SATURDAY NIGHT RIVAL SONS, MODJO.

Rival Sons with Feral Roots. From the 2019 album of the same name.





US rock band from Long Beach, CA. Formed in 2009 by Jay Buchanan and Michael Miley.



On a somewhat lighter note, Modjo with Lady (Hear me tonight). From their debut album Modjo (2000).





Short-lived (1999-2003) French house band around Romain Tranchart and vocalist Yann Destagnol.



Dobranoc.


MFBB.

NUMBER OF HOMELESS PERSONS IN THE NETHERLANDS DOUBLES IN TEN YEAR TIME SPAN.

Dutch daily NRC, one of the most important written news outlets, notes that the number of homeless in The Netherlands has doubled since 2009:

"Het aantal mensen dat in Nederland bekend staat als dak- en thuisloze is sinds 2009 meer dan verdubbeld, zo blijkt uit cijfers van het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS). In 2018 stonden ruim 39.000 mensen bekend als dakloos; in 2009 waren dat er nog ongeveer 18.000. Daklozen die illegaal in Nederland verblijven, zijn niet meegenomen in de cijfers.

„Ik schrik erg van deze cijfers”, schrijft staatssecretaris Paul Blokhuis van Volksgezondheid (ChristenUnie) in een reactie op Twitter. „Dit is een trend die we absoluut moeten keren. Ik wil de komende tijd precies te weten komen wat deze stijging heeft veroorzaakt, zodat we hier samen met gemeenten, woningcorporaties, opvangorganisaties en andere ministeries mee aan de slag kunnen.”

Het aantal daklozen met een niet-westerse achtergrond groeide de laatste jaren harder dan gemiddeld. Deze groep, waarvan de meesten jonger zijn dan 30 jaar, is sinds 2009 in aantal verdrievoudigd tot ruim 18.000. Zij maken sinds 2016 ongeveer de helft uit van het totale aantal daklozen; in 2009 was dit nog 36 procent. Wat daarbij opvalt is dat zij vaker dan gemiddeld in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht en Den Haag verblijven.

Van alle 18- tot 65-jarige daklozen had vorig jaar 57 procent een migratie-achtergrond. Het overgrote deel (84 procent) was man."

The Central Bureau for Statistics notes that in 2009, there were about 18,000 homeless. In 2018 there were 39,000. So that's actually a doubling in 9 years.

Of all the homeless between 18 and 65 years of age, last year 57 per cent had a migration background. Since it is fair to assume that homeless usually fall into that category - below 18, you are usually cared for by your family, and beyond 65 as a homeless person you are either dead or put in a shelter - one can conclude that the doubling is for the greater part the result of The Netherlands' migration policy.

The howler is of course that State Secretary for Public Health Paul Blokhuis "was very much shocked by these numbers".

Well of course you idiot. If your country has an Open Border policy re immigration, you attract large numbers of Third Worlders with no knowledge of the language, no skills, no money, and no customs worth speaking of. Ergo, prime candidates for the growing army of homeless people.


The numbers are devastating. My country Belgium receives about 125,000 - 129,000 migrants PER YEAR. Dutch politicians are a degree more responsible and sane than their Belgian counterparts, but the population is bigger: now around 17.5 million vs 11.3 million. It is thus fair to say The Netherlands also easily welcomes over 100,000 welfare seekers per year.

That is UNSUSTAINABLE.

And to think that if there is one word the grand majority of our treacherous class of politicians slaps us around the ears with - apart from 'racism!' - it is .... sustainability.


MFBB.

THE THREE SEAS INITIATIVE, A REVIVAL OF MARSHAL PILSUDSKI'S OLD INTERMARIUM PROJECT.

First some background, via NewEasternEurope:

"The Intermarium strategy was developed in Poland as a political doctrine at the turn of the 20th century. It was an attempt to answer the general question on how to rebuild a sovereign Polish state and how to secure its future. The concept was innovative even if the purpose was not. The Poles alone, and Poland as a sole actor, wouldn’t be able to achieve such a goal. Poland’s enemies, especially Russia, were considered the main obstacle to independence and excessively powerful. The authors of the Intermarium strategy, Józef Piłsudski and his closest associates of the Polish Socialist Party, discovered the potential of nationalistic aspirations of other nations living within the Russian state. The idea was simple: to initiate a national revolt in a suitable moment and split Russia along national divisions. In such a way both major Polish goals would be fulfilled: independence and a secure future. Russia, if pushed from Europe and stripped of its conquest, would be annihilated as an empire and no longer pose a threat to the newly established states.

The first opportunity to turn Intermarium strategy into reality appeared at the outbreak of the war between Russia and Japan in 1904. Piłsudski submitted his political study and idea to the Japanese ministry of foreign affairs. But the Japanese did not take that proposal seriously. The second opportunity emerged at the end of the First World War, which left Poland’s partitioners (Russia, Germany and Austria) defeated. Russia was additionally crippled by the revolution and civil war. Piłsudski wanted to create a chain of sovereign nation states from the Baltic Sea up to the Black Sea including Poland, Lithuania (heirs of the Grand Duchy in its 18th century borders), Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and some countries in the Caucasus. All these nations working together within a political bloc were supposed to fundamentally transform Eastern Europe and bring a new strategic balance not only to the region, but also to the whole Europe. It is evident that the Intermarium project was directed against Russian power. Such a bloc would also prevent Germany from rebuilding its imperial might in Europe. Finally, newly established countries would become good allies to the Western European powers.

For achieving his goal Piłsudski needed two preconditions: complete military defeat of Russia and deep co-operation of the nations involved in the project. Neither came into place. The Riga Peace Treaty (1921) was a disaster for the Intermarium concept. It sanctioned a de facto partition of Ukraine and Belarus between Russia and Poland as well as ruined the relations of Poland with the other countries in the region. No nation was willing at that time to recognise Polish political aspirations nor were they willing to replace one colonial power for another; all of the neighbors were afraid of Polish domination. Additionally, the West treated Polish ambitions and activities as unjustified expansion to the East. Russia, on the other hand, was humiliated by the war with Poland and abandoned by the old entente allies. It started to look for new friends, such as Germany. The alliance was profitable for both sides. However, this change of international balance was achieved at the expense of all the nations settled between Germany and Russia. The new war broke out in 1939 and after five terrible years Germany was defeated, but the Soviet Union celebrated victory. The Yalta agreement allowed the USSR to swallow the whole disputed region in its direct and indirect sphere of influences.

In the post-war era, Intermarium was deeply buried and censored. Outside of the region it was cultivated by Polish exiles, for instance by Jerzy Giedroyć and his magazine Kultura. Giedroyć once stated: “There can be no free Poland without free Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.” What was important here was that Giedroyć abandoned the concept of Poland in its historic, Jagiellonian borders and stressed the value of equal co-operation among partners in every respect. In such a way he addressed the Eastern European nations’ pre-war fears of Polish domination.

This stance was supported and repeated by the Polish democratic opposition, which matured in the 1970s. In September 1981 the First National Conference of the Delegates of NSZZ “Solidarność” prepared a “Message to the working people of Eastern Europe”repeating Giedroyć’s position. The communist regimes were furious. The Soviet government treated the message as unauthorized interference into state policy. The Intermarium concept was still treated as a danger to Soviet rule over the region.

One could believe that after the dreams of many people in the region were realized and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Intermarium project would have been reintroduced. However the majority had another dream: to make a geopolitical shift from the East to the West. The first step was gaining independence from the Soviet Union through the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. In this action all the countries of the region were loyal and supportive to each other. However, when it came to the negotiations with NATO and the European Union, solidarity disappeared. Nations were lodging separate applications; there was constant competition and individual negotiations. The weakness of the Intermarium was laid bare. It consisted in the differences between the goals of the potential partners. Whenever it came to deciding between solidarity and individual benefits, the latter always won – also within Visѐgrad Group. If the countries of a similar level of development were not able to reach any vital agreement, what can be said about the post-Soviet dependents like Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and others?





Nevertheless, Intermarium existed as a slogan, especially in Poland, to which right-wing politicians frequently referred in their speeches. For instance, this could be visible in the parliamentary debates after the annual address by the minister of foreign affairs. One may ask: What was the reason for such empathy? That might not be solely the attachment to the tradition and glorious history, though this element should also be considered. Paraphrasing US President Donald Trump’s slogan, the Polish right was still attracted by the idea of “making Poland big again”. But how? They neither favoured sticking to the mainstream, nor promoting close co-operation with the most developed EU countries.

The answer could be seen in the parliamentary debate of 2013. Witold Waszczykowski who was then a deputy to the parliament stressed the need to “regain the role as spokesman of the region” and “rebuild the autonomous region, e.g. Carpathian”. His colleague Arkadiusz Mularczyk added that Poland should become a leader and a representative of Eastern and Central Europe within the EU. Thus, the essential role foreseen for Poland was to build its position by being a leader of an autonomous region. The will of some politicians is not always easily transformed into real action, however. And it certanily is not so easy to become the leader of a regional group.

When a new idea, the so-called Three Seas Initiative, appeared in 2015 and was followed by two summits (first in Dubrovnik in 2016 and second in Warsaw in 2017), the old Polish strategies began to once again emerge. The old questions were also being re-formulated: Does Poland still aspire to play the role of regional leader and want to use the newest initiative for its own purposes? What is the real reason for the 12 countries of Central and Eastern Europe, all members of the EU, to unite around some common goals?..."

In 2015, Pilsudski's old dream resurfaced, under the name Three Seas Initiative (3SI), a geopolitical joint project by Poland and Croatia:

"...It acts as a forum between twelve European countries to strengthen trade, energy, infrastructure and political cooperation. It is also known as the BABS Initiative as the member countries border with three European Seas - Baltic, Adriatic and Black Sea.

The Three Seas or BABS Initiative comprises of twelve Eastern and Central European countries. This includes Poland, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Austria, Latvia, and Slovenia. Other than Austria, all the member countries were formerly Soviet-influenced communist countries and part of the former socialist group known as Eastern Bloc.

Six of these member countries, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia, are Central European Defence Cooperation (CEDC) countries. The CEDC was formed in 2010 with the objective of developing and strengthening defense cooperation between the member countries. Except Austria, all CEDC member countries are also part of NATO. Apart from that, four of its member countries, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia, are into a cultural and political alliance known as the Visegrad Group or Visegrad Four since 1991.

Interestingly, seven member countries of this project, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, were part of the Intermarium plan of Jozef Pilsudski of Poland, who proposed a federation of Baltic States after the end of World War I.

The first summit of the Three Seas Initiative was held on the 25th and 26th of August, 2016 in Dubrovnik (Croatia). It was headed by the Croatian President, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic. The member countries agreed on economic cooperation to strengthen economic activates, especially in the energy and infrastructure sector.





The Three Seas Business Forum was formed during the second summit of the initiative that was held on 6th and 7th July 2017 in Warsaw under the leadership of the Polish President, Andrzej Duda. This event was highly debated and highlighted internationally as it was attended by the American President Donald Trump.

The initiative provided a base for strategically important infrastructural projects, two of which stand prominently so far are the North-South Highway and the LNG Projects.

The North-South Highway project is part of the Three Seas Initiative. It will connect Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. The proposed route will connect Klaipeda, which is an important seaport of Lithuania, located on the coast of Baltic Sea, to Thessaloniki, one of the most important trade hubs in Southeastern Europe. It will also help boost trades with Poland by providing Eastern Poland with a north-south route to connect with Central Europe.

Poland and Croatia took the initiative of building Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals in the Baltic Sea to fulfill gas requirements of the member countries. Poland has completed its LNG terminal already, while Croatia is expected to complete its terminal by 2019. The construction of a pipeline for LNG is also part of the project...

Better pay attention to Eastern Europe. With potentially 150 million people, The Three Seas Initiative is set to become a geopolitical power to be reckoned with. Once again, the spoiled, deluded nations of Western Europe find themselves cushioned from Eastern dangers by, if not a Polish buffer, then in any case a Polish-doctored buffer, for it is Poland which is the main inspiration and instigator of this novel project.

There may be another reason to rejoice - while Western Europe will, over the next decades, in all likelihood drown in islamization and insane unchequered Third World immigration, the Three Seas Initiative, composed of the far saner Eastern European countries, may very well escape that terrible fate.

In more than one way, 3SI may become to the Western World what Byzantium was to the whole of the Roman Empire: a place where the immensely valuable assets of a great culture, material and immaterial, will be preserved from harm and decay for a thousand years to come.


MFBB.

LIGO, VIRGO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE OBSERVATORIES POSSIBLY DETECT BLACK HOLE SWALLOWING UP NEUTRON STAR.

Over at Science News, a fascinating article dealing with the possible discovery of a Black Hole swallowing a neutron star:

By Emily Conover

AUGUST 15, 2019 AT 6:06 PM

Shudders in the cosmos have revealed what’s likely the sad end of a neutron star — getting swallowed by a black hole.

If confirmed, it would be the first solid detection of this source of gravitational waves, revealing a type of cataclysm never before spotted. Researchers from the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories reported the candidate event, which was detected August 14, in a public database used by astronomers.

Scientists are still analyzing the data to verify what created the gravitational waves, which are tiny vibrations in spacetime caused by massive, accelerating objects. But one thing seems fairly certain: “Something has occurred out there in the sky,” says physicist Daniel Holz of the University of Chicago, a member of LIGO. “So far, it doesn’t obviously look like anything we’ve detected with high confidence before.”

LIGO and Virgo previously have picked up gravitational waves from pairs of merging black holes and from colliding neutron stars, which are extremely dense collapsed stars (SN: 1/19/19, p. 10). In April, scientists saw tentative hints of a rendezvous between a black hole and neutron star, but the signal was weak and could have been a false alarm (SN Online: 5/2/19).

This new discovery offers much more solid evidence: The detection was so clear that it’s considered very unlikely to be a false alarm. The researchers estimate that the run-in between the two objects occurred around 900 million light-years away, and within an area about 23 square degrees across the sky. (For comparison, the moon is about half a degree across.) Astronomers have since been peering at that region with their telescopes, looking for any light that may have been emitted in the merger. Such light could have been released if the neutron star were torn apart by the black hole before being gulped within its depths.

Further study of the encounter could help reveal new secrets about some of the universe’s most mysterious objects. But the potential detection is exciting on its own, Holz says. “The first of anything is always really fascinating.”

A quick recap of some key notions:



a.) A neutron star:

If a star right before going Supernova still has a mass of between ten and twenty solar masses, the core that remains after the explosion is a neutron star. Whilst weighing around 1.4 solar masses, its diameter is only about 20 kilometers, which means that one spoonful of that neutron star weighs about 1 billion tonnes!





b.) A Black Hole:

If the mass of the star before going Supernova was over 20 solar masses the remaining core may exceed 5 M☉, and from about 3–4 M☉ (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit), the degeneracy pressure of neutrons which otherwise stops neutron stars from imploding into themselves, is now insufficient to stop further collapse. A black hole is born.





While we are at it, fun quiz: what would happen if you fell into a black hole?





c.) LIGO:

LIGO stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. It is a large-scale physics experiment involving two observatories to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. Laser interferometry is used to detect gravitational waves. LIGO can detect a change in the 4 km mirror spacing of less than a ten-thousandth the charge diameter of a proton. There is an observatory in Hanford, Washington and one in Livingston, Texas.


d.) Virgo:

Virgo is LIGO's European couterpart, a large interferometer designed to detect gravitational waves. Virgo is a Michelson interferometer is isolated from external disturbances: its mirrors and instrumentation are suspended and its laser beam operates in a vacuum. The instrument's two arms are three kilometres long and located in Santo Stefano a Macerata, near Pisa, Italy. Godammit! We spent our summer holiday in Tuscany and of course we had to go see Pisa and its slanted tower and duomo and baptisterio. If I had known that Virgo was just around the corner, I definitely would have taken a look!






I can't for the love of God fathom what kind of a big gulp a black hole gobbling up a neutron star must give. Lucky are those with the smarts and the tools to explore these inimaginable phenomena.



MFBB.