A new ICE age

Space and space exploration
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Old spaceships don’t die, they just get parked in very long stable orbits to fade away, but sometimes what’s assumed to be dead is still there ready to serve us again, as seems to be the case with the International Cometary Explorer:

ISEE-3 was originally launched on August 12, 1978, as the International Sun-Earth Explorer to a halo orbit about one of the Earth-Moon libration points to study Earth’s magnetosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. Then, in 1983, it employed several lunar gravity assist flybys to send it on a new journey, for which it was rechristened the International Cometary Explorer, through the tail of comet Giacobini-Zinner. ICE approached within 7,800 kilometers of the comet on September 11, 1985. In 1986, it turned its instruments toward Halley’s comet, participating in the international observation campaign, and becoming the first spacecraft to investigate two comets.

[…]

ICE is actually on a return trip to Earth now; it’s in an orbit similar to, but slightly faster than, Earth’s, so measured relative to us, it’s taking a long, slow trip around the Sun. It will return to our neighborhood on August 10, 2014, targeted to return to the Moon, which is what originally launched it on this journey. A lunar flyby can recapture it back into Earth orbit, after which, Farquhar said, they are thinking of parking it in its original halo orbit again, from which they could launch it back out to explore more cometary targets.

So it returns home on my birthday, which is nice. There’s so much interesting stuff going unexplored in our solar system for lack of spacecraft, so it’s great to see a new purpose for an old soldier like this.

Found via Sore Eyes.

Some unanswered questions

economic crisis
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In its infinite generosity, Washington came to the rescue. Of course it had no choice; no modern government would dare let a financial crisis turn into a general collapse. Yet the situation is rich with irony. In the early 1990s, Greenspan would craft the Federal Reserve’s bailout of the 1980s mania. And the braindead caretaker administration of George Bush crafted the greatest socialization of private loss in history, the S&L bailout. And, remarkably, almost nobody has suffered serious criminal penalties or political disgrace for this rampant abuse of trust. Huge quantities of public money — some $200 billion, though definitive accountings are hard to come by — were spent with little discussion or analysis, and the affair is now largely forgotten. The chance to use the industry’s partial liquidation as an opportunity to develop new public and cooperative financial institutions was blown. Within a couple of years of the crisis’ passing, no one paid it any mind any longer. It’s as if it never happened.

Wall Street, page 90, Doug Henwood.

One question I haven’t seen answered so far, or even asked yet, is how the various governments around the world are paying for their bailout schemes. The US government doesn’t just have 700 billion dollars lying around, or the British government fifty billion pounds, nor even the Dutch government the 17 billion euros needed to bail out Fortis. So where do they get it from? That’s right, they borrow it on the international money markets.

So two questions: 1) if the banks are in trouble because they can’t get anybody to lend them money, where do the governments get their money from and 2) if there is money in the system, and if governments can get money for bailouts there obviously is, why isn’t this money loaned to the banks directly?

Obviously the answer to the second question is that the people with the money don’t trust the banks but do trust governments enough to think their investment is safe with them, even if their bailouts fail. Private profits, socialised risk.

Another de Menezes tragedy could happen again

Jean Charles de Menezes, Policing
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Cressida Dick. Picture by Paul Grover

Because I haven’t been fired or prosecuted yet, says Cressida Dick (not really):

Facing cross-examination about the shooting for the first time, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick admitted: “I am afraid that I do believe that this or something like this could happen again”.

She added: “The nature of these operations is that they are immediately high risk to all concerned and that is because of the nature of the threat we face from suicide terrorists.

“Our job is to reduce the risk to everybody as best as possible. But I do fear that, in the future, a bomber might not be prevented from setting off a bomb. And equally, I pray it doesn’t happen, but it is possible an innocent member of the public might die like this.”

No responsibility taken by Dick than, who was the person in charge when de Menezes was murdered, but instead the Met’s standard Barbie defense “policing is hard”. No recognition either of the simple fact that these police tactics have not prevented any of the London suicide bombings but do have a hundred percent track record of killing innocent bystanders. Even on its own terms the police tactics did not work, yet the Met still insists they were the right tactics for the circumstances.

What’s more, the first response by the Metropolitian Police when their momentous error became know was to smear de Menezes, even though it was clear immediately after his murder he was not a suicide bomber. Who smeared de Menezes? And why did Dick not protest against this? Are we supposed to just accept the idea that the London police every now and again will murder one of us just because they think it’s necessary?

In olden days, senior commanders who screwed up like Dick or her superior, Ian Blair, did would be given a bottle of whisky and a loaded pistol. Instead one denies all wrongdoing, was even promoted afterwards, while the other was finally forced to resign by Boris Johnson, of all people.

Fortis nationalised

Dutch politics, economic crisis
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Jump you fuckers!

This time last week Fortis was to be part-nationalised by the governments of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Less than a week later, this drastic measure costing billions of euros was already ruled to be insufficient and now Fortis is to be broken up, with the Dutch part nationalised and the Belgian and Luxembourg parts sold to a French bank. Instead of the four billion euros that were to be paid last week for 49 percent of Fortis, the government will now pay some 17 billion euros for the entire kit and kaboodle. No longer will it be dependent on the vageries of the stock market but instead the rot is stopped and it’s safe under state control. A thriumph for socialism?

Hardly.

There’s a big difference between a proper nationalisation done by the workers for the workers and a nationalisation of last resort as been done here. Yes, the recieved economic wisdom of the past three decades has been that state owned companies are evil, inefficient and that everything should be left to the free market, but in reality capitalism has always been happy to let government clean up its messes. In this case, the government has made clear this is a temporary measure, with Fortis to be privatised again once it has stablised, the company will be run according to normal capitalist rules rather than for the common good and the day to day running of Fortis will remain in the hands of the same people who run it now. In other words, nothing will change and the only positive thing the government has done is rewarding the same people who almost ran Fortis in the ground with their slice of the seventeen billion euros…

What’s more, that seventeen billion had to be borrowed on the financial markets, so interests will need to be paid over it. Sure, the profits Fortis will make might cover these costs, but in the short term and the current climate this is unlikely. Which means there will be more budgetcuts next year, less to spend on social welfare, especially as we’re still comitted to fighting an expensive (and of course, immoral) war in Afghanistan which also doesn’t come cheap. This at a time when the need for social welfare will surely grow, considering the collapse of the world financial system going on around us and the effects on the real economy this
already has.

No, this isn’t socialism, this is just socialism of risks and privatisation of profits: same as it ever was.