orbit's Chief Engineer. Despite the setback, the company is already in contact with UK officials to reschedule the launch for as soon as late 2023. Virgin Orbit: Premature shutdown behind rocket launch fail Britain Start Me Up Launch
A repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aircraft, named Cosmic Girl, carrying Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket, takes off from Spaceport Cornwall at Cornwall Airport, Newquay, England, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. The plane will carry the rocket to 35,000 feet where it will be released over the Atlantic Ocean to the south of Ireland, as part of the Start Me Up mission and the first rocket launch from U.K. The rocket will take multiple small satellites, with a variety of civil and defence applications, into orbit. (Ben Birchall/PA via AP)
Thu, January 12, 2023
LONDON (AP) — Virgin Orbit said Thursday its first attempt to launch satellites into orbit from the U.K. failed after its rocket's upper stage prematurely shut down.
The U.S.-based company used a modified Boeing 747 plane to carry one of its rockets from Cornwall in southwestern England over the Atlantic Ocean on Monday. The plane released the rocket, which carried nine small satellites, but the rocket failed to reach orbit.
In a statement Thursday, Virgin Orbit said initial data indicated that the first stage of the rocket performed as expected. It said the rocket reached space altitudes, and that stage separation and ignition of the upper stage occurred in line with the mission plan.
But it said that later in the mission, at an altitude of approximately 180 kilometers (112 miles), "the upper stage experienced an anomaly. This anomaly prematurely ended the first burn of the upper stage,” the company said.
The plane, piloted by a Royal Air Force pilot, returned to Cornwall. The rocket components and the satellites were destroyed.
The launch failure was a disappointment to the company and U.K. space officials, who had high hopes that the mission — the first such one to be attempted from Europe — would be the beginning of more commercial space launch ventures.
Virgin Orbit, which was founded by British billionaire Richard Branson in 2017, began commercial launching services in 2021. It had previously successfully completed four similar launches from California, carrying payloads for businesses and governmental agencies into orbit.
The company has launched an investigation into the source of the second stage failure on Monday. It said it plans to carry out its next mission from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, and that it is in talks with officials and businesses to return to the U.K. for another potential launch “as soon as later this year.”
“We’re going to make them pay a price”: The liberal groups attacking the House GOP
Story by Christian Paz • Jan 6, 2023
The new year could not have started any worse for House Republicans: 11 failed attempts to elect Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, infighting among the rank and file as fringe members of the party hold the rest of the chamber hostage, and a unified Democratic caucus that’s watching Republicans tear themselves apart.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) react during a vote to adjourn following a day of votes for the new speaker of the House at the US Capitol.
That’s exactly the narrative a coalition of Democratic and liberal groups want to cement in the minds of American voters for the next two years. These groups have developed a new plan to put the Democratic Party on offense and use Republican talking points and priorities against them. That effort includes an “investigate-the-investigators” approach: attacking the new House GOP leadership as they launch investigations into the Biden administration.
Describing themselves as collaborators in a war room to coordinate messaging, polling, paid and earned media, rallies, and local organizing, the groups include the relaunched Congressional Integrity Project and a campaign of progressive activists called Courage for America. Helping with public opinion surveys is Navigator, a progressive research and polling group; Common Defense, a progressive veteran-focused organization; and a new rapid response and opposition research team called the House Accountability War Room, which Courage for America launched.
All of these organizations will be focused on crafting attack ads, social media messaging, local awareness campaigns, and the occasional stunt, which would represent a bit of a departure for Democrats in Congress if they embrace the outside efforts. For most of the 2022 cycle, President Joe Biden and more moderate congressional candidates were less enthusiastic about attacking Republicans, opting instead for bipartisan messaging where they could, even as progressive firebrands called for more confrontation with the GOP’s right flank. That changed after the summer, and the more combative tone may be here to stay.
The efforts also aim to prevent a repeat of congressional Republicans’ two-year Benghazi investigations, which damaged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by uncovering her private email use, accusing her of mishandling the State Department’s response to the terrorist attack, and selectively leaking information from closed-door testimony.
Democrats don’t just want to avoid another Benghazi investigation, however. They learned from it and are borrowing some of the GOP’s messaging tactics with social media campaigns, opposition research distributed to journalists, and scrutiny of their funders, subordinates, and supporters. The hope is that the liberal groups will counterbalance the conservative think tanks, activists, and organizations that have been prepping Republicans to use their power in the majority for probes.
How progressive groups plan to control the narrative
Though these groups aren’t all operating under the same umbrella organization, they share similar goals: set the narrative for how the House GOP will operate before they have the power to start their investigations, push their conservative agenda, and create new rules for Congress. Related video: A handful of people can't run the party, says House Republican (MSNBC) Duration 9:18 View on Watch
“One of the key goals here is to help educate the American people about how this House is run and controlled by MAGA extremists, which is becoming increasingly clear as we witness this speaker fight,” Zac Petkanas, a longtime Democratic strategist who has worked for Hillary Clinton’s presidential and Harry Reid’s senate campaigns and is running the House Accountability War Room, told me.
Petkanas said that the goal of these groups is to “make sure that none of the work that this new House does goes unnoticed.” The idea is to hold a mirror up to Republicans’ priorities. “So when they pass legislation,” he said, “doing what they said they were going to do, which is to cut Social Security and Medicare, to raise prescription drug costs, to pass a national abortion ban, we’re going to make sure that people don’t just shrug it off here in DC so that people back at home don’t hear about it, we’re going to hold a lantern to that.”
The groups geared up in the fall of 2022, after it seemed apparent that despite Democratic candidates defying the odds in battleground districts and states, they would lose their House majority by the slimmest of margins.
For example, Common Defense, which usually focuses on veteran-specific policy advocacy, partnered with Courage for America, the network of progressive activists, to “start preparing as soon as the election ended in November for what was going to inevitably be this Republican shitshow,” Naveed Shah, the political director for Common Defense and a senior adviser to Courage for America, told me. “Common Defense and Courage for America are working to ensure that our elected officials hear from their constituents, and they need to know that they are going to be held accountable by us.”
That includes press conferences, like the one that both groups delivered Thursday in front of the Capitol building to call for the House GOP to condemn political violence two years after the January 6 Capitol attack. In attendance were four Democratic members of Congress, former Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone, and about 40 military veterans. And it includes directly confronting Republican members of Congress either through local demonstrations in their districts (like one in Long Island, New York, to call for an investigation of Representative-elect George Santos) or on the Hill and filming those interactions for social media, like encounters this week with Reps.-elect Troy Nehls of Texas, Mike Carey and Bill Johnson of Ohio, and Fanone delivering a petition to Georgia Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene’s office.
Those confrontations show the different attitude these outside groups have for dealing with the GOP; compared to official Democratic Party groups, these new organizations are bolder about keeping Republicans on their toes on Capitol Hill and tarnishing the reputations of these future investigators and power brokers.
This week, House Accountability War Room also released its first opposition research document focused on 39 current and incoming GOP lawmakers. Highlighting figures like Greene, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, the “MAGA Guidebook” was distributed around congressional offices, Metro stations, and in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Boosting the guidebook and the effort to tie the House Republican majority to its furthest right flank is the revamped Congressional Integrity Project, which put up posters and projected a display near the Capitol to exploit the GOP’s chaotic speaker election, highlighting McCarthy’s efforts to gain favor with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s and the House Freedom Caucus that is so far blocking McCarthy’s bid.
Beyond that, the Congressional Integrity Project plans to “engage in other paid activities. We’re looking at putting people in key swing districts around the country because we want to have a discussion with the constituents of Republican members in swing districts to ask, ‘Is this what you want Congress focused on?’” Brad Woodhouse, a veteran Democratic strategist helping to lead the project, told me. “We’re gonna spend money, we’re gonna grow our organization, we’re gonna go down into the district level, and we’re going to be on offense.”
That offensive posture would be a new strategy for Democrats, especially in the context of the eventual congressionalinvestigations that Republicans want to conduct of the Biden administration, Woodhouse told me. “Someone could look at the effort to push back investigations against President Biden and his administration and Democrats and democratic policies, it would be defensive,” he said, “but we don’t consider it that way. We are on offense.” He added that the goal is “to undermine their political standing. We’re going to make them pay a price.”
And that means crafting a coordinated anti-MAGA Republican narrative in the press and social media, informing partners in the White House and in both chambers of Congress of polling and opposition research, and taking that knowledge to voters, in the same spirit that Republicans did the last time they had a House majority with a Democratic president (like the Benghazi hearings) and had begun to prepare with outside groups late last year.
“I take a lot of optimism from how unified the message was by Democrats and the president putting this MAGA ideology front and center, making Republicans accountable for it,” Woodhouse said. “And it’s not a hard concept.”
Canada enters a public domain pause as copyright laws change to match other nations
Story by Joseph Pugh • Saturday 7, 01,2023
Excited about Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books entering the public domain in Canada? Thanks to recent changes to copyright laws here, you'll now be waiting a couple more decades.
When the copyright on a work expires anyone is free to use it without needing to seek permission. This is known as public domain. In Canada, copyright laws meant that books, films, songs or other works entered public domain 50 years after the death of the creator.
But last week, the country updated those laws, tacking on an extra 20 years, so works don't enter the public domain until 70 years after the creator's death. This means additional content will not enter the public domain in Canada until at least 2043. So the copyright on the works of fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien, who died in 1973, will now expire in 2043, meaning the Lord of the Rings trilogy and many of his other works will become public domain on Jan. 1, 2044.
The change brings Canada in line with other jurisdictions that lengthened their copyright terms decades ago. Some artists and creative unions welcome the change, while others feel the duration hampers public access to artistic works.
Canadian songwriter Marc Jordan from Toronto, whose credits include 1978's Rhythm of my Heart, feels the copyright extension has benefits for his work down the road.
"If you're going to go into this business, you want to know that there is some way you can make a living, and I think by extending this the extra 20 years … adds a little bit of value to what you're doing," he said.
"People, companies will still make money from those songs if they're used to promote a product or they're used as a theme song, so why shouldn't the heirs have some access to the value of that?"
Canada now on a par with other countries
Intellectual property lawyer Elizabeth Dipchand says this recent change is the result of what's happening outside our borders.
"It is absolutely about copyright, but it's actually more so about trade rights," she said. "The management of intangible assets [doesn't] stop at the borders."
Both the European Union and the U.S. extended their copyright terms to 70 years after an author's death at separate points during the 1990s (in the U.S., there are also different copyright rules regarding corporate-owned works and those from before 1978.)
In a statement to CBC News, the Office of the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry cited the Canada-U.S.-Mexico (CUSMA) trade agreement as the reason for the change last week.
"In keeping with our trade obligations under CUSMA, Canada was required to extend copyright term protection by 20 years, to 70 years after end of life prior to January 1. This puts Canada in line with many other jurisdictions in the world, including Europe, the U.K. and Australia."
Change not retroactive
But the change to Canada's copyright laws is not retroactive, so any works whose creators died before 1972 are still available in the public domain.
This means for the next 20 years, there are a number of titles that have entered the public domain in Canada that still have copyright protection in most of the world. Some examples include the works of authors Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath and James Bond creator Ian Fleming.
Dipchand says Canadians could potentially use that material, but would need to be concerned about whether or not people could access them across borders, including via the internet.
"Does that purpose behind what you're going to do with the work, is that traded off against what potential hot water you can get into in a different jurisdiction?" she says.
According to Dipchand, live performance is one space Canadians could see the material used, allowing theatres to stage performances of public domain works here without having to pay royalties.
Even when something is in the public domain, potential creators may still face issues.
Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne Of Green Gables, for example, entered the public domain 30 years ago. But The Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority Inc., owned by the province of Prince Edward Island and Montgomery's heirs, has a trademark on Anne of Green Gables, and has worked to protect it. The impact of public domain
Neil Shyminsky, a pop culture writer and professor of English at Cambrian College in Sudbury, Ont., thinks most Canadians are unlikely to notice this copyright extension.
"Really, it's just the furthering of a situation that was already in place," he said.
In the U.S., works from 1927 are entering the public domain this year.
These include The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, the final Holmes novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, whose work has been in the Canadian public domain for decades.
Next year Steamboat Willie, the first cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse, is scheduled to enter the public domain.
"I expect that Disney will be spending the next 12 months lobbying really hard to get the United States to once again revisit and look at extending those copyright protections," said Shyminsky.
But he says there is often an impact that comes with having content in the public domain sooner.
He cites the cultural revival of the 1946 film It's A Wonderful Life as an example of a work that has come to be seen as a classic largely because it entered the public domain early.
Though the film was not initially a commercial success, a bureaucratic error allowed it to enter the public domain in the 1970s.
This meant television stations could play it without having to pay for the rights, giving the film a new audience and a reputation as a holiday classic.
"It allowed for this sort of democratisation of what it means to be popular," Shyminsky said.
"Rather than 'We're going to push this, we're going to put a marketing budget of multiple millions of dollars, and we're going to tell you what is popular culture.' "
Fentanyl killed 70,000 in US. With Biden in Mexico, can neighbors cooperate to stop flow?
Josh Meyer, USA TODAY
Four days before President Joe Biden flies south to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, authorities in the northwest state of Sinaloa arrested the son of the infamous drug cartel leader known as "El Chapo," who is wanted by U.S. officials for contributing to the fentanyl epidemic that killed as many as 70,000 Americans last year.
At least 29 people, including 10 Mexican soldiers, were killed in shootouts with Sinaloa Cartel members during the operation to nab Ovidio Guzman on Thursday and fly him to Mexico City on a military plane.
Publicly, Mexican officials denied that the raid was timed to show Washington that its southern neighbor is an active partner in the politically fraught bilateral effort to stanch the cross-border flow of the lethal synthetic opioid.
But some current and former American counternarcotics officials are suspicious, noting that another "most wanted" drug cartel leader, Rafael Caro Quintero, was arrested in Sinaloa just days after Biden and Lopez Obrador met in Washington last July to discuss a range of issues, including a drug war that has tested the two countries' security alliance for the past half a century.
"It certainly seems like politics. There's a lot of speculation now that it's all about the timing," former Drug Enforcement Administration official Derek Maltz told USA TODAY. "Biden announces he's going down to Mexico, so now they're going to go out and grab Ovidio," who has been facing U.S. criminal drug trafficking charges since his indictment in New York in 2018.
President Joe Biden meets with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the Oval Office of the White House on July 12.
Based on his conversations with current DEA leaders, some senior U.S. counternarcotics officials believe Mexico also has been inflating the amount of fentanyl and other drugs it has seized at cartel "superlabs" where vast quantities of fentanyl and methamphetamine are produced just south of the border for easy smuggling into the United States, according to Maltz, the special agent in charge of DEA's Special Operations Division for almost 10 years before his retirement in 2014.
"I really don't know for sure," added Maltz, who helped lead the international effort to capture Ovidio's father, Joaquín Guzmán Loera. "But in my opinion, unless it's sustained attacks against the cartel leadership and the production labs, it's not going to make a difference. Meanwhile, we have 9,000 Americans dying every month."
It’s no secret what Biden will be asking of López Obrador, and vice versa, when they meet in Mexico City next week on the sidelines of the North American Leaders’ Summit.
López Obrador wants the same thing from Biden as Mexican leaders have been demanding for the past half a century: to reduce the voracious American demand for Mexican-made drugs that has created the multibillion-dollar black market economy in the first place. He wants Washington to stem the flow of U.S.-manufactured guns smuggled into Mexico, which have allowed Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation and other cartels to accumulate more firepower than most government armies.
And Biden wants Mexico to stop the flood of deadly narcotics coming into the United States, especially fentanyl, which killed more Americans last year than COVID-19, motor vehicle accidents, cancer and suicide. More discreetly, he will also push Mexico to do far more to attack the rampant government corruption and collusion that for decades has allowed the cartels to flourish.
Working hard for a deal
Aides to both presidents have been working behind the scenes to tee up some form of counternarcotics agreement, or at least signs of progress, that can be announced when the two meet.
On Friday, White House spokesman John Kirby said Mexico already has taken "significant steps" to crack down on fentanyl traffickers and referenced Guzman's arrest. "That is not an insignificant accomplishment by Mexican authorities, and we're certainly grateful for that," Kirby told reporters. "So we're going to continue to work with them in lockstep to see what we can do jointly to try to limit that flow."
Security analysts, however, told USA TODAY that the outcome is likely going to be the same as it has been after similar summits attended by almost every U.S. president since Richard Nixon established the U.S. “War on Drugs” just over 50 years ago. There will be promises made by both sides to do more, followed by the inevitable backsliding when it comes to turning those promises into reality.
A truck burns on a street in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, on Thursday. Mexican security forces captured Ovidio Guzmán, an alleged drug trafficker wanted by the United States and one of the sons of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in a pre-dawn operation.
That’s especially the case because counternarcotics relations between Washington and Mexico City have been at an unusually low point since AMLO, as he is popularly known, became president in December 2018. Almost immediately, he threw out the bilateral playbook the two countries had been using to go after the cartels.
Even as Mexico's murder rate soared, López Obrador said he had no intention of going after the cartels, instead focusing on a more wholistic "Hugs, not bullets" approach that prioritized social welfare over law enforcement.
“These issues are very difficult. They're very hard. But look, you’ve got to restart some of these conversations and have, again, a more constructive, honest dialogue between the two countries to beget a framework, and begin a process, that leads to greater action,” said David Luna, a former top State Department official who led bilateral efforts to fight the growing threat of transnational drug cartels.
“You can’t just focus on the cartels and the criminality," Luna said. "To make greater progress, with greater results, you need to be fighting the enabling corruption and organized crime that is helping to fuel the insecurity and cartel violence in Mexico."
Fighting corruption alongside criminality
The U.S.-Mexico security relationship became even more strained after U.S. drug enforcement agents arrested the former Mexican defense minister, retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, on drug-trafficking-related corruption charges as he and his family arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Oct. 15, 2020. That all but dismantled bilateral law enforcement operations between the two countries, especially over drug traffickers.
To move forward, Biden himself “needs to take a more direct role" in pushing Mexico to deal much more aggressively with the endemic corruption in the country, said Luna, the founder and executive director of the International Coalition Against Illicit Economies. “President Biden must place greater accountability on President Obrador to disrupt the illegal fentanyl production in Mexico and to disrupt the various illicit trafficking flows.”
Frame grab from video provided by the Mexican government shows Ovidio Guzman Lopez at the moment of his detention, in Culiacan, Mexico
Four demands Washington needs to make
Maltz, the former DEA Special Operations chief, outlined four demands that Biden should make – and that he says U.S. counternarcotics officials have been pushing for years.
The U.S. has indicted a “massive number” of senior cartel leaders who are still operating in Mexico, including in fentanyl trafficking, but who Mexico hasn’t captured or, more importantly, extradited to the United States to stand trial, Maltz told USA TODAY.
He also said Washington has shared intelligence with Mexico numerous times about the “superlabs” that are producing record-breaking amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamine and other drugs just south of the U.S. border that are then smuggled into the United States. “We’ve made historic seizures at the border and in this country, but they have to go after the border labs with their elite units like the Mexican Navy,” Maltz said.
He said the Cienfuegos arrest “set us back many, many years in Mexico, and they are not being cooperative and they are not working on joint operational successes. And the lab seizures are way down” in Mexico, Maltz said
And Mexico needs to stop the flow of chemical precursors from China and India that are used to make fentanyl and meth, and to take far more aggressive action against Chinese money launderers that are now working in tandem with the cartels.
“There’s really a lot of frustration on our side of the border,” Maltz said. “We are not getting enough from them.”
A 'very prickly nationalist'
Whether López Obrador will be responsive is anybody’s guess. He made headlines by not going to the Summit of Americas last July in what was seen as a major blow to the U.S.-Mexico relationship. He made his second visit to the White House in eight months soon after but tartly told Biden that he was meeting “in spite of our differences and also in spite of our grievances that are not really easy to forget with time or with good wishes.”
"López Obrador is a very prickly nationalist,” said former Mexico Ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhán Casamitjana. He noted that the Mexican president sent a letter to Biden before the summit in which he continued to insist that one of the key issues that he'll be pressing is to ensure that the U.S doesn't meddle in the domestic affairs of other countries in the Americas, including his own.
“This is part of his 1960s, 1970s vision of the world and the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship," Sarukhán said. “So given that this is also a Mexican government, that has really sort of ratcheted down the level of collaboration in terms of law enforcement and counternarcotics policy.”
Analysis-Capture of El Chapo's son gilds Mexican president's patchy record on crime
Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attend a news conference, in Mexico Fri, January 6, 2023 By Dave Graham
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The capture of a drug cartel boss who embarrassed Mexico's government has given President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador a rare crime-fighting victory as he prepares to host a major North American summit and gears up to secure his succession.
The arrest of Ovidio Guzman, son of captured kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was a timely reversal of fortune for Lopez Obrador. The president had ordered Ovidio to be freed to avoid mass bloodshed after he was captured previously in the state of Sinaloa in 2019, sparking a violent stand-off with cartel gunmen.
His release angered the armed forces and caused consternation inside the government and the United States, according to U.S. and Mexican officials, feeding criticism of Lopez Obrador's strategy of avoiding direct clashes with gangs.
But the recapture of Guzman, a leader of a cartel blamed for helping to fuel a surge in U.S. opioid deaths, just as President Joe Biden and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are due to arrive in Mexico for the summit could hardly have come at a better time for Lopez Obrador, analysts and officials said.
"It's a plus for him domestically, and a plus for him with the Americans," said Jorge Castaneda, a former Mexican foreign minister and prominent critic of the president.
However, the arrest, one of just a handful of major scalps Lopez Obrador has claimed, is unlikely to herald a major sea change in the battle on organized crime unless the government is more aggressive about going after gangs, analysts said.
Lopez Obrador took office in 2018 vowing to get a grip on gang violence. Instead, the number of homicides rose on his watch, and is now on the verge of surpassing the total recorded in the entire preceding six-year administration.
And while Lopez Obrador is popular, his record on combating crime has consistently been viewed critically by voters.
In a poll by newspaper El Financiero published this week, security again emerged as his biggest weakness, with 52% of respondents saying the government was doing a bad job on it compared with just over a third arguing the opposite.
The president's overall approval rating has held close to 60% for months, and he is hoping to lend his popularity to help his party's candidate, due to be chosen this year, secure victory in the 2024 presidential election.
Mexican presidents can only serve a single term.
GOODWILL
Lopez Obrador's attitude to the Sinaloa Cartel has stirred up misgivings, particularly when he decided to greet El Chapo's mother on a trip to Sinaloa in 2020.
Raul Benitez, a security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said Ovidio's capture should help quell frustration the military felt at having to give up Ovidio during the botched attempt at nabbing him in 2019.
Mexican security forces were never persuaded by Lopez Obrador's stated policy of using "hugs not bullets" to combat crime and the successful sting against Guzman showed that a more robust approach was what yielded results, he added.
Now Mexico needs to pursue the Sinaloa gang's main rival, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or they would pick up any slack in the market for deadly opioid fentanyl, Benitez said.
John Feeley, a former deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy to Mexico, said unless authorities had a comprehensive strategy to dismantle cartels and their front businesses, little progress would be made against fentanyl traffickers.
"Any big dude you take down is always welcome," he said. "(But) until you have a coordinated take-down of first, second and third tier associates as well as ... 'legitimate' citizens who collaborate in the money laundering, all you're really doing is putting on a spectacle for a visiting dignitary."
Feeley was skeptical that enough pressure would come from Washington to build on Guzman's capture, arguing that U.S. governments tended to subordinate all other interests to securing the U.S.-Mexico border against illegal immigration.
There were signs of mutual goodwill after the capture.
Mexico's government said late on Thursday that Biden had decided to land for the summit at a politically contentious new airport and flagship project of Lopez Obrador north of Mexico City which has so far struggled to secure airline traffic.
Mexican officials had privately been skeptical that Biden would agree to touch down there.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Alistair Bell)
Mexican capo's arrest a gesture to US, not signal of change 2 / 12 Traffic drive past a charred vehicle set on fire the day before, in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, Mexico, Friday, Jan. 6, 2023. The government operation on Thursday to detain Ovidio Guzman, the son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, unleashed firefights that killed 10 military personnel and 19 suspected members of the Sinaloa drug cartel, according to authorities.
(AP Photo/Martin Urista) ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, MARK STEVENSON and FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ Fri, January 6, 2023
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s capture of a son of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán this week was an isolated nod to a drug war strategy that Mexico’s current administration has abandoned rather than a sign that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s thinking has changed, experts say.
Ovidio Guzmán’s arrest in the Sinaloa cartel stronghold of Culiacan on Thursday came at the cost of at least 30 lives — 11 from the military and law enforcement and 19 suspected cartel gunmen. But analysts predict it won't have any impact on the flow of drugs to the United States.
It was a display of muscle — helicopter gunships, hundreds of troops and armored vehicles — at the initiation of a possible extradition process rather than a significant step in a homegrown Mexican effort to dismantle one of the country’s most powerful criminal organizations. Perhaps coincidentally, it came just days before U.S President Joe Biden makes the first visit by a U.S. leader in almost a decade.
López Obrador has made clear throughout the first four years of his six-year term that pursuing drug capos is not his priority. When military forces cornered the younger Guzmán in Culiacan in 2019, the president ordered him freed to avoid loss of life after gunmen started shooting up the city.
The only other big capture under his administration was the grabbing of a geriatric Rafael Caro Quintero last July — just days after López Obrador met with Biden in the White House. At that point, Caro Quintero carried more symbolic significance for ordering a DEA agent’s murder decades ago than real weight in today’s drug world.
“Mexico wants to do at least the bare minimum in terms of counter-drug efforts,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations who spent 13 years of his career in Mexico. “I don’t think that this is a sign that there’s going to be closer cooperation, bilateral collaboration, if you will, between the United States and Mexico.”
While capturing a criminal is a win for justice and rule of law, Vigil said, the impact on what he sees as a “permanent campaign against drugs” is nil. “Really what we need to do here in the United States is we need to do a better job in terms of reducing demand.”
That was a key talking point when the U.S. and Mexican governments announced late in 2021 a new Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health and Safe Communities, replacing the outdated Merida Initiative.
The pact was supposed to take a more holistic approach to the scourge of drugs and the deaths they cause on both sides of the border. But underlining the frequent disconnect between diplomatic speech and reality, just two months later the U.S. government announced a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of any of four of El Chapo’s sons, including Ovidio, signaling the U.S. kingpin strategy was alive and well.
“The Bicentennial understanding was a change on paper with respect to attacking drug trafficking and violence with a more important focus on what were supposedly public health programs — (but) without any budget,” said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at George Mason University. In reality, “Mexico is bending to the United States’ interests.”
For decades, the U.S. has nabbed drug kingpins from Mexico, Colombia and points between, but drugs are as available and more deadly in the United States as ever, she said. “The kingpin strategy is a failed strategy.”
The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on Ovidio Guzmán's arrest.
López Obrador took office in December 2018 after campaigning with a motto of “hugs, not bullets.” He shifted resources to social programs to address what he sees as violence’s root causes, a medium- to long-term approach that did little for a country suffering more than 35,000 homicides per year.
“Something that has characterized, in my opinion, Mexico’s security policy in recent years is that it isn’t very clear. It has been a bit contradictory,” said Ángelica Durán-Martínez, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. That ambiguity makes it difficult to determine if there has really been a change, she said.
López Obrador’s government benefits from the detention of Guzmán in several ways. The arrest eases the armed forces’ humiliation after being forced by cartel gunmen to release him in 2019. It may sooth ill-feelings after his administration strictly limited U.S. anti-drug cooperation two years ago. And it may help diminish perceptions that López Obrador -- who has frequently visited Sinaloa and praised its people — has gone easier on the Sinaloa cartel than on other gangs.
For four years López Obrador has continued to shred his predecessors’ prosecution of the drug war at every opportunity. Experts say the respite allowed the cartels to get stronger, both in terms of organization and armament.
Guzmán during that time took a growing role after his father was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. The younger Guzmán was indicted in Washington on drug trafficking charges along with another brother in 2018. He allegedly controlled a number of methamphetamine labs and was involved as the Sinaloa cartel expanded strongly into fentanyl production.
Synthetic drugs have been impervious to government eradication efforts, are easier to produce and smuggle, and are much more profitable.
The Sinaloa cartel hardly missed a beat when Guzmán's father was sent to the U.S., so the capture of one of the so-called “Chapitos,” as the brothers are known, is never going to shake the operation.
Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope said the detention of Ovidio Guzman probably came as the result of pressure or information from the U.S. government, and marks the tacit abandonment of López Obrador’s rhetoric about ditching the kingpin strategy.
For Hope, the detention is depressing, not only because it won’t fundamentally change the Sinaloa cartel’s booming export trade in meth and fentanyl, but because it reveals how little investigation Mexican authorities had done on Guzmán and the cartel since 2019.
“How great that they got Ovidio, applause, perfect,” Hope said. “What depresses me is that we’ve been at this (drug war) for 16 years, or 40 counting from the (murder of DEA agent Enrique) Camarena, and we still don’t have the ability to investigate.”
After Guzmán's capture, Mexican officials said he was arrested on an existing U.S. extradition request, as well as for illegal weapons possession and attempted murder at the time they found him. On Friday, Interior Secretary Adán López Hernández said there were other Mexican investigations underway that they couldn’t talk about.
“We keep betting on the muscle, the military capabilities and not on the ability to investigate,” Hope said.
Thursday, January 12, 2023
Republican Men Still Can’t Talk About Abortion and Rape Without Embarrassing Themselves
Kylie Cheung Thu, January 12, 2023 Photo: Brandon Bell (Getty Images)
It’s been well over a year now since Texas enacted its citizen-enforced abortion ban, S.B. 8, which offers no exceptions for rape. In September 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott famously defended this by proclaiming that he would simply “eliminate all rapists from the streets,” ostensibly by giving more funding to the same police officers who do little to nothing to prevent sexual violence—and often perpetrate it themselves.
And now, in the wake of some Texas Republicans expressing openness to adding a rape exception to the state’s abortion laws ahead of the 2023 legislative session, Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick (R) opted to give a revisionist history lesson on the issue on the podcast Y’allitics this week. Specifically, Patrick suggested Democrats are actually to blame for the cruelty that abortion bans inflict on rape victims. “Our original law that’s on the books now was written by Democrats—all Democrats,” Patrick said. “We had few Republicans back then, few Republicans in the state. They did not put in an exception for rape or incest when they passed that law.”
Patrick is referring to pre-Roe abortion bans and laws criminalizing abortion from the 1920s and as far back as the 1850s—you know, before the political realignment spurred by the New Deal era.
Because apparently it needs to be said, political parties took radically different stances 100 years ago! Today, Texas Democrats are challenging abortion bans and Republicans are upholding them—it’s not complicated.
Insipid as Patrick’s comments were (including his claim that “a child who is born should not be another victim of that crime,” referring to rape-induced pregnancies), what else, really, could he say? For over a year now, Texas Republicans—like anti-abortion lawmakers everywhere—have stumbled around talking about abortion and rape, relying on obfuscation, misinformation, and tough-on-crime rhetoric disregarding how law enforcement and the criminal legal system have historically victimized survivors, because they can’t justify their positions.
In recent months, Republican politicians have claimed people can’t be impregnated by rape because they “control that intake of semen.” Last year, Jezebel reported on a Michigan Republican candidate who said he told his daughters, “If rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it.” An Ohio Republican in the state legislature called pregnancy from rape “an opportunity.” Notably, in post-Roe Ohio, a 10-year-old rape victim was forced to travel across state lines for abortion, prompting top Republicans in Ohio and Indiana to terrorize and investigate the doctor who provided her care for months.
In June, then-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) outright admitted that the state’s total abortion ban, which lacks a rape exception, could force rape survivors as young as 13 to carry their rapist’s babies—but he also refused to do anything about it. “I would prefer a different outcome than that, but that’s not the debate today in Arkansas. It might be in the future, but for now, the law triggered with only one exception ... in the case of the life of the mother.”
The only way to grant pregnant rape victims dignity and agency is to not ban abortion at all or subject survivors to extensive, retraumatizing verification processes to “prove” their rape to law enforcement. Yet, where anti-abortion lawmakers once overwhelmingly supported rape exceptions—to present themselves as “moderate”—nearly all abortion bans post-Roe now lack them. Because why pretend to care about pregnant people and rape survivors when you can just lie and blame the Democrats?
Jezebel
Georgia nuclear plant startup delayed due to vibrating pipe
In this image provided by Georgia Power, the outside of the Unit 3 reactor containment building at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Ga., is shown on Oct. 13, 2022. Startup of the nuclear power plant will be delayed since its operator found a vibrating pipe in the cooling system during testing, Georgia Power Co. announced Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023.
JEFF AMY Wed, January 11, 2023
ATLANTA (AP) — Startup of a nuclear power plant in Georgia will be delayed since its operator found a vibrating pipe in the cooling system during testing.
Georgia Power Co., the lead owner of Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, announced the delay Wednesday. The company said that the third reactor at the plant is scheduled to begin generating electricity for the grid in April. The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. had previously given a startup deadline of March.
The problem was found during startup testing in a pipe that is part of the reactor's automatic depressurization system, said Georgia Power spokesperson Jacob Hawkins. He said the pipe needs to be braced with additional support.
“It's not a safety issue,” he said.
Southern Nuclear Operating Co., which will operate the reactor on behalf of Georgia Power and other owners, must get approval for a license modification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company said in an investor filing.
The plant includes two operating nuclear reactors and the first two nuclear reactors being built from scratch in the United States in decades. The fourth reactor is still under construction and is supposed to start generating electricity sometime in 2024.
The delay will cost Georgia Power and other co-owners at least $30 million.
A third and a fourth reactor were approved for construction at Vogtle by the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2012, and the third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016. The cost of the third and fourth reactors has climbed from an original cost of $14 billion to more than $30 billion.
Other owners include Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton. Oglethorpe and MEAG would sell power to cooperatives and municipal utilities across Georgia, as well as in Jacksonville, Florida, and parts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.
Georgia Power customers are already paying part of the financing cost and state regulators have approved a monthly rate increase as soon as the third reactor begins generating power. But the Georgia Public Service Commission will decide later who pays for the remainder of the costs.
Vogtle is the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States. Its costs and delays could deter other utilities from building such plants, even though they generate electricity without releasing climate-changing carbon emissions.
Solar developers approached two NY farmers. Their choices reveal an industry in crisis
Thomas C. Zambito and Edward Harris, New York State Team Wed, January 11, 2023
The cows have all been milked and fed.
Ben Simons’ Holsteins are lounging in a field next to his home on Starr Hill in Remsen, the morning fog having given way to a warming early afternoon sun.
“Right now, they’re fat and happy,” Simons says, taking in the scene. Ben Simons stands outside of his home and farm on Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.
Dairy cows have provided Simons a steady income through the years, ever since he and his wife Robin arrived in central New York in the 1980s, joining an exodus of farming families from New Hampshire in search of a place where they could work the land and raise a family.
They sell milk to yogurt maker Chobani in nearby Chenango County and Hood dairy products in Massachusetts.
But it’s physical work, up with the sun milking cows, planting corn and soybeans and, when the growing season is over, chopping firewood for sale in nearby towns. Simons is 61.
A few years ago, while he was up on a tractor harvesting hay, Simons got an unexpected visit from a man who chased him down in the field with an offer.
He was a land agent for a developer checking his interest in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.
He mentioned the transmission lines that border the fields along the Starr Hill property. Those lines would carry energy down to a substation and onto the grid, helping the state achieve its goal of 70% reliance on renewables by 2030. Ben Simons stands out on the back porch of his home with his farmland in the background atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.More
He tossed around a few numbers — Simons recalls about $1,000 an acre annually — and promised Simons he’d receive his first down payment after the agreement was signed.
And then he asked Simons, “Are you going to keep farming?”
It’s a question upstate farmers have been asking themselves a lot in recent years. Facing an uncertain financial outlook and a next generation unwilling to inherit the family farm, leasing land to a solar developer is a way out.
This is the story of two farmers. One who took the offer, another who turned it down. Ben Simons stands out on the back porch of his home with his farmland in the background atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.More An offer hard to refuse
Minimum wage increases, lower overtime thresholds for workers and the cost of doing business in New York — not to mention changing weather patterns — have made the farmer’s life a daily grind that has some looking for the exit. Dairy farmers like Simons have had to contend with plunging milk prices.
Enter renewable energy developers drawn to New York by financial incentives the state has put in place to achieve its ambitious slate of climate goals. They’ve been fanning out across upstate New York in recent years, searching for farmers willing to turn over their land for, in many cases, thousands of dollars an acre annually.
The state’s goal of 60 gigawatts of solar-powered energy by 2050 translates to roughly 180 million panels. That includes panels on commercial and residential properties as well as utility-scale arrays like the one envisioned for Simons’ farm. A view of the transmission lines that border the fields along Ben Simons' Starr Hill property in Remsen, NY.
“Farmers, I talk to them every day, they are equally frustrated and concerned about their well-being,” said Jeff Williams, the policy director for the New York Farm Bureau. “I know a couple of farmers are making that calculation now because they just can't be competitive.”
And so, the question posed to Simons a few years ago — “Are you going to keep farming?" — takes on greater urgency.
Some 16 miles southeast of Simons’ farm, Richard Marko runs a 350-acre cattle farm called Hillside Meadows in Newport, north of Utica. It produces enough beef to feed about 30 families.
A few months ago, Marko was approached by a Canadian renewable developer named Boralex who wanted to put a solar farm on a portion of his 350–acre property on North Gage Road.
The Newport Solar Project, as it’s called, would saddle the Herkimer and Oneida county lines, covering some 900 acres in Deerfield and Newport.
Boralex approached Marko because they were looking for land flat enough to lay solar panels and fields close enough to the electrical grid. The Deerfield and Newport properties checked all the boxes, Boralex spokesman Darren Suarez said.
Fields of solar panel arrays would be mixed in with viable farmland that would remain in use during the 25-year life of the project, Suarez said.
“It’s integrated more into the community," he said.
Towns, counties and local school districts would reap an estimated $8 million in revenue. The 130-megawatt array would produce enough energy to power roughly 37,000 homes, with some of the energy remaining nearby and the rest sent out on the grid.
Marko and his wife Patty were raised on dairy farms and bought the Hillside Meadows property a decade ago. They have four adult children between the ages of 30 and 43 and hope one day to leave it to their son, who is currently on active duty in the Marines.
After the lease term expires, the land involved in the solar project would be returned to farming. That sold Marko.
“It’s not ruining our farmland," he said. "It’s preserving our farmland." Balancing NY renewable energy goals with 'finite resources'
State Sen. Michelle Hinchey, a Democrat, chairs the agriculture committee and represents a district with more than 1,000 farms.
In recent years, the district, which includes Greene and Montgomery counties, has been flooded with proposals for largescale solar developments and Hinchey fears the state's renewable buildout risks creating "a secondary crisis" by removing prime soil from food production.
“Don’t get me wrong, we need renewable energy, we needed it 50 years ago,” Hinchey said. “But we cannot do it at the detriment and at the expense of our finite resources, especially our finite agricultural resources.” A view of Ben Simon's farm atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.
Farmland, she said, should be the last resort.A bill Hinchey sponsored that would discourage renewable developers from using prime farmland passed both houses of the state legislature this year. But in late November it was vetoed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said it would hinder the New York State Energy and Redevelopment Authority’s agrivoltaic program — a way to use land simultaneously for renewable energy and farming.
Hinchey plans to introduce the measure again in 2023.
Ben Simons talks with his son Christopher who is sitting inside of a John Deere atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.
In an effort to steer developers away from viable farmland, the state recently began a program requiring solar developers to make an “agricultural mitigation payment” if their plan includes building on prime agricultural soil. A Hinchey-sponsored bill Hochul signed this month requires that the money go into a farmland protection fund.
Under the current setup, developers search out willing landowners, then try to win state approval. It’s led to showdowns pitting the state against towns who fear sweeping views of green pastures will be marred by fields of solar panels or wind turbines.
State Sen. Joseph Griffo, a Republican whose district includes the upstate counties of Oneida, Lewis and St. Lawrence, said the current system needs to change. Ben Simons stands out on the back porch of his home with his farmland in the background atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.More
“They (developers) go in and say, ‘Hey, we'll take on most of your problem land and we'll leave you a little bit.’ And the farmers are jumping at it. But the communities are screaming, saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, you're gonna put all these things here.”
Several upstate towns have joined in a lawsuit challenging the state’s decision to create the Office of Renewable Energy Siting to streamline the approval process for renewable projects. Griffo sponsored a bill that would have eliminated ORES.
“I think these communities have legitimate questions and legitimate concerns and they should not only be dealt with fairly but they need to be addressed,” said Griffo. “Stop the power grab. It’s basically, in my opinion, a sham process.” Paying for those idyllic views
Marko's taking Boralex up on their offer. He is currently working with the company on acreage amounts.
“The big thing that sold me," Marko said, "is when the project expires, it goes right back to farmland."
The project will need to clear a number of significant hurdles.
Boralex expects to apply for a state permit early next year with hopes of beginning construction at the end of 2024 and up and run by the end of the following year.
Marko’s agreement with Boralex has not been finalized and the payout will depend largely on how many acres of his property the company uses.
But the deal will help him enough financially that he can continue operations on the farm. A view of Ben Simons' farmland atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. He was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.
Simons told the agent who chased him down in the field he wasn’t interested.
But another developer came around last year, asking about a property he owns in Westernville, some six miles to the west of Starr Hill.
He wanted to build on 30 acres.
The proposal promised an initial payment of $10,000 the first year, with payments of $1,000 an acre annually. Over 25 years, the payout would exceed $1.6 million. Ben Simons and his son Christopher are pictured in front of their farm's welcome sign atop of Starr Hill in Remsen, NY. Ben was approached by a land agent interested in leasing acres of Simons’ land to build an array of solar panels to convert the sun’s energy into electricity and deliver it to the state’s electrical grid.
“Business-wise it is a stupid decision,” Simons said. “I’m not kidding you. It is. But we’re farmers. And I’m getting ready to retire. I’m not going anywhere but I’m slowing down.”
His son, Christopher, is 33 and has plans to take over the farm some day. He has little interest in the dairy business but wants to grow crops and work the land.
“We kicked it around,” Chris Simon said. “We considered it. But when you’re talking about the best prime farmland we have, then it’s a no. If you’re taking the marginal land, the small-odd shaped fields, the ones that are less productive, that’s a different story.”
Ben Simons understands the choices made by Marko and other farmers and doesn’t begrudge their decision a bit.
In the end, he was not convinced the land could be tilled again after solar panels were dug into the ground.
But when he stops to think about the current cycle of contention — developers making deals with farmers, communities fighting developers — he thinks perhaps the farmer has been forgotten in the debate.
France 24US speaker debacle: New Congress marked by deep Republican divisions
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