RUTHFULLY YOURS

The solar-powered plane that recently concluded its much delayed and long overdue round-the-world flight was predictably touted as further ‘proof’ that green energy has come of age. The real-world appraisal is dour: a PR stunt to obscure the fact that ‘alternative technologies’ are going nowhere.
Just the other day, we were told history was made when the aircraft Solar Impulse 2 landed in Abu Dhabi after what was described as the first round-the-world flight by a solar powered plane. The epic journey commenced in March, 2015, and since that time the plane had spent a total of 23 days in the air. This was an achievement for which the aviation world waited a long time, quite literally, to applaud — both in the short and much longer-term.

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright conducted what is generally credited as the first sustained powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft, covering 39 metres. By 1905, the Wrights were able to cover 24 miles in 39 minutes 23 seconds. By 1916 the aeroplane had been matched the synchronised machine gun and become a potent instrument of war. A bare 65 years after the short hop at kitty Hawk, NASA put a man on the moon. The rapid progress was fuelled primarily by human imagination, wonderful new commercial opportunities and, of course, by two world wars. It was an extraordinarily rapid pace of development.

In 1925, John Logie Baird demonstrated his first prototype of a modern television set. His breakthrough, of course, relied on earlier technologies, the most important of which was the cathode ray tube first demonstrated in 1907. In 1928, the world’s first television station WGY commenced operation in Schenectady in upstate New York.

In 1932 the BBC commenced regular programming. TV broadcasts in London were on the air an average of four hours daily from 1936 to 1939. There were 12,000 to 15,000 receivers. Some sets in restaurants or bars might have 100 viewers for sport events. Broadcasts were suspended during the war and resumed in 1946. By the 1960s TV had become a ubiquitous part of modern life and by now its quality has improved exponentially.

A third example of technological advancement and commerce began in 1946, when ENIAC, the world’s first electronic general purpose computer was unveiled. It weighed 27 tons, occupied 167 square metres of space, used 150kw of electricity. Its construction cost almost US$7 million in today’s money, not least for its five million hand-soldered joints! It could multiply two 10 digit numbers in .0028 seconds. ENIAC was, of course, based on vacuum tubes and crystal diodes, which imposed a serious physical limitation on future progress. This impediment was overcome in 1955 with the development of the first fully transistorized computer, the Harwell Cadet, at the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment. The development if the integrated circuit in 1958 then opened the way to the rapid development of the microcomputer. The world went from ENIAC to Apple Mac in just 38 years! And the pace of technological advance in computing since then has been astronomical.

See where I’m going with this? Now consider other technologies, ones we are constantly told are on the very edge of becoming commercially viable.

A former Guantanamo Bay detainee who unexpectedly disappeared from Uruguay last month showed up in Venezuela on Tuesday, saying he wanted help traveling to Turkey, Uruguay’s Foreign Ministry said.

Abu Wa’el Dhiab, who was transferred by the Obama administration to Montevideo, Uruguay, in 2014, appeared at Uruguay’s consulate in Caracas and asked for assistance to fly to Turkey or some other country to be reunited with his family.

“He made it clear he has no interest in returning to Uruguay, but that he needs our country’s help,” the ministry said late Wednesday, adding that Venezuelan authorities were aware of the situation.

A spokesman for the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry in Caracas had said earlier that the office had no information about the former detainee’s arrival.

Uruguay’s foreign ministry said it wouldn’t fund Mr. Dhiab’s travel plans but that he could return to Montevideo, where his legal status as a refugee would still be valid.

Mr. Dhiab’s abrupt disappearance from Uruguay sparked weeks of speculation and concern about his intentions, leading several South American nations to try to determine his whereabouts. Brazil was especially interested as security is being heightened ahead of the Summer Olympic Games set to begin next week.

Once accused of being an al Qaeda militant, Mr. Dhiab is one of six former Guantanamo prisoners who were resettled in Uruguay as part a White House effort to close down the Cuba-based prison. The other five men remain in Uruguay.

Uruguayan officials have allowed the former detainees to move about freely.

Mr. Dhiab’s travel plans may raise additional concern, given Turkey’s porous border with Syria and its use as an entry point for volunteers looking to join Islamic State. CONTINUE AT SITE

Turkish prosecutors are investigating people who allege on social media that the coup attempt was in fact a hoax.

In a massive purge, the government sacked more than 60,000 civil servants from the military, judiciary, police, schools and academia, including 1,577 faculty deans who were suspended. More than 10,000 people have been arrested and there are serious allegations of torture.

Witnesses told Amnesty International that captured military officers were raped by police, hundreds of soldiers were beaten, some detainees were denied food and water and access to lawyers for days. Turkish authorities also arrested 62 children and accused them of treason.

The good news is that the coup attempt failed and Turkey is not a third world dictatorship run by an unpredictable military general who loves to crush dissent. The bad news is that Turkey is run by an unpredictable, elected president who loves to crush dissent.

In 1853, John Russell quoted Tsar Nicholas I of Russia as saying that the Ottoman Empire was “a sick man — a very sick man,” in reference to the ailing empire’s fall into a state of decrepitude. Some 163 years after that, the modern Turkish state follows in the Ottoman steps.

Turkey, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule, was staggering between a hybrid democracy and bitter authoritarianism. After the failed putsch of July 15, it is being dragged into worse darkness. The silly attempt gives Erdogan what he wanted: a pretext to go after every dissident Turk. A witch-hunt is badly shattering the democratic foundations of the country.

Taking advantage of the putsch attempt, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency that will run for a period of three months, with an option to extend it for another quarter of a year. Erdogan, declaring the state of emergency, promised to “clean out the cancer viruses like metastasis” in the body called Turkey. With the move for a state of emergency, Turkey also suspended the European Convention on Human Rights, citing Article 15 of the Convention, which stipulates:

Earlier this month, the visitors’ log of the Jewish part of Hebron enjoyed a boost as activists, largely American Jews, ‎descended on the ancient Jewish city. Not as tourists to the Cave of the Patriarchs, or for contemplation ‎or prayer at the Avraham Avinu synagogue, but to organize a protest against “Israel’s crimes” and to support the Palestinian community.

There was no mention of the ‎fact that only 3% of Hebron is accessible to Jews and the remaining 97% is Palestinian, ‎with a small area functioning as a military buffer zone, or that Palestinian Hebron has ‎functioned as a terrorist hub for some time. The group’s main objective, ‎according to their spokesperson, was to take over an old Palestinian factory, now part of ‎the buffer zone, and turn it into a movie theater.

Some of the activists brought ‎popcorn labeled “Cinema Hebron” with them as a prop to drive the point home. ‎There were 45 American Jewish activists and a handful from various other countries. They did their best to provoke the authorities in the already volatile city, but while a ‎few activists with Israeli citizenship were detained and charged with presence in a ‎closed military zone and organizing an illegal protest, the others were merely banned from ‎entering Hebron for two weeks and then permitted to return to Tel Aviv. ‎No violence erupted, and despite a heavy media presence, the event could be ‎considered a calm affair. At around 2 p.m. the activists left Hebron to go have lunch, and, ‎according to their spokesperson, they have no plans to come back to complete the movie theater task.

The leaders of this pack were Peter Beinart, an American left-wing activist and self-‎proclaimed intellectual, and Amna Farooqi, the Muslim president of J Street U. The activists belonged to such well-known groups as J Street, the New Israel Fund and Jewish ‎Voice for Peace, an organization that supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions ‎movement against Israel. During the hours spent in Hebron, Beinart said he was very happy with what they had achieved that day and that he saw this as ‎proof of not only the success of their message, but also of a “new leadership” emerging ‎within the Jewish world. ‎

Beinart has every reason to be happy and content, because he is a major player in ‎one of the world’s most lucrative and trendy industries — conflict and activism. I have ‎personally seen an example of this industry much closer to home, as my home of Sweden is also the home of the infamous Gaza flotilla, known as “Ship to Gaza,” involving well-known intellectuals, ‎politicians and pundits far more concerned with an idea than with actual results. This is clearly demonstrated by their cargo manifest, which includes 10-year-old antibiotics, a few footballs, canned goods, a second-hand fridge and a ‎generator — a considerably more humble contribution than the 700 trucks entering Gaza ‎every day from Israel, carrying building material, food, medicine and clothes.