In Plane Terms
January 18, 2022
The Good News
- Bill Gates’ climate fund looks to funnel billions into carbon removal, green hydrogen, and more (The Verge)
- Norway blows up hydro dam to restore river health and fish stocks (Guardian)
“The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.” – Thomas Sowell
In Plane Terms
When Jessica Rosenworcel, chairwoman of the FCC, spoke about the results of the U.S. government’s latest spectrum auction in February 2021, she said: “It is essential to America’s economic recovery that we deliver on the promise of next-generation wireless services for everyone, everywhere.” To make the promise of 5G a reality, wireless companies spent over $81 billion to buy the rights to use certain parts of the radio spectrum – specifically, the C-band frequencies between 3.7 and 3.98 GHz. AT&T and Verizon dominated the auction, spending a combined $68.9 billion of the total on licenses in the upper 3GHz band. The addition of the C-band frequency will improve speeds for 5G devices and expand coverage. Once 5G networks become fully operational, 5G devices will be over 10 times faster than 4G processors.
But the FAA worried that C-band could interfere with some radio altimeters and aircraft safety tools that rely on nearby airwaves, and impact low-visibility operations. The agency began fighting to delay 5G deployment, preparing guidance that could cause flight cancellations from airports operating near certain 5G antennas. On New Year’s Eve, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent a letter to the CEOs of AT&T and Verizon, asking the wireless carriers to delay their C-band launches for two weeks beyond the agreed-upon January 5 deadline. The letter said commercial C-band service would begin in January as planned, with certain exceptions around priority airports “where a buffer zone would permit aviation operations to continue safely while the FAA completes its assessments of the interference potential around those airports.” On January 3rd, AT&T and Verizon agreed to buffer zones around 50 airports to reduce interference risks and to take other steps to cut potential interference for six months. They also agreed to delay deployment for two weeks until this upcoming Wednesday, temporarily averting an aviation safety standoff.
The FAA began issuing hundreds of notices last week related to the rollout of C-band while it continues to determine which radar altimeters will be reliable and accurate when 5G C-band finally gets deployed. Then Monday, the chief executives of major U.S. passenger and cargo carriers warned of an impending “catastrophic” aviation crisis if the new 5G service is launched Wednesday. The airline executives said the new service could potentially make a significant number of wide-body aircraft unusable and possibly “strand tens of thousands of Americans overseas.” According to the chief executives of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and others, “unless our major hubs are cleared to fly, the vast majority of the traveling and shipping public will essentially be grounded. To be blunt, the nation’s commerce will grind to a halt.” The airlines ask that 5G not be implemented within two miles of airport runways at some key airports. (ArsTechnica, Vox, faa.gov, Al Jazeera)
Eviction Friction
- Jewish settlement construction in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem spiked after Donald Trump took office in 2017. Now, dozens of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem are at risk of eviction by Jewish settler organizations, and thousands face the threat of demolition because of discriminatory policies that make it extremely difficult for Palestinians to build new homes or expand existing ones.
- Palestinian members of the Salhiya family live on property in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood they say the family purchased before 1967; the state denies their claims. The Jerusalem Municipality formally seized the property in 2017, but the family continued to operate a plant nursery there.
- In 2021, a Jerusalem court ordered the eviction of 36 Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and two other East Jerusalem neighborhoods. On Monday, when police came to evict the Salhiya family, several members climbed onto the roof with gas tanks and threatened to light them on fire. Hours later they came down, but only after police and work crews backed off. (AP)
Signs Of Imminent Genocide In India
- Gregory Stanton, founder and director of Genocide Watch, predicted the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi in Rwanda years before it took place in 1994. During a congressional briefing, Stanton said there are early “signs and processes” of genocide in the predominantly Muslim state of Assam in India, and in Indian-administered Kashmir.
- Stanton said, “We are warning that genocide could very well happen in India.” He noted that genocide is not an event but a process, and drew parallels between policies pursued by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the discriminatory policies of Myanmar’s government against Rohingya Muslims in 2017.
- Among Modi’s policies that Stanton cited were the revocation of the special autonomous status of Indian-administered Kashmir in 2019, which stripped Kashmiris of the special autonomy they’d had for seven decades, and the Citizenship Amendment Act the same year, which granted citizenship to religious minorities, but excluded Muslims. Stanton said the Hindutva ideology was “contrary to the history of India and the Indian constitution” and referred to Modi as an “extremist who has taken over the government.” (Al Jazeera)
Additional World News
- Possible Netanyahu plea deal could force him out of politics (Axios)
- China steps up construction along disputed Bhutan border, satellite images show (Reuters)
- Austria tweaks vaccine mandate plan, to come in next month (ABC)
- Kosovo bans Serbian vote on constitutional changes on its soil (Reuters)
- North Korea fires projectile in 4th launch this month (CBS)
- Microsoft Warns of Cyber Attack on Ukrainian Computer Networks (NYT, $)
- Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta: Ousted Mali president dies aged 76 (BBC)
Fake It ‘Til You Make It
- In March 2021, a watchdog group, American Oversight, obtained the nearly identical fake elector certificates created by Trump allies in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico – all states Biden won. The fake documents had been submitted to the National Archives in the weeks following the election in a coordinated effort to replace valid presidential electors from those states with a pro-Trump slate.
- Last week, Michigan’s Democratic attorney general Dana Nessel asked federal prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into 16 Republicans who submitted false certificates stating they were the state’s presidential electors despite Biden’s 154,000-vote victory. Team Trump’s efforts to subvert the Electoral College is a key line of inquiry for the January 6 committee, which has subpoenaed John Eastman, a controversial right-wing lawyer who worked for Trump.
- Eastman authored a memo outlining a six-step plan for Pence to overturn the election and award Trump a second term. The plan included throwing out results from seven states because they allegedly had competing electors. (American Oversight, CNN)
Guam High Alert
- Tensions in the Indo-Pacific have been escalating between the U.S. and China over the status of the self-ruled island of Taiwan. And on Monday, North Korea conducted its fourth missile test of the year, firing two short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea off the coast of the Korean Peninsula.
- All that undoubtedly explains why one of the most powerful weapons in the U.S. Navy’s arsenal made a rare port call Saturday at the naval base in the U.S. Pacific Island territory of Guam. The USS Nevada, an Ohio-class nuclear-powered submarine carrying 20 Trident ballistic missiles and dozens of nuclear warheads, pulled into port in what was the first visit to Guam of a ballistic missile submarine – sometimes called a “boomer” – since 2016, and only the second announced visit since the 1980s.
- Movements of the Navy’s fleet of 14 boomers are usually closely guarded secrets. But analysts like to say Washington can send a message to allies and foes with its ballistic missile submarines that neither Beijing nor Pyongyang can. (CBS News, CNN)
Additional USA News
- Double dealing: Legal, illicit blur in California pot market (AP)
- DeSantis says he disagreed with Trump’s decision to shut down economy at start of pandemic (The Hill)
- Florida tornadoes destroy dozens of homes, leave 7,000 customers without power (CNN)
- Surgeon general on Omicron: Next few weeks will be tough (Politico)
- Glenn Youngkin attempts to ban critical race theory on day one as Virginia governor (Guardian) Order to end school mask mandates gets pushback in Virginia (AP)
- ‘It’s ugly out there’: Rail theft soars on LA tracks (LAT, $)
- Romney: Putin can’t be allowed to rebuild the Soviet Union (Politico)
A Dig Deal
- The Jurassic Coast is England’s only natural World Heritage Site, stretching 95 miles from Exmouth, East Devon to Old Harry Rocks, Dorset. The dramatic scenery of the Jurassic Coast and the fossils hidden within its rocks make it one-of-a-kind for citizen scientists and collectors alike. The Jurassic Coast is highly unusual among the world’s great fossil sites because it’s entirely legal for absolutely anyone to go there, find fossils, take them home, and even sell them. With the West Dorset cliffs eroding at a rapid rate, scientists alone could never hope to save even a fraction of the fossils emerging onto the beaches before they’re swept away by the waves. This has left amateur collectors as key partners in the fight to preserve the area’s extraordinary fossil bounty for study and display. Over the past two decades, there’s been a huge rise in the number of people visiting the local beaches, in search of prehistoric treasures before they’re destroyed by the tides.
- The Dorset town of Lyme Regis has a local geologist and fossil collector named Paddy Howe, who claims to have taken more than 100,000 people fossil hunting. Howe himself has been a fossil hunter for decades, and among his collection are some stunning finds, including an almost 20-foot long ichthyosaur – a type of fearsome, warm-blooded, air breathing, fish-shaped marine reptile from the Mesozoic Era that looks like a cross between a shark and a crocodile. Ichthyosaurs grew up to 82 feet long and lived between 250 million and 90 million years ago.
- Fossilized ichthyosaurs have usually been found along the Jurassic Coast in Dorset or on the Yorkshire coast. That’s why the discovery of Britain’s largest ichthyosaur, found 30 miles inland at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve, a landlocked reservoir about 100 miles north of London, was so stunning. This particular “sea dragon” was almost 33 feet long, had a skull that literally weighed a ton, and lived some 180 million years ago. It likely never would have been unearthed if the lagoon hadn’t been drained in early 2021 as part of a landscaping project. Dr. Dean Lomax, a paleontologist from Manchester University, was brought in to lead the excavation effort, which was done over three weeks in late summer. Lomax called the discovery “truly unprecedented” and “one of the greatest finds in British paleontological history.” (Geographical Magazine, NYT)
Additional Reads
- Wealth of world’s 10 richest men doubled in pandemic, Oxfam says (BBC)
- Typhoons, wildfires, missiles: Teen flies solo round world (AP)
- Baked beans and drugs? Men tried to smuggle $340,000 worth of cocaine in baked bean cans (USA Today)
- Djokovic arrives in Dubai after deportation from Australia (AP)
- What Davos Looks Like When the World Economic Forum Is Cancel (NYT, $)
- Is There Really Such a Thing as Low-Carbon Beef? (Wired)
- Ancient life may be just one possible explanation for Mars rover’s latest discovery (CNN)