Tag Archives: economics

Trailing

Posted on by
Reply

The People’s Republic of China now has the fastest supercomputer in the world.  In fact, it has the two fastest.  There’s more to it than this, too, as Horst Simon, Deputy Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, noted:

The fact that every single piece is Chinese-made is huge.

side from minor matters like predicting the weather and the investment markets, these kinds of computers are useful in identifying and solving complex problems involved in design of equipment, weapons, defense weapons, collating intelligence information and making serious predictions based on that information, and on and on and on.

This is an area in which we can’t afford to lag.  Especially to trail our enemies.

Boeing, Iran, and Aircraft Sales

Posted on by
1

Iran reportedly reached an agreement Sunday to buy 100 planes from Boeing, pending the final authorization from US Treasury officials.

These are passenger aircraft, ostensibly destined for Iranair and other Iranian airline companies.

There are a couple of questions about this deal, though.  One is where will the money (in the neighborhood of $17 billion) come from with which Iran will pay for these aircraft?  Who will lend Iran the money?

The second question has more dire possibilities.  Regardless of Boeing’s motives (and I do not doubt them), in the end, these are fundamentally transport aircraft.  What assurances can there be that Iran won’t turn them over to their military for transport of equipment and soldiers, whether to support Iranian military adventurism (Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, for instance) or to support Iranian terrorist clients (Hamas and Hezbollah, for instance)?

Laughingstock

Posted on by
Reply

The Pentagon held a video-teleconference with Russian defense officials Saturday, two days after Russia bombed Pentagon and CIA-backed rebels not once, but twice on Thursday near Syria’s border with Iraq and Jordan.

And especially [emphasis added]

The second wave of strikes occurred after the US military called Russia on an emergency byline established following Russia’s deployment of dozens of fighter jets and attack helicopters to Syria in late 2015.

This is how seriously Russia takes President Barack Obama’s (d) administration.  This is the contempt Vladimir Putin has for this President and for Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her Reset that she wants to extend.  A Reset that is too expensive, indeed.

Elections have consequences.

Another Failure of Leading from Behind

Posted on by
Reply

As the Tuesday [ASEAN] meeting ended, people briefed on the matter said discord emerged over how the proceedings should be presented to the public—between China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, and among ASEAN members themselves.

Indeed, no official post-meeting statement was produced, as is usual for international meetings.  Several participants issued their own statements, and Indonesia canceled a joint appearance with the PRC representative.  The PRC—not an ASEAN member—even presumed to instruct the participants that whatever ASEAN might say could not be the official ASEAN comment.

We’re not a member of ASEAN, but as a Pacific nation, we certainly could—and should—exercise a measure of influence and help.  But this administration doesn’t want to engage here, either.

Time to Decertify the Local

Posted on by
Reply

Some employees of Cablevision in Brooklyn, members of the Communication Workers of America union, were at a company BBQ circulating a petition to decertify their local, 1109.  Naturally the local’s officials objected, and they threatened the petition circulators.

I just want you to understand, to be perfectly clear that CWA we’re probably going to personally sue y’all[.]
…
[W]e’re going after y’all personally[.]

It’s especially serious when an NLRB administrative judge objects to the union local’s behavior, ruling these union officials had violated Federal labor law with their threats.  It’ll be interesting to see how the NLRB board itself rules on the union’s inevitable appeal.