UPDATED 

BOEING OUSTS MUILENBURG, NAMES DAVID CALHOUN AS CEO AMID MAX CRISIS

WAS HE FIRED OR DID HE QUIT?

Sacked Boeing boss could walk away with up to $52m
Dennis Muilenburg will walk away from Boeing with up to $52m (£40m) after resigning following two deadly plane crashes that prompted a safety scandal.

Boeing Reports $8.1B In Cancellations

Boeing Boss Dennis Muilenburg Scolded by FAA, According to Reports

by John Biers

DECEMBER 23, 2019Boeing's 737 MAX has been grounded worldwide since the March 16, 2019 
crash of an Ethiopian airways plane, the second deadly crash of the aircraft, 
which has raised questions about the company's handling of the crisis

Boeing on Monday pushed out its embattled chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, as it attempts to pivot from a protracted crisis surrounding the grounding of its top-selling 737 MAX after two deadly crashes.

More than nine months after the MAX was grounded and a week after halting production of the aircraft, Boeing named board Chairman David Calhoun as chief executive and president, saying the company needed to "restore confidence" and "repair relationships with regulators, customers and all other stakeholders."

A week ago, Boeing took the monumental step of temporarily shutting down MAX production because of the crisis, which has pushed the aircraft's return to the skies into 2020 and raised the anxiety level among Boeing's workforce and suppliers.

Though coming during the sleepy days ahead of the Christmas holiday, the move was not entirely unexpected after Boeing stripped Muilenburg of his chairman title in October, installing board member Calhoun in that post.

Still, while Boeing watchers had seen Muilenburg's days as numbered, some expected him to stay on until the MAX was returned to service.

But the timing of that landmark event remains unclear and will depend on the Federal Aviation Administration, which has made it clear it is not in a hurry.

An FAA spokesman said the agency does not comment on personnel decisions.

"The FAA continues to follow a thorough process for returning the Boeing 737 MAX to passenger service," the FAA spokesman said. "Our first priority is safety, and we have set no timeframe for when the work will be completed."

Muilenburg repeatedly offered predictions on the 737 MAX return to service that proved overly-optimistic. His prospects further dimmed last week when its Starliner unmanned spacecraft came up short in a NASA mission to reach the International Space Station.

Muilenburg's departure was "long overdue," said former National Transportation Safety Board chief Jim Hall.

"Boeing clearly needs to reset the table and put someone in who puts safety first," Hall told AFP.Boeing selected board chairman David Calhoun (L) to replace Dennis Muilenburg 
as CEO to 'restore confidence' in the company

Another insider?

Shares rallied on the announcement of the leadership shakeup, which came after calls in Congress for Muilenburg to go. The stock price jumped 2.9 percent to finish at $337.55.

But Scott Hamilton of Leeham News, an aviation website, noted that Calhoun had roundly praised Muilenburg's performance as CEO in a November television interview.

The executive has been "part of the Board policy-making that led to the cost-cutting some say had deleterious impact on the development of the MAX," Hamilton wrote.

"Calhoun has been on the board 10 years," he said. "Is Calhoun, an insider, the right person to pull Boeing out of its dive?"

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, called for a "complete management house cleaning" at Boeing and new leadership "who will take safety seriously."

Calhoun previously served as vice chairman of General Electric, where he had a long career after starting with the company soon after graduating from Virginia Tech. He also currently serves as senior managing director of investment banking firm Blackstone Group.

Following the announcement, Calhoun reached out to lawmakers, airline CEOs, suppliers, regulators and other key stakeholders, a Boeing spokesman said.

Muilenburg will leave the company immediately but Calhoun will not take the CEO post until January 13, 2020, while he exits existing commitments, Boeing said in a news release.

During that period, Chief Financial Officer Greg Smith will serve as interim CEO. Meanwhile, board member Lawrence W. Kellner will become non-executive chairman of the board effective immediatelyBoeing 737 MAX planes parked in a Washington state airport amid a grounding 
that has dragged on for more than nine months

Awkward response to crisis

Muilenburg's response to the crisis was increasingly criticized as the MAX grounding has dragged on far longer than initially expected as more disturbing details have dribbled out about the certification of the aircraft and issues with the flight software implicated in both crashes.

He also was seen as tone deaf and awkward towards families of the 346 people killed in the crashes.

Michael Stumo, whose daughter Samya was killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March, called Muilenburg's departure "a good first step toward restoring Boeing to a company that focuses on safety and innovation."

"The next step is for several Board members who are underperforming or underqualified to resign," Stumo said.

The company resisted grounding the planes even after the second crash when Muilenburg pressed his case in phone calls with President Donald Trump.

Probes of the two crashes have focused in particular on the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, an automated flight control system.

FAA chief Steve Dickson ripped Muilenburg in October for not disclosing communications from a Boeing pilot that raised questions about the MCAS system.

The FAA also called out the company for its overly-optimistic statements about restoring the MAX saying it created the perception Boeing was trying "to force FAA into taking quicker action."

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SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2019/10/boeing-board-strips-ceo-of-chairman.html

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=boeing 

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Chimpanzees more likely to share tools, teach skills when task is complex

by Washington University in St. Louis

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Teach a chimpanzee to fish for insects to eat, and you feed her for a lifetime. Teach her a better way to use tools in gathering prey, and you may change the course of evolution.

For most wild chimpanzees, tool use is an important part of life—but learning these skills is no simple feat. Wild chimpanzees transfer tools to each other, and this behavior has previously been shown to serve as a form of teaching.

A new study led by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Miami and Franklin & Marshall College finds that chimpanzees that use a multi-step process and complex tools to gather termites are more likely to share tools with novices. The research was conducted in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Lincoln Park Zoo and the Jane Goodall Institute. The study helps illuminate chimpanzees' capacity for prosocial—or helping—behavior, a quality that has been recognized for its potential role in the evolution of human cultural abilities.

"Non-human primates are often thought to learn tool skills by watching others and practicing on their own, with little direct help from mothers or other expert tool users," said Stephanie Musgrave, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Miami, and first author of the study published the week of Dec. 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"In contrast, the results from this research indicate that social learning may vary in relation to how challenging the task is: during tasks that are more difficult, mothers can in fact play a more active role, including behaviors that function to teach."

Beginning with Jane Goodall in the 1960s, researchers have been studying chimpanzee tool use for decades at the Gombe Stream Research Center in Tanzania. The Gombe chimpanzee study is one of the longest running studies of animal behavior in the wild. This year marks the 20-year anniversary of the study of chimpanzees in the Goualougo Triangle, Republic of Congo, where researchers have documented some of the most complex tool behaviors of chimpanzees.

The study is distinctive because it applies standardized methods to directly compare how processes of cultural transmission may differ between two populations of wild chimpanzees. In both populations, the chimpanzees use tools to target the same resource—but the task varies in complexity.

The findings of the current study are important on a number of levels, Musgrave said. "First, chimpanzee populations may vary not only in the complexity of their tool behaviors but in the social mechanisms that support these behaviors," she said. "Second, the capacity for helping in chimpanzees may be both more robust and more flexible than previously appreciated."

Maintaining chimpanzee cultures

Among animals, chimpanzees are exceptional tool users. Different groups of chimpanzees use different types of tools—and likewise, researchers have suggested that the teaching process might be customized to facilitate these local skills.

In this study, researchers examined the transfer of tools between chimpanzees during termite gathering, and compared the population in the Goualougo Triangle, Republic of Congo, with the population in Gombe, Tanzania.

Termites and other insects are a valuable source of fat and protein in the diet of wild chimpanzees and also contribute important vitamins and minerals. Termites build complex nest structures that encompass a network of below-ground chambers, sometimes topped with a towering, freestanding mound reaching several meters high.

Chimpanzees in both locations use fishing-probe style tools to harvest termites, but Goualougo chimpanzees use multiple, different types of tools sequentially. They also make tools from specific plant species and customize fishing probes to improve their efficiency.

The researchers found differences in the rate, probability and types of tool transfer during termite gathering between these two populations.

At Goualougo, where the fishing tasks were more complex, the rate of tool transfer was three times higher than at Gombe, and Goualougo mothers were more likely to transfer a tool in response to a request. Further, mothers at Goualougo most often responded to tool requests by actively giving a tool to offspring. Such active transfers were never observed at Gombe, where mothers most often responded by refusing to transfer tools. Given that offspring in both populations made comparable requests for tools, these differences suggest that mothers at Goualougo were in fact more willing to provide tools.

"We have previously documented that tool transfers at Goualougo function as a form of teaching," said Crickette Sanz, associate professor of biological anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. "The population differences we observed in the present study suggest that teaching may be related specifically to the demands of learning to manufacture tools at Goualougo, where chimpanzees use multiple tool types, make tools from select plant species, and perform modifications that increase tool efficiency."

"An increased role for this type of social learning may thus be an important component of the transmission of complex tool traditions over generations," she said.

"While Gombe and Goualougo chimpanzees both fish for termites, we suspected that there might be differences in how this skill is acquired," said Elizabeth Lonsdorf, associate professor of psychology at Franklin & Marshall College. "But only after many years of accumulating these data were we able to rigorously quantify these differences."

"To date, prosocial helping in chimpanzees has been principally examined in captivity or using differing methods in the wild," said Stephen Ross, director of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at Lincoln Park Zoo. "This study provides novel evidence for helping behavior in wild chimpanzees and demonstrates that chimpanzees can help flexibly depending on context."

A shared capacity

Understanding how chimpanzee tool traditions are passed on over generations can provide insights into the evolutionary origins of complex cultural abilities in humans.

"Human evolution is characterized by the emergence and elaboration of complex technologies, which is often attributed to our species' aptitude for passing skills onto one another through mechanisms such as teaching and imitation. However, the evolutionary origins of these capacities remain unclear," Musgrave said.

"Our research shows that the human propensity to assist others in acquiring complex skills may build at least in part upon capacities that we share with our closest living relatives."

Conservation efforts are fundamental to this research and future studies.

"Chimpanzees and their cultures are endangered," said Emma Stokes, director of the Central Africa Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

"Recent research shows that human activity imperils the survival of chimpanzee cultures. Studying our closest living relatives offers a unique opportunity to gain insights into the evolutionary origins of cultural behavior—but this privilege depends on long-term efforts to conserve these apes and their habitats."

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#ENGELS WAS RIGHT LABOUR AND ITS ROLE IN THE TRANSITION FROM APE TO MAN  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/
SO WAS #KROPOTKIN MUTUAL AID A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION 
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4341

Large scale feasts at ancient capital of Ulster drew crowds from across Iron Age Ireland

by Cardiff University

One of the analysed pig jaws for the study. Credit: Dr Richard Madgwick

People transported animals over huge distances for mass gatherings at one of Ireland's most iconic archaeological sites, research concludes.

Dr. Richard Madgwick of Cardiff University led the study, which analysed the bones of 35 animals excavated from Navan Fort, the legendary capital of Ulster. Researchers from Queen's University Belfast, Memorial University Newfoundland and the British Geological Survey were also involved in the research.

The site had long been considered a centre for ritual gatherings, as excavations found a huge 40m diameter building and a barbary ape cranium, likely from at least as far as Iberia. Results suggest the pigs, cattle and sheep were brought from across Ireland, perhaps being reared as far afield as Galway, Donegal, Down, Tyrone and Antrim. Evidence suggests some were brought over more than 100 miles.

Dr. Madgwick, based in Cardiff University's School of History, Archaeology and Religion, said: "Our results provide clear evidence that communities in Iron Age Ireland were very mobile and that livestock were also moved over greater distances than was previously thought.

"The high proportion of pig remains found there is very rare for this period. This suggests that Navan Fort was a feasting centre, as pigs are well-suited as feasting animals and in early Irish literature pork is the preferred food of the feast.

"It is clear that Navan Fort had a vast catchment and that the influence of the site was far-reaching."

Researchers used multi-isotope analysis on samples of tooth enamel to unlock the origins of each animal. Food and water have chemical compositions linked to the geographical areas where they are sourced. When animals eat and drink, these chemical signals are archived in their teeth, allowing scientists to investigate the location where they were raised.

Co-author of the research, Dr. Finbar McCormick, of Queen's University, Belfast, said: "In the absence of human remains, multi-isotope analysis of animals found at Navan Fort provides us with the best indication of human movement at that time.

"Feasting, almost invariably associated with sacrifice, was a social necessity of early societies where the slaughter of a large domesticate necessitated the consumption of a large amount of meat in a short period of time."

Earlier this year, Dr. Madgwick's research of 131 pigs found at sites near Stonehenge revealed animals came from as far away as Scotland and numerous other locations across the British Isles. Before this, the origins of people who visited this area and the extent of the population's movements at the time had been long-standing enigmas in British prehistory.

Dr. Madgwick added: "Transporting animals across the country would have involved a great deal of time and effort so our findings demonstrate the important role they played in society. Food was clearly a central part of people's exchanges and traditions."

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8-10 million Iranians died over Great Famine caused by the British in late 1910s, documents reveal

• Nov 4, 2015
 
• Print

The document in the American Archives, reporting the widespread famine and spread of epidemic disease in Iran, estimates the number of the deceased due to the famine to be about 8-10 million.

Sadegh Abbasi*

One of the little-known chapters of history was the widespread famine in Iran during World War I, caused by the British presence in Iran. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Britain became the main foreign power in Iran and this famine or--more accurately--‘genocide’ was committed by the British. The document in the American Archives, reporting the widespread famine and spread of epidemic disease in Iran, estimates the number of the deceased due to the famine to be about 8-10 million during 1917-19 (1), making this the greatest genocide of the 20th century and Iran the biggest victim of World War I (2).

It should be noted that Iran had been one of the main suppliers of food grains to the British forces stationed in the empire’s South Asian colonies. Although bad harvest during these two years made the situation worse, it was by no means the main reason why the Great Famine occurred. Prof. Gholi Majd of Princeton University writes in his book, The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, that  American documents show that the British prevented imports of wheat and other food grains into Iran from Mesopotamia, Asia, and also the USA, and that ships loaded with wheat were not allowed to unload at the port of Bushehr in the Persian Gulf. Professor Majd argues that Great Britain intentionally created genocide conditions to destroy Iran, and to effectively control the country for its own purposes. Major Donohoe describes Iran of that time as a “land of desolation and death” (3). But this event soon became the subject of a British cover up.

Britain has a long record of its several attempts to conceal history and rewrite it in their own favor. The pages are filled with conspiracies that were covered up by the British government to hide its involvement in different episodes that would tarnish the country’s image. One of the clear examples is the “Jameson Raid”; a failed coup against Paul Kruger’s government in South Africa. This raid was planned and executed directly by the British government of Joseph Chamberlain under the orders of Queen Victoria (4) (5). In 2002, Sir Graham Bower's memoirs were published in South Africa, revealing these involvements that had been covered up for more than a century, focusing attention on Bower as a scapegoat for the incident (6).

The records that were destroyed to cover up British crimes around the globe, or were kept in secret Foreign Office archives, so as to, not only protect the United Kingdom's reputation, but also to shield the government from litigation, are indicative of the attempts made by the British to evade the consequences of their crimes. The papers at Hanslope Park also include the reports on the "elimination" of the colonial authority's enemies in 1950s Malaya; records that show ministers in London knew of the torture and murder of Mau Mau insurgents in Kenya and roasting them alive (7). These records may include those related to Iran’s Great Famine. Why were these records that cover the darkest secrets of the British Empire destroyed or kept secret? Simply because they might ‘embarrass’ Her Majesty’s government (8).

A famine occurred in Ireland from 1845 until 1852 which killed one fourth of the Irish population. This famine was caused by British policies and faced a large cover up attempt by the British government and crown to blame it on ‘potatoes’ (9). The famine, even today, is famous in the world as the “potato famine” when, in reality, it was a result of a planned food shortage and thus a deliberate genocide by the British government (10).

The true face of this famine as a genocide has been proven by historian Tim Pat Coogan in his book The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy published by Palgrave MacMillan (11). A ceremony was planned to take place in the US to unveil Coogan’s book in America, but he was denied a visa by the American embassy in Dublin (12).

Therefore it becomes obvious that Britain’s role in Iran’s Great famine, which killed nearly half of Iran’s population, was not unprecedented. The documents published by the British government overlook the genocide, and consequently, the tragedy underwent an attempted cover-up by the British government. The Foreign Office “handbook on Iran” of 1919 mentioned nothing related to the Great Famine.

Julian Bharier, a scholar who studied Iran’s population, built his “backward projection” estimation of Iran’s population (13) based on reports from this “handbook” and, as a result, ignored the effect of the Great Famine on Iran’s population in 1917. Bharier’s estimations were used by some authors to deny the occurrence of the Great Famine or to underestimate its impacts.

By ignoring Iran’s Great Famine in his estimations, Bharier’s work faces four scientific deficiencies. Bharier does not consider the loss of population caused by the famine in his calculations; he needs to ‘adjust’ the figure of the official census in 1956 from 18.97 million to 20.37 million, and this is despite the fact that he uses 1956 census as his primary building block for his “backward projection” model. He also ignores the official growth rates and uses his personal assumptions in this regard, which is far lower than other estimates. Finally, although Bharier frequently cites Amani’s estimates (14), in the end Bharier’s findings contradict that of Amani’s; notably Bharier’s population estimate for 1911 is 12.19 million while Amani put this figure at 10.94 million.

Despite deficiencies in the population estimates offered by Bharier for the period of the Famine and its earlier period, his article offers useful data for the post-Famine period; this is because these figures are generated from 1956 backward. That is to say, numbers generated from 1956 to 1919 are thus credible because they do not include the period of famine. Moreover, this portion of Bharier’s data are also true to that of the American Legation. For example, Caldwell and Sykes estimate the 1919 population at 10 million, which is comparitive to Bharier’s figure of 11 million.

Gholi Majd was not the first author to refute Bharier’s figures for this period. Gad G. Gilbar, in his 1976 article on demographic developments during the second half of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, also considers Bharier’s estimates inaccurate for the period.

In an apparently biased review of Majd’s work, Willem Floor confirms Bharier’s model (15), despite its apparent deficiencies, and takes a mocking tone toward the well- documented work of Gholi Majd to undermine the devastation caused by the British-instigated famine in Iran, to the point of total denial of the existence of such a genocide. Floor also offers inaccurate or untrue information to oppose the fact that the British deprived Iranians from honey and caviar in the north, as he argues caviar was haram (religiously prohibited), while no such fatwa has ever existed in Shia jurisprudence and all available decrees assert that caviar is halal or permissible under the Islamic law. There was a rumor made up by Russians at the time, saying that Caviar was haram and Britain made full use of this rumor.

Another criticism made by Floor was to question why Majd’s work does not use British archival sources. A more important question is why Majd should have used these sources when they totally ignore the occurrence of the famine in Iran. The fact that Majd used mainly US sources seems to be reasonable on the grounds that the US was neutral toward the state of affairs in Iran at the time, and made efforts to help by feeding them (16).

*Sadegh Abbasi is a Junior M.A. student at Tehran University. As a student in history he has also worked as a contributor to different Iranian news agencies.

---

References

1. Majd, Mohammad Gholi. The Great Famine & Genocide in Iran: 1917-1919. Lanham : University Press of America, 2013. p.71: https://books.google.com/books?id=5WgSAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA71&lpg.

2. Sniegoski, Stephen J. Iran as a Twentieth Century Victim: 1900 Through the Aftermath of World War II. mycatbirdseat.com. [Online] 11 10, 2013. [Cited: 10 12, 2015.] http://mycatbirdseat.com/2013/11/iran-twentieth-century-victim-1900-aftermath-world-war-ii/.

3. Donohoe, Major M. H. With The Persian Expedition. London : Edward Arnold, 1919. p. 76.

4. Nelson, Michael and Briggs, Asa. Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera. London : Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2007. p. 97: https://books.google.com/books?id=6ISE-ZEBfy4C&pg=PA97&lpg.

5. Bower, Graham. Sir Graham Bower's Secret History of the Jameson Raid and the South African Crisis, 1895-1902. Cape Town : Van Riebeeck Society, 2002. p. xii: https://books.google.fr/books?id=VFYFZKRBXz0C&pg=PR23&lpg.

6. Ibid. p. xvii.

7. Cobain, Ian, Bowcott, Owen and Norton-Taylor, Richard. Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes . The Guardian. [Online] 03 17, 2012. [Cited: 10 10, 2015.] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes.

8. Walton, Calder. Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War, and the Twilight of Empire. New York : The Overlook Press, 2013. p. 15: https://books.google.fr/books?id=f2cjCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT15&lpg.

9. Warfield, Brian. History Corner: The Great Irish Famine. wolfetonesofficialsite.com. [Online] [Cited: 10 12, 2015.] http://www.wolfetonesofficialsite.com/famine.htm.

10. Britain's Cover Up. irishholocaust.org. [Online] [Cited: 10 12, 2015.] http://www.irishholocaust.org/britain'scoverup.

11. Coogan, Tim Pat. The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

12. O'Dowd, Niall. Proving the Irish Famine was genocide by the British. IrishCentral. [Online] 08 06, 2015. [Cited: 10 12, 2015.] http://www.irishcentral.com/news/proving-the-irish-famine-was-genocide-by-the-british-tim-pat-coogan-moves-famine-history-unto-a-new-plane-181984471-238161151.html.

13. Bharier, Julien. A Note on the Population of Iran, 1900-1966 . Population Studies. 1968, Vol. 22, 2.

14. Amani, Mehdi. La population de l'Iran. Population (French Edition). 1972, Vol. 27, 3: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1529398.

15. Floor, Willem. Reviewed Work: The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, 1917-1919 by Mohammad Gholi Majd . Iranian Studies. Iran Facing the New Century, 2005, Vol. 38, 1.

16. Fecitt, Harry. Other Theatres of War. westernfrontassociation.com. [Online] 09 29, 2013. [Cited: 10 12, 2015.] http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/the-great-war/great-war-on-land/other-war-theatres/3305-dunsterforce-part-1.html.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=IRAN

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/09/us-war-on-capitalism-in-iran.html