The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of my favorite Heinlein novels along with Stranger in a Strange Land. Its about a revolt of a moon colony and their reorganization as an anarchist society. One of its characters Manny a technician worker who is an communist (well a Cold War Russian at least).

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is similar to Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) in that both describe social upheavals, and both contain a strong streak of irony. In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the irony is that although the lunar colony is, at the beginning of the story, theoretically a kind of prison ruled by a tyrannical Warden, in reality the Warden seldom interferes in lunar society, which is portrayed as a kind of libertarian utopia. When the revolution succeeds, the new lunar government succumbs to its own worst instincts to regulate society to the hilt. The novel is notable stylistically for its use of an invented Lunar dialect consisting predominantly of English words but strongly influenced by Russian grammar (cf. Nadsat slang from Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess).

Well today Russia announced is planning to build a base on the moon for industrialization rather than weaponization of space.

Russia plans to put a mine on the Moon to help boost energy supply
Independent -
Russia has staked out plans to recapture its Soviet-era space-race glory and start mining the Moon for a promising energy resource that scientists say could meet the Earth's power needs for more than a thousand years.

Russian Rocket Builder Aims for Moon Base by 2015, Reports Say Space.com


Bloody well about time too. That someone used the space race for something other than weapons systems, spy sattelites and 500 channels on TV.

We should have had a viable space station orbiting in the L5 years ago, with regular missions to the moon, ala 2001 A Space Odessy.

But the Space Race was part of the Cold War and after that it was part of the American privatization of NASA at any cost program around the Space Shuttle. A cost which was measured in lives lost rather than missions accomplished.

After the umpteenth mission we know the space orbiter works, now do something with it like build a space station, one that won't come crashing down after a decade. But that opportunity is lost too. Won't be no more Space Shuttle missions, the point of which was what? Waste in space.

Really once the Reagan regime got the Space Weapons bug thats all the Space Shuttle missions were for, but seeing that no Weaponization systems could be put up well the Space shuttle went up and down, sometimes with horrendous accidents.

We should have one global space agency always should have. NASA the EU Space Program, the Japanese, Canadian, and all the other space programs and yes the Russians and Chinese should be part of a global space program. But sigh that is too much Star Trek for the liking of the Star Wars mentality around the Pentagon.

Now the Russians are onto something. Mining the moon, just like in the Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. One word of advice, from the novel, don't rely on prison labour for the miners or they may revolt and that would be Anarchy in space.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Wikiquote


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TANSTAAFL

Fox News anchor attacks New Jersey's school nutrition program: 'Kids are going to grow up thinking lunch is free!'

Brad Reed

RAW STORY
September 30, 2021



Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum on Thursday expressed distress at the state of New Jersey for having school nutrition programs in which children do not have to pay money to get fed.

While speaking with former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow, MacCallum complained about giving out school lunches without requiring payment.

"What kills me is now that there's a free lunch program in New Jersey, and it's for everyone!" she said. "Even if you don't need help to send your child's lunch to school. So those kids are all going to grow up thinking school lunch is free! And then, God help the person who comes along and tries to take that away, Larry!"

Kudlow then said that the lunch program wasn't "free" and predicted New Jersey residents would "pay for it with higher taxes and higher inflation."

He also said that "commonsense Americans know that this is not right, they don't want big government socialism!"

Watch the video below.

TANSTAAFL by Robert Heinlein from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=735

TANSTAAFL by Robert Heinlein from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. TANSTAAFL. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. An essential element in the basic Heinlein philosophy; this is (as far as I know) the first appearance of this acronym. "Gospodin," he said presently, "you used an odd word earlier--odd to me, I mean..."

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL

• Overview
• History and usage
• See also
• Notes

The "free lunch" refers to the once-common tradition of saloons in the United States providing a "free" lunch to patrons who had purchased at least one drink. Many foods on offer were high in salt (e.g., ham, cheese, and salted crackers), so those who ate them ended up buying a lot of beer. Rudyard Kipling, writing in 1891, noted how he

High Tech Keyensians

Once again the harsh reality of capitalism and its state once again debunk the fantasy world of the anarcho-capitalists and their lazzie faire comrades. Here again capitalism cannot function without some kind of prime the pump state intrusion into the marketplace. Because the market place is disfunctional. Unfortunately unlike my friends in the Libertarian Left I do not believe that the market place of capitalism can ever be anything but what it is; a Harsh Mistress. And here again we see it in it's neo-coservative version of Keyensian economics.

This is the same ideology of neo-conservative statist economics, as those who would have the state promote venture capital schemes as Alberta did and then sold off.

High-tech firms need government help, executive says

Last updated Mar 29 2006 11:19 AM MST CBC News

An Edmonton entrepreneur says the Alberta government has to do more to encourage investment in the province's small but burgeoning high-tech sector. Adrian Banica owns Synodon Inc., a small high-tech company that specializes in gas detection technology. He said without government help, the high-tech sector will disappear from the Alberta landscape because it can't compete for investment with the oil and gas industry. Banica added that he has had trouble for years raising money to develop his product and expand his business. He said for an economy to be strong, it has to be diverse, so the province should provide more incentive for investment in high-tech. "The government has to put some dollars forward and then demand that private investors match it at least. But one thing that could make a big difference is to have some sort of tax credit that's issued on certain investments." A recent survey of 128 high-tech firms by Ernst & Young discovered that 49 per cent of high-tech companies are thinking of moving to other provinces that offer tax credits and financial considerations for technology businesses. ERNST & YOUNG: Alberta Technology Report 2006 High-tech companies are also concerned about finding new customers in what they consider to be a limited marketplace. In the Ernst & Young report, 91 per cent cited that as their greatest challenge.

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Westinghouse, Astrobotic team up on space projects

02 June 2023

Westinghouse Electric Company and lunar landers and rovers developer Astrobotic have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore collaboration on space technology programmes for NASA and the US Department of Defense.

(Image: Westinghouse)

The collaboration will focus on the development of space nuclear technology and delivery systems. Westinghouse said the joint effort will also include strengthening the space nuclear supply chain and workforce in the Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia region.

In June 2022, NASA, in partnership with Battelle Energy Alliance, contractor for the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, selected Westinghouse to provide an initial design concept for a fission surface power system that could be ready to launch to the Moon by the end of the decade. The 40-kilowatt class fission power system is planned to last at least 10 years in the lunar environment.

Fission systems are relatively small, lightweight and reliable, with the potential to enable continuous power regardless of location and other natural environmental conditions. A demonstration of such systems on the Moon would pave the way for long-duration missions on the Moon and Mars.

Westinghouse is developing a scaled-down version of its 5-MWe eVinci microreactor to power spacecraft in orbit or for deployment on the surface of planetary bodies such as the Moon or Mars, providing continuous power for space research and other applications.

Westinghouse's eVinci is a transportable reactor that is fully factory built, fuelled and assembled, and capable of delivering combined heat and power. Its small size allows for standard transportation methods and rapid, on-site deployment, with superior reliability and minimal maintenance, making it particularly suitable for energy consumers in remote locations.

"The inherent simplicity of the eVinci technology supports these critical space missions by providing a reliable, resilient, low-mass power generation system that can be operated autonomously," Westinghouse said. "The technology is ideal for electricity generation for the lunar surface, satellites and electric propulsion."

Astrobotic is currently developing LunaGrid, a commercial power service designed for the poles of the Moon. LunaGrid is a power generation and distribution service that will deliver power to landers, rovers, habitats, science suites, and other lunar surface systems. The service will enable systems to survive the lunar night and operate indefinitely on the Moon starting at the lunar south pole. Astrobotic plans to begin deploying and demonstrating LunaGrid elements as early as 2026 with the goal of the first operational LunaGrid by 2028 at the lunar south pole.

"Westinghouse is excited to partner with Astrobotic on delivering the next wave of innovative nuclear technology that is vital to advancing space exploration and supporting national defence missions," said Westinghouse President for Energy Systems David Durham.

"Astrobotic and Westinghouse have deep roots in Pittsburgh, and we are excited to leverage both companies' capabilities to pioneer the future of space power technologies and services," said Astrobotic CEO John Thornton.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

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THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS

A solution to the climate crisis: mining the moon, researchers say

Oliver Milman in New York
Wed, 8 February 2023

Photograph: Richard A Brooks/AFP/Getty Images

Proponents of a “moonshot” idea to deal with global heating have been handed a new, very literal, interpretation by researchers who have proposed firing plumes of moon dust from a gun into space in order to deflect the sun’s rays away from Earth.

The seemingly outlandish concept, outlined in a new research paper, would involve creating a “solar shield” in space by mining the moon of millions of tons of its dust and then “ballistically eject[ing]” it to a point in space about 1m miles from Earth, where the floating grains would partially block incoming sunlight.

Related: Can geoengineering fix the climate? Hundreds of scientists say not so fast

“A really exciting part of our study was the realization that the natural lunar dust grains are just the right size and composition for efficiently scattering sunlight away from Earth,” said Ben Bromley, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Utah, who led the research, published in Plos Climate.

“Since it takes much less energy to launch these grains from the moon’s surface, as compared with an Earth launch, the ‘moonshot’ idea really stood out for us.”

Bromley and two other researchers considered a variety of properties, including coal and sea salt, that could dim the sun by as much as 2% if fired into space. The team eventually settled on the dust found on the moon, although millions of tons would have to be mined, sifted and loaded into a ballistic device, such as an electromagnetic rail gun, and fired into space each year into order to maintain this solar shield.

Getting this mining and projective equipment to the moon would be a “significant project”, Bromley conceded, and might also require the positioning of a new space station in an area called the L1 Lagrange point, found between Earth and the sun, in order to “redirect packets of dust on to orbits that could provide shade for as long as possible”.

Such an approach would act as a “fine-tuned dimmer switch, leaving our planet untouched”, Bromley said, an advantage over other solar geoengineering proposals that have raised concerns about the environmental impact of spraying reflective particles within the Earth’s atmosphere.

The moon dust would have to be continually propelled into space in order to take the edge off global heating, however, or risk a so-called “termination shock” whereby temporary cooling is abruptly stopped and the world is left to rapidly heat up. Bromley insisted that the research’s sci-fi idea is no substitute for the primary task of cutting planet-heating emissions in the first place.

“Nothing should distract us from reducing greenhouse gas emissions here on Earth,” he said. “Our strategy may just be a moonshot, but we should explore all possibilities, in case we need more time to do the work here at home.”

Tinkering with the world’s climate, including attempts to reflect sunlight, is a controversial and still relatively fringe response to the climate crisis. It has gained some traction amid repeated warnings that countries are not slashing emissions quickly enough to prevent disaster, however, with the US government launching a research project around the concept last year.

Related: Can geoengineering fix the climate? Hundreds of scientists say not so fast

Ted Parson, an expert in environmental law at UCLA, said the moon dust proposal was “fun, scientifically interesting speculation” that was unlikely to be put into practice, partially due to the larger cost and lack of control compared with Earth-based geoengineering options.

“There seems to be a bit of uptick of interest in space-based geoengineering schemes more broadly,” Parson said. “They were long dismissed as wildly impractical due to technical and cost considerations, but my impression is that the ongoing reduction of launch costs is piquing people’s interest and strange ideas are bubbling around.”

But opponents of solar geoengineering, whether on Earth or in space, argue that it is an unhelpful and potentially dangerous distraction from the urgent imperative to transition away from burning fossil fuels.

“The idea to mine the moon or near-Earth asteroids in order to artificially block parts of the sunlight is no solution to the ongoing and intensifying climate crisis,” said Frank Biermann, professor of global sustainability governance at Utrecht University.

“What is needed are massive cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions, which require rapid technological advancement and socioeconomic transitions. Mining the moon is not the answer that we need.”

THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS

Whoever Controls the Moon Controls the Solar System

Passant Rabie
Sat, February 26, 2022

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway and Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy declared that his nation would be the first to land a man on the moon. That ambitious goal would later be fulfilled as two NASA astronauts took wobbly steps across the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, much to the dismay of Russia’s own space program leaders.

More than 60 years later, a new space race to the moon has begun, albeit with much higher stakes and brand new players ready to make the 238,855-mile journey. This time, the race to the moon is about much more than just planting a flag on its dusty surface. Getting to the moon first could also mean calling dibs on its limited resources, and controlling a permanent gateway to take humans to Mars—and beyond.

Whether it’s NASA, China, Russia, or a consortium of private companies that end up dominating the moon, laying claim to the lunar surface isn’t really about the moon anyway—it’s about who gets easier access to the rest of the solar system.
Everyone’s Got an Agenda

James Rice, a senior scientist at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, remembers growing up with the Apollo program and getting bitten by the space bug as he watched the 1969 moon landing unfold on television.

“As a kid, I saw that happening and I wanted to be a part of it,” Rice told The Daily Beast. “That’s basically why I’m in this career today.”

As Rice reflected on the current space race, he recognized some key differences. “Things have really changed dramatically in terms of the technology and the players that are out there,” he said. “This is not the moon we thought of during the Apollo days.” Scientists have learned so much more about the moon through more detailed analysis of lunar samples, as well as several missions that have probed exactly what might be sitting on the moon’s surface and remain hidden deep underground.

Though we have known for over a decade that the moon is probably teeming with reserves of water ice, NASA announced just last year that it had found the best evidence yet that water trapped in icy pockets were far more spread out across the lunar surface than previously believed. The discovery further fueled the idea of building a permanent base on the moon, which astronauts could then use to reach Mars and other celestial destinations.

Conceptual art for a NASA-led astronaut base involving water ice prospecting and mining.
NASA

Why is this such a big deal? Water is a precious resource for space travelers—not just for astronauts to drink, but also to turn into rocket fuel to use to blast off.

Remember your grade-school science here: Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is known to be the most efficient rocket propellant whereas oxygen can be combined by fuel to create combustion. The ability to break down all that water ice on the moon means you have access to both of its constituent elements—an enormous supply of rocket fuel. (And as an added bonus, you can use any excess oxygen as breathable air for astronauts.)

Finding these resources on the moon is much better than transporting them from Earth. Packing resources to space comes at a hefty price—it costs about $10,000 just to launch a payload weighing a single pound into Earth’s orbit, according to NASA. It could be far less costly to use what the moon has to offer to build a lunar pitstop to cosmic destinations.

“I think the moon has been placed as this midpoint, or first step towards Mars,” Casey Dreier, senior space policy adviser at The Planetary Society, told The Daily Beast. “It’s not an end destination.”

In other words, going back to the moon is not really about the moon, at least not entirely. It’s a gateway to truly larger space ambitions. That’s why Artemis—NASA’s new lunar exploration program—has been consistently touted not as simply a redux of Apollo, but rather the initial foundation for a permanent presence on the moon.

Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk, left, and Rick Gilbrech, director of NASA's Stennis Space Center, right, watch as the core stage for the first flight of NASAs Space Launch System rocket undergoes a second hot fire test in the B-2 Test Stand on March 18.
NASA/Robert Markowitz via Getty

Martha Hess, the director for human exploration and spaceflight at the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit for technical guidance on space missions, echoed those sentiments. “This time, the moon is a training ground, and Mars is the destination,” she told The Daily Beast.

Today’s space race is also not merely between competing nations and political ideologies. It also involves private companies trying to pursue profits. “We are at a unique point in time where our economy and technology are aligned, allowing for private and commercial investment in space based capabilities,” said Hess. “This investment takes the pressure off government agencies to sustain the industry.”

Private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are also looking beyond the moon. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has an obsessive vision of going to Mars and terraforming the planet to make it suitable for human colonization. Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos is looking to be a dominating player in the field of commercial space travel, transporting (probably very wealthy) citizens to the moon or beyond.

“Private companies have their own long term goals that exist outside of the national space program,” Dreier said. “They’ll do whatever NASA asks them to do, they don’t care whether NASA is going to the moon or Mars.”
A fight over resources

Something that will define the upcoming moon race is the fact that not every region on the moon is equal in value. “There are limited places to go, and it’s all about location,” Rice said.

Just as the California gold rush of the 19th century was defined by where the gold was found, so too will the water rush to the moon be defined by where the water is stored. The U.S. is looking to build its lunar base at the moon’s south pole, where there is thought to be a wealth of water ice reserves.

Moreover, the south pole is a wellspring for fulfilling energy needs: It’s exposed to more sunshine than anywhere else on the moon, which would fuel solar panels and supply power to the base.

Li Xianhua, China Academy of Sciences academician and Institute of Geology, speaks during a press conference in Beijing on Oct. 19.
Noel Celis/AFP via GettyMore

And with no clear space laws currently in place over ownership of objects in space, lunar resources may very well come down to whoever calls dibs first.

Who else wants to build a base on the moon’s south pole? For starters, there’s China, which recently announced long-term plans to build a base on the moon with Russia. Its more distant goal, of course, is to send a crewed mission to Mars by the year 2033.

The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, or the Chang’e Project, is relatively new to the scene but has already made great strides. In Jan. 2019, the country’s Chang’e-4 lunar probe was the first spacecraft in history to safely land on the far side of the moon. In Dec. 2020, the Chang’e-5 mission returned samples from the lunar surface. Those new moon rocks are already paying off in new scientific revelations. .

China’s space agency recently approved three more missions to the moon, targeting—you guessed it—the lunar south pole. The nation’s space program is hoping to land astronauts on the moon by the year 2030. Down the line, we may see Chinese and American astronauts hanging out on the moon at the same time.
The finish line

Nevertheless, China and Russia don’t pose much competition to the U.S. as long as NASA doesn’t dawdle on its way back to the moon. “China is absolutely working on building up its capability,” Dreier said. “But I’d say they’re at least a decade behind, if not more, compared to the U.S. capability.”

First up on NASA’s agenda is Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight to the moon that is meant to debut the brand new Space Launch System (the biggest rocket system ever built) and the Orion crew capsule that will eventually take astronauts back to the moon. Launching tentatively in April, Artemis I will simply orbit the moon and come back to Earth. It won’t be until Artemis III, set to launch in 2025 (if you’re an optimist), that we’ll finally see human boots make it to the lunar surface.

Hess does believe, however, that China has one advantage over the U.S. that it could exploit to make speedy progress.

“China has the benefit of being able to establish a long-term plan and funding, which allows them the ability to chip away at their 30-50-100 year vision,” Hess said. “We don’t have that luxury; our plans are good for a presidential term, and our budgets are appropriated annually so our programs start, stop and starve.” Long-term exploration of the solar system isn’t actually something that’s crystallized in U.S. budgets for decades to come.

NASA estimates that the Artemis program will cost $86 billion by 2025. The current U.S. administration has made a $24.8 billion fiscal 2022 budget request for NASA to cover the return to the moon.

During the first space race, the agency spent $28 billion to land the first humans on the moon, which is about $280 billion when adjusted for inflation, according to The Planetary Society.


As the space program for each of the space race participants begins to take shape, policy makers are realizing that they need to update the laws at hand to better govern the new era of space exploration that’s about to launch.

Regardless of who gets to plant space boots on the moon next, there is an overarching benefit to human exploration as a whole.

“There's more to it than that because there's an inspiration to it that you can't put a price tag on,” Rice said. “It does something to you when you walk out there and look at the moon and now there are people out there doing something, that just resonates.”

Forrest J. Ackerman RIP

Forry Ackerman the father of 'Sci-Fi' and Famous Monsters of Movieland died yesterday. When I learned this I said to a friend wow I thought he had passed away years ago. At least he had as a pop culture icon of fantasy, sci-fi and movie monsterdom. He was relagatedto occasional apperances in cheesy B sci fi and monster movies, which he loved, while the fickel world of pop culture popularity replaced him with George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Harry Potter and Tolkien.
One thing I learned from this LA Times obituary bio was that he was a closet lesbian. Which makes alot of sense, Hollywood where he grew up was always a kinky place and science fiction was place where homosexuality was one of the speculative fictions.
And the science fiction community known as 'fandom' was always a fringe community, begining in its earliest days as pulp fiction, it was based on readers and writers who cooresponded with each other, in doing so they linked to other fringe groups, and movements, some of them in their embryonic forms; feminism, occultists, conspiracy theorists, socialists,beatniks, hippies, homosexuals, etc. etc. It was not limited to the United States. Fandom was populated by the original geeks and nerds who read wild tales of imaginary worlds. In doing so they helped create the counter culture of the fifties and sixties. And in LA they created links between sci fi and libertarian politics as well as the feminist, homosexual and occult community. And no one was more of a geek than Forry.

By his late teens, he had mastered Esperanto, the invented international language. In 1929, he founded the Boys Scientifiction Club. In 1932, he joined a group of other young fans in launching the Time Traveler, which is considered the first fan magazine devoted exclusively to science fiction and for which Ackerman was "contributing editor." Ackerman also joined with other local fans in starting a chapter of the Science Fiction Society -- meetings were held in Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown L.A. -- and as editor of the group's fan publication Imagination!, he published in 1938 a young Ray Bradbury's first short story. During World War II, Ackerman edited a military newspaper published at Ft. MacArthur in San Pedro. After the war, he worked as a literary agent. His agency represented scores of science-fiction writers, including L. Ron Hubbard, Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, H.L. Gold, Ray Cummings and Hugo Gernsback. In 1954, Ackerman coined the term that would become part of the popular lexicon -- a term said to make some fans cringe. My wife and I were listening to the radio, and when someone said 'hi-fi' the word 'sci-fi' suddenly hit me," Ackerman explained to The Times in 1982. "If my interest had been soap operas, I guess it would have been 'cry-fi,' or James Bond, 'spy-fi.' " At the time, Ackerman already was well-known among science-fiction and horror aficionados for his massive collection. After a couple from Texas showed up on his doorstep in 1951 asking to view the collection, Ackerman began opening up his home for regular, informal tours on Saturdays. Over the years, thousands of people made the pilgrimage to the Ackermansion. He also wrote what has been reported to be the first lesbian science-fiction story ever published, "World of Loneliness." And under the pen name Laurajean Ermayne, he wrote lesbian romances in the late 1940s for the lesbian magazine Vice Versa.





SEE:

Childhoods End

RAW RIP

Vonnegut, Dresden and Canada

Lily Munster RIP

Grandpa Munster RIP

Van Allen Belt

LEM RIP

Octavia Butler RIP

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Heinlein Centennial

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Andre Norton 1912-2005

Lagrange 5

Good Morning Dave

Another Character Generator




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Fascism, the acme of anti-politics

It should be obvious by now, in the wake of the steady growth
enjoyed by far-right parties in many European countries since
the start of the crisis, that the anti-political mood is fertile ground
for some rather nasty developments indeed.

From Hungary’s Jobbik, with its Magyar Garda (Hungarian
Guard) paramilitary association and their anti-Roma pogroms
and unashamed antisemitism, to the unreconstructed neo-Nazis
of Greece’s Golden Dawn (polling 14% at the time of writing)
whose gangs of black-shirted bruisers drag immigrants off public
transport and break up immigrant market stalls in full view of
a sympathetic police, Europe’s new far right is soaking up the
anger, cynicism, apathy and fear of people who have abandoned
all hope in the political class. Italy’s Lega Nord, France’s Front
National (whose 17.9% for Marine Le Pen in the 2012 presidential 

elections now seems like a solidified voting bloc and no longer
simply a protest vote), Denmark’s Folkparti, the Netherlands’

 far right “lite” of Geert Wilders – there are few countries left without
a far-right party now solidly part of the mainstream.

This is not to say that the rise of the far right is a simple function
of austerity, crisis and the anti-political mood. There are a range
of complications involved. Support is not consistent and the 

anti-political mood is a harsh mistress. With allegiances to political
parties that once went back multiple generations now lasting
less time than it takes a fresh internet meme to come and go,
voters will dump a far-right party with as little regret as any other.
Golden Dawn was not the first such party to profit from the Greek
cataclysm. Laos, a hard-right Greek Orthodox party historically
on the fringes of the country’s political scene, shot up like a rocket
but was wiped out following its support for the EU-IMF bail-out.
Similarly, Geert Wilders’ anti-austerity turn is a product of his
attempt to revive his fortunes after he was associated with the
cuts to social programmes of the liberal-conservative coalition
he had been holding up.

It is undeniable, however, that if the “Kick out all the bums”
attitude is not channelled in a progressive direction it can be
absorbed by the far right instead. The rise of this form of 
anti-establishment politics is inexorably linked to the incapacity
of traditional social democracy [14] to present a constructive
channel for fury at elites. 

The rise of the far right is the twin of the collapse of social democracy.
 Of course, it is not as simple to say that all blue collar voters 
have switched from social democracy to the far right. 
This is demonstrably false. With the (instructive) 

exception of Greece where Pasok, the country’s traditional
centre-left party, has been all but wiped out, a clear majority of
working people in almost every European country continue to
vote for social democrats.
But voter abstention is soaring, particularly amongst the working
poor, and the far right go fishing in these abstentionist waters.
Italy’s anti-immigrant and regionalist Lega Nord (Northern
League) has soaked up such support in areas that until the
1980s were strongholds of working class activity and 
mobilisation that its breakthrough in 2008 allowed then leader Umberto
Bossi to claim that his was “the new working class party.” [15]

Equally in France, the Front National does best in

 de-industrialised areas and peri-urban commuter belts among low-paid
private-sector workers, the unemployed and small shopkeepers
bankrupted by competition with the out-of-town hypermarkets.
“It is a vote that has taken root east of a line from Le Havre in the
north to Perpignan in the south, and is made up of the victims
of globalisation,” according to sociologist Sylvain Crepon who
specialises in the demographics of the Front National. “The Front
National scores well among people living in poverty, who have a
real fear about how to make ends meet.” [16] Consistently across
Europe, the empirical evidence supports the thesis that being in
the category of those viewed as surplus by the market economy
and abandoned by social democratic parties “significantly raises”
the probability of voting for the extreme right. [17]
A 2011 poll for Greece’s Kappa Institute found that 30% of
respondents wanted the country to be led by “a group of experts
and technocrats” and 22.7% wanted “a strongman” to resolve
the ongoing crisis. [18] In this case, we can see the anti-political
mood supporting both the technocratic and fascist routes. A more
recent survey in France for Le Monde made similar findings:
82% agreed that politicians act principally in their own interest,
72% said that “the democratic system in France does not work
well and no one represents my ideas,” and a full 87% of respondents

 expressed a desire for a “real leader to restore order.” [19]
It is transparent that post-democracy and anti-politics are mutually

 reinforcing. The anti-political mood is exploited by the
post-democratic elites to support the removal of great swathes
of legislative subjects (and in particular fiscal policy) from the
realm of democratic contest. At the same time, the deepening
social dislocation that the policies of austerity and structural

 adjustment have imposed in this post-democratic fashion alienate
electorates still further, deepening the anti-political sentiment.
For a growing number this has led to a desire for a strongman,
but it does not need to be this way. We’ve identified here that
anti-politics can push in two directions: support of post-democratic 

technocracy or support of fascism - a strongman or paramilitary 

force to “restore order.” 

The difference between the two lies primarily in their attitude to

 force, to minorities, and
their auras of “respectability.” But in terms of their relationship
to democracy – and their agreement on the need to curb the
excesses of democracy - the two are essentially identical. They
are both varieties of despotism.

READ THE REST HERE http://tinyurl.com/wzfcc5x

US IMPERIALISM ON THE MOON

China lambasts NASA claim it may take over the moon

NASA chief has said that the world should be worried China may claim the moon as its own and tell others to ‘stay out’.

The war of words comes as NASA has also launched a moon exploration programme called Artemis WHICH IS A POLICY THAT SAYS THE MOON IS AMERICA'S SIGN THIS TREATY OR STAY OUT

[File: Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]

Published On 5 Jul 2022

China has criticised warnings from the chief of NASA that claimed Beijing may take over the moon as part of a military space programme.

Zhao Lijian, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters on Monday that China firmly opposed NASA Administrator Bill Nelson’s “irresponsible remarks”.

Nelson, who heads the United States’ space agency, had told the German newspaper, Bild, in an interview published on Saturday that he was worried about China’s space ambitions.

“We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out’,” he said, referring to Beijing’s moon exploration plans.

China, which has stepped up the pace of its space programme in the past decade, has made exploration of the moon a focus.

It made its first lunar uncrewed landing in 2013 and is planning uncrewed missions to the moon’s south pole some time this decade.

It also plans to launch rockets powerful enough to send astronauts to the moon towards the end of this decade and has also set its sights on a Mars sample-return mission around 2030.

It is also working on a three-module space station called Tiangong that will rival the International Space Station (ISS), from which it is barred as US law bans NASA from sharing data with China.

NO FACTS JUST ALLEGATIONS
Nelson said China’s space programme was a military one and claimed that it had stolen ideas and technology from others.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson [File: Joe Skipper/Reuters]

When Bild asked what military purposes China may pursue in space, he replied: “Well, what do you think is happening on the Chinese space station? They are learning how to destroy other people’s satellites.
(CONFUSING CHINA WITH INDIA AND RUSSIA)

“There is a new space race,” he added. “This time, with China.”

Zhao, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said Nelson’s remarks were not the first time that NASA chiefs have “ignored the facts and spoken irresponsibly about China”.

“The US side has constantly constructed a smear campaign against China’s normal and reasonable outer space endeavours, and China firmly opposes such irresponsible remarks,” he said.

China has always promoted the building of a shared future for humanity in outer space and opposed its weaponisation and any arms race in space, he added.

The war of words comes as NASA has also launched a moon exploration programme called Artemis.

Under Artemis, NASA plans to send a crewed mission to orbit the moon in 2024 and to make a crewed landing near the lunar south pole by 2025.

That crew will include the first woman and the first person of colour on the moon. “We will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars,” NASA said on its website.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MOON IS HARSH MISTRESS

Fifty Years In Space

Today marks the 5oth anniversary of the beginning of the Space Age and the Space Race. The Space Age and its Race was the result of the Cold War, which began with the Atomic Age. Not surprisingly the Atomic Age over laps the Space Age, in fact the Space Race not only superseded that short age, but was far more popular. Considering that the former meant the end of the world as we know it, and the latter meant finding other worlds.

While the Americans launched the Atomic Age it was the Soviet Union which launched the Space Age and its Race to the Moon.

History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a basketball, weighed only 183 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race.

The story begins in 1952, when the International Council of Scientific Unions decided to establish July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958, as the International Geophysical Year (IGY) because the scientists knew that the cycles of solar activity would be at a high point then. In October 1954, the council adopted a resolution calling for artificial satellites to be launched during the IGY to map the Earth's surface.

Both ages come as result of WWII. And it is ironic that while the Atomic Age was the collective effort Allied scientists and the U.S. military exemplifying the best aspects of a planned economy, the space race was begun in a collectivist state by the individual efforts of a scientist worthy of being a character in an Ayn Rand novel.

Sputnik was a spur of the moment gamble driven by the dream of one scientist, whose team scrounged a rocket, cobbled together a satellite and persuaded a doubting Kremlin to usher in the space age.
In a series of interviews with the Associated Press, Boris Chertok, one of the founders of the Soviet space programme, has told the little-known story of how Sputnik was launched and what an unlikely achievement it was.

For much of his life, Mr Chertok couldn't whisper a word about the project, which culminated in Sputnik entering orbit on October 4 1957.

His identity, along with that of Sergei Korolyov, the chief scientist, was a state secret. Today, aged 95, he can finally express his pride at the pivotal role he played in the history of space exploration.

"Each of these first rockets was like a beloved woman for us," he said. "We were in love with every rocket - we desperately wanted it to blast off successfully. We would give our hearts and souls to see it flying."

As described by the former scientists, the world's first orbiter was born out of a separate Soviet programme: the development of a rocket capable of striking the US with a hydrogen bomb.

Today the Space Race is on again in earnest. The Chinese have launched their first successful rocket into space. Canada, NASA, Russia, India, the European Space Agency, Japan, all have space programs. What we don't have is a common space program. Instead everyone, including the private sector, is once again competing to get to the Moon and to Mars.

Rather than developing a common space station in the Lagrange 5,an area in space where a space station could exist in perpetuity, we have a disposable station being built as a joint US/Canada/Russian venture, that will once again become space junk.

Once the space race began in earnest fifty years ago, humanity focused upwards to the skies. And it is no coincidence that as we launched space probes, space aliens appeared in popular culture to probe us.


SEE:

Drunks In Space

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Canada Celebrates Star Wars

Star Wars The Next Installment

Science or Tourism

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
space, litter, debris, NASA, Atlantis, satelittes, UFO, grabage, junk, spacewar, L5, Lagrange, Lagrange5, sci-fi, space-colonization, space, space-colony, space-station, Budget, Moon, Tourism, Space, Science,

My Articles on Anarchism

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Some of My writings on anarchism see:

Libertarian Justice

The Era Of The Common Man

Red In Tooth and Claw

The Scientific Basis of Socialism

Libertarian Communism Redux

Libertarianism

Did You Say Libertarian Communist

Free Market Economics=Cooperatives

Once More On the Fourth

Max Stirner Wears Prada

Unmasking Hayek

Some People Never Learn

Not Your Usual Left Wing Rant

Proudhon

Black Herstory Month: Lucy Parsons

Jewish Anti Zionism

Ibn Khaldun 14th Century Arab Libertarian

Left, Right and Liberty

Workers Control Versus Trade Unions

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Prisons Need Police Society Needs Mediators

The Need for Arab Anarchism

History of the Libertarian Movement

Economics, Evolution and Mutual Aid

Antinominalist Anarchism

State less Socialism

Libertarian Labour