Tag: United States

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Controversial subjects Graphic novels and comics

Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit.

Non fiction comic book "Mégantic - Un train dans la nuit".
Non fiction comic book “Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit”.

We have all heard of the tragedy experienced by the inhabitants of Lac-Mégantic in 2013, when a driverless oil train from the CP railway company pulling hundreds of cars of explosive petroleum derails in the middle of the night, explodes and kills 47 inhabitants of the city.

The comic book (or graphic novel according to some) “Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit ” adds to the information that we already knew about this tragedy. It also exposes several key pieces of information overlooked by the media.

Author Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny worked for years on the file and, in order to convey the content and the emotions in images, enlisted the help of Christian Quesnel. The result is extremely interesting. The formula works: the drawings are very precise, the layout leaves room for the reader to reflect on the events, the colours are appropriate.

In the train explosion in Lac-Mégantic, there are multiple factors to consider, among others:

1) Executives of the CP company making catastrophic choices.

2) As always, a desire to meet the demands of shareholders. There is a reduction in staff and the company self-assesses when it comes to safety.

3) One driver only is allowed for a train carrying hundreds of tanks of explosives.

4) Politicians agree to the new cuts proposed by the company.

5) There is some magical thinking involved: if something goes wrong with the driver, the train stops on its own thanks to a mechanism which, however, is always likely to fail eventually.

6) Dated rails.

7) The transport of dangerous goods is granted to the MMA, a company with a dubious reputation .

8) The DOT-111 tanks are too fragile for hazardous materials and targeted in more than 25 surveys.

9) There is an agreement to tamper with the oil bill of lading. Instead of indicating the code PG1 (the most dangerous, the most explosive) as it should be, it is instead PG111 (not dangerous) that is written.

10) The lead locomotive is terribly worn.

11) The driver reports a problem with his old locomotive. He is ordered to continue on his way.

12) In Lac-Mégantic, the train is heating up. The driver is ordered to apply the brakes and let the engine run. The driver is then allowed to leave the premises and go to bed. This is one of the repercussions of allowing a single driver on a train.

13) During the night, a fire starts on the lead locomotive, the one that had problems. The firefighters shut down the engine. “By turning off the engine, the air pressure in the air brakes is released. Eventually, the train will start to move on its own and descend the slope towards Lac-Mégantic.”

With just one driver gone to sleep somewhere, there are now 5,000,000 litres of explosives starting to move on the rails and no one will stop them.

“Firefighters believe they are fighting low flammable oil. They are unaware that the CP and World Fuel have falsified the papers, camouflaging their oil classified as the most explosive and dangerous.” There are 47 dead, including several suicides.

Now that there has been a disaster, those involved directly or indirectly are passing the buck, as is the custom in tragedies. The graphic novel mentions, at the political level, the names of Denis Lebel, Lisa Raitt, John Baird and later Marc Garneau. At CP, the author mentions Hunter Harrison. The MMA’s CEO Edward Burkhardt is also mentioned.

Changes happen, but not the ones you would think…

Naomi Klein analyzes the “shock strategy” devised by Milton Friedman. In step 1, “we take advantage of what the population while it is still dazed: they will not be able to oppose what we want to impose on them.” The zoning is being quickly changed to include the expropriation of houses that are totally outside the disaster-affected area. There are some people who are interested in these properties…

In step 2 of the “shock strategy”, we “use the excuse of mandatory decontamination to wipe out the Old World. Excluding the population from the scene of the tragedy, so that they cannot cling to it, so that there is no going back. “

Finally, step 3: “Faced with a population whose shock has been exacerbated by the destruction of its landmarks and habits, we can launch a reconstruction or reinvention which will be received with resigned acceptance“. We have the case of people living in Fatima, a remote area spared by the disaster: owners must quickly sign their expropriation or they shall lose everything. When the former owners are finally gone, a Jean Coutu pharmacy comes to settle on the vacated land.

On the legal side, the small players are targeted and the investigation is limited as much as possible. Takeovers are carried out and returns to shareholders multiplied.

The book flaunts some of the political and entrepreneurial maneuvers aimed at protecting the railway companies. Even at the dawn of 2022, eight years later, the rails still pass through downtown Lac-Mégantic.

“MMA-Canada, essentially bankrupt, has paid nothing and has not been sued.“

“Nothing has changed in rail laws in Canada since the tragedy: companies self-regulate, self-monitor and, in the event of an accident, self-investigate. Thus, it was the CP itself that investigated the deaths of three of its employees in an accident in February 2019 in British Columbia. The CP investigator, prevented from investigating, denounced his employer and called for an independent investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Transport Safety Board (TSB), an investigation immediately accepted by the chief investigator responsible for the case at the TSB. That same day, this TSB investigator was dismissed from his post. The CP investigator concluded on a CP no-fault.”

Title: Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit

Author: Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny

Edition : Écosociété, 2021

ISBN : 978-2-89719-686-8

Click on the link for more graphic novels and comic books on my blog.

Categories
Human behavior

Religious discourse in Boston

Two worlds collide in Boston.
Two worlds collide in Boston.

In the foreground, two women are discussing and a man is paying full attention to his cell phone while, behind, the preacher and his devotees do what they can, through a religious discourse, to bring the citizens back in the right path: two worlds exist in parallel in this Boston park. If “the message is the medium”, as Marshall Mc Luhan once said, the communication method should possibly be reviewed, as the medium does not seem to work very well!

Click on the link for other street photography articles on my blog.

Categories
Flight Simulation

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

Approaching the Narita international airport, in Japan, with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
Approaching the Narita international airport, in Japan, with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

The Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is an extremely interesting product. Microsoft is taking advantage of the satellite imagery offered by Bing, which allows the flight simulation enthusiast to fly over the world almost like in the real life. With the addition of live weather and air traffic in real time, the immersion is incredible.

Flying over New York in the evening with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
Flying over New York in the evening with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

To download the game’s 128 gigabytes using my current internet plan, it took fourteen hours. I still remember when I bought a hard drive that could hold 30 megabytes of data: it was a computer revolution!

Of course, the game requires an adaptation. We are far from the old FSX platform. It goes without saying that you need a high-performance computer. But a new and very positive aspect of this simulator is that you can now use an X-Box controller as an in-flight camera, with the addition of a rudder and a steering wheel for more reality. This camera offers incredible possibilities and the additional X-Box controller becomes essential.

The Zlin Savage Cub flying over the United States using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
The Zlin Savage Cub flying over the United States using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

As with anything new, there are some glitches. Personally, I have been using the CH company products for flight simulation for many years and the new MSFS 2020 has had problems recognizing the functions of CH products. Many virtual flight enthousiasts have had the same problems. So here are the links below that allowed a neophyte like me to solve the problems.

A first video of interest is also available. Its author uses a slightly different method, but it is super easy to understand and allows you to acquire additional knowledge if you want to map your CH rudder and control column correctly.

A second video gives you access to the CH company products. There you will find the links that allow you to print a representation of your CH flight controls. This will allow you to find which number is associated with a specific command control. You can then remap the controls to your taste and keep a record of all the modifications you made.

Here are two other practical links for answers to various questions about X-Box and other subjects and CH products.

Aerial view of Quebec City using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
Aerial view of Quebec City using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

In the screenshot above, you might recognize Quebec City, with the restaurant Le Concorde in the distance on the left, followed by the Edifice Marie-Guyart, a part of the Plains of Abraham, the Château Frontenac, the Price building and the lower town.

Have a good flight!

Click on the link for other flight simulation articles on my blog.

Categories
Geopolitics Human behavior

Stupidity and power

During the turbulent times that United States is going through, it is appropriate to remember the Third Basic Law of human stupidity as defined by Carlo M. Cipolla : « Is stupid a person who causes a loss to another person or a group of other persons while not deriving any benefit for himself and possibly even inflicting losses on himself ». Losses can be of all kinds, such as a rapid decrease in the support network, a greater difficulty in accessing financial resources, loss of credibility or even possible civil lawsuits for inappropriate acts.

According to Mr Cipolla, « the destructive potential of stupid people depends on two main factors. First, the genetic factor […] and second, the position of power and eminence in society ». « Essentially, stupid people are dangerous because people have difficulty imagining and understanding unreasonable behaviour ».

Click on the link for books on human behaviour on my blog.

Categories
History of cities

Black Detroit: a people’s history of self-determination.

Cover page of the book Black Detroit by Herb Boyd.
Cover page of the book Black Detroit by Herb Boyd.

As the author Herb Boyd writes, « this is the first book to consider black Detroit from a long view, in a full historical tableau. » (p.14). If you are looking for a significant black person that influenced Detroit’s history, he or she is in the book.

The author covers the arrival of Blacks in Detroit through the Underground Railroad the type of work they could find, the music they created, their need to have their own church to avoid racism, the work at Ford, the influence of trade unions,  the poor housing conditions, etc.

Of course, there are several paragraphs on racism, police repression and useless violence, the problems caused by the KKK and how a few individuals dealt with it, the Smith Act, the American Civil War and the desire the end slavery, the presence of Rosa Parks in the city and  Nelson Mandela’s visit in Detroit in 1990.

There is not only something on the past history and development of Detroit but also thoughts on the future of the city and how it will have to deal with the fact that there are so many people choosing to live in the suburbs instead of in Detroit itself.

Since the fight for equal rights, racism, police repression and the useless deaths of so many black individuals have continued to be an important problem in United States, I have chosen a few quotes from the book on those subjects.

I also chose a paragraph on Nelson Mandela’s visit in Detroit. When Nelson Mandela left United States to fly back to South Africa, his plane had to do a stopover in Iqaluit, in Canada’s Arctic. I was working as a flight service specialist (FSS) at Iqaluit in 1990, so I could see him and Winnie attending an official ceremony in the middle of the night at the airport’s terminal. You can read the real life stories in Iqaluit on my website.

Detroit and Canada.

« In 1795, Detroit was still under British jurisdiction, and the city was a de facto part of Upper Canada. » (p.22)

« Judge Woodward stipulated in a later ruling that if black Americans were to acquire freedom in Canada, they could not be returned to slavery in the United States. “Two of Denison’s children […] took advantage of this ruling by escaping to Canada for a few years and then returning to Detroit as free citizens”. Theirs was a landmark case and would be cited as a precedent in a number of appeals for emancipation by enslaved African Americans. (p.25)

The Smith Act

“The Smith Act, was written so that labor organization and agitation for equal rights could be construed as sedition and treason, the same as actually fighting to overthrow the government by force” (p.162)

Police repression and brutality

“[…] Twenty-five blacks had been killed in Detroit while in police custody in 1925, eight times the number killed under police supervision that year in New York City, whose black population was at least twice as large” (p.112)

“During STRESS’s (Stop the Robberies and Enjoy Safe Streets) first year as a death squad – cum – SWAT team [near 1970], the city’s police force had the highest number of civilian killings per capita of any American police department. During its three and a half years of existence, STRESS officers shot and killed 24 men, 22 of them African American.[…] Among the STRESS officers, none was as seemingly problematic as crew chief Raymond Peterson. Before he was assigned to STRESS, he had amassed a record number of complaints. During his first two years on the squad, he took part in nine killings and three nonfatal shootings. Bullets from Peterson’s gun killed five of the victims. No charges were brought in any of these cases.” (p.226-227)

The policeman Raymond Peterson and a murder charge in Detroit in the seventies.
The policeman Raymond Peterson and a murder charge in Detroit in the seventies.

© Detroit Free Press March 23rd 1973

“[Around 1999] gentrification was one thing to worry about, but police brutality was a far more menacing immediacy for young black Detroiters. They were keenly aware there was little mercy awaiting them from the police, nor from school conselors or employment agencies, and certainly not from the drug dealers” (p.292)

“[Around 2001] Detroit, according to reports from several local papers, had the highest number of fatal shootings among the nation’s largest cities” (p.300)

“Throughout the nation over the previous decade, from 1999 to 2009, gun violence had taken the lives of thousands of young black men and women, and hundreds of them were unarmed victims of unwarranted police violence. Few of these terrible tragedies were as heart-wrenching as the killing of seven-year-old Aiyana Jones by a police officer in May 2010. It was around midnight and Aiyana was asleep on the couch with her grandmother nearby watching television. Neither of them had time to react to the thud at the door nor the flash-bang grenade tossed into the living room by the police at the start of the raid.

                Officer Joseph Weekley immediately began firing his MP5 submachine gun blindly through the window into the smoke and chaos. One of the bullets entered Aiyana’s head and exited through her neck. She was killed instantly. The SWAT team had come looking for a murder suspect who lived upstairs but left with only a dead child. […]. » (p.327-328).

Education

“Ethelene Crockett, having raised three children, earned a medical degree from Howard University in 1942. She completed her internship at Detroit Receiving Hospital, and because no Detroit hospital would accept an African American woman physician, she did her residency in New York City. Finally in 1952, she was accepted at a hospital in Detroit, becoming the first black woman in her field of obstetrics and gynecology to practice in the state.” (p.163)

No middle-class for young blacks.

“With the traditional routes to middle-class success closed, young black Detroiters sought other means of survival, mainly via the underground economy.” (p.254)

Nelson Mandela in Detroit

“In the summer of 1990, Nelson Mandela toured the United States after spending twenty-seven years in prison. […] When Mandela and his wife, Winnie, emerged from the plane [in Detroit], one of the first people they recognized was Rosa Parks. Nelson Mandela stated that Parks had been his inspiration during the long years he was jailed on Robben Island and that her story had inspired South African freedom fighters’” (p.268).

Detroit’s future

“Most Detroiters live in neighborhoods, and in these areas, development is uneven. There are some flashes of improvement, but by and large, communities are still struggling with unemployment, crime, and low-achieving schools. Detroit is a city with large expanses of uninhabited land and is sprinkled with thirty-one thousand vacant and dilapidated houses. In various pockets throughout town, community-based organizations have worked tirelessly to maintain their respective areas against a tide of neglect and disinvestment. The current mayoral administration has tried to use an assortment of methods to arrest the decline of the neighborhoods, with moderate success. This gargantuan task has been assisted with massive aid from the Obama administration, but the city still has major hurdles ahead with a large poor, unskilled, and semiliterate population.” (p.342).

Click on the link for other books on the history of cities on my blog.

Title : Black Detroit

Author : Herb Boyd

Edition : Amistad

© 2017

ISBN : 978-0-06-234662-9

Categories
Controversial subjects Geopolitics

Donald Trump’s re-election in 2020.

US President Donald Trump is preparing for his Fall 2020 re-election by practicing a recipe used by the Chicago Daley machine. Father and son Daley ruled Chicago for decades using police repression.

Policeman Derek Chauvin, who killed African-American George Floyd, offers the President of the United States an opportunity to use this recipe. The murder being followed by protests and looting, Trump complained about the weakness of the leaders and suggested not only that law enforcement officials dominate the street, but that use of the military may be required against the population.

Here is a short excerpt from a summary of the book “Chicago“:

“The exploitation of racial fears was quite successful. Daley was defending his policies by saying that “ most people are more worried about a black uproar than of a mayor that orders the use of lethal force to put an end to it and they recognized themselves far less in pacific protesters than in policemen that hit them with truncheons” (p.319).”

Cover of the book "Histoire de Chicago" by Andrew Diamond and Pap Ndiaye
Cover of the book “Histoire de Chicago” by Andrew Diamond and Pap Ndiaye

The high social tensions and unnecessary violence that follow the police repression generate ever more fear, and it is this fear that some politicians take advantage of.

The most conservative politicians have long understood that installing fear in the population pays off politically. It is an easy and expeditious method. The government is responsible for “dominating” real and more often fictitious enemies and, in doing so, reassures the population while diminishing the rights and freedom of the American population so that it can act as it pleases later on other matters.

Even the usually silent American generals have made public appearances in an attempt to save American values. According to several observers, there is a gradual shift towards a seriously worrisome  authoritarian political control.

Respect for the African-American population was the main factor at stake in the American Civil War, which lasted four years, between 1861 and 1865 and killed 750,000 people. It also cost President Lincoln his life. The problem of respect for African-Americans is still an issue.

All these people seen in protest at the death of George Floyd represent the non-racist side of the United States. It should not be forgotten that there is a large part of the American population who still dreams of retaining traditional white power: a population that cannot accept that the United States is changing and whose wealth comes from the mix of cultures and races. The solid base of American voters who support Donald Trump, this pathological liar who can say everything and its opposite in a single sentence, is not ready to give up on him.

Other non-negligible factors favor Trump during the American presidential elections in the fall of 2020: 1) a well-stocked election fund (pressure groups such as the NRA are big donors and influencers, 2) candidates from the Republican Party who approve of the Trump method or choose silence when they do not agree, 3) a hesitant Joe Biden who will not be able to stand up for confrontation during televised political debates, 4) an economy which will recover quickly with unemployment which has already started to decline, just in time for the election campaign. The right-wing media will ignore the appalling initial mismanagement of COVID-19 until the elections are over.

If I am wrong with my prediction, I will never have been so happy with my mistake!

Click on the link for other articles on geopolitics in my blog.

Categories
Controversial subjects Geopolitics

In our America, all people are equal.

With the current divisive administration in the United States under Donald Trump, citizens are more than ever willing to express their political opinions. In 2019 in Boston’s Brookline suburb, a quick walk in the neighbourhood allowed me to take the two following pictures.

In our America, all people are equal.
In our America, all people are equal.

In case your cell phone screen cannot clearly show what is written on the sign above, here it is : « In our America, all people are equal. Love wins. Black lives matter. Immigrants and refugees are welcome. Disabilities are respected. Women are in charge of their bodies. People and planet are valued over profit. Diversity is celebrated. »

On the sign below, the message is clear : « No kids in cages. »

No Kids in Cages 2019
No Kids in Cages 2019

Click on the link for other pictures of United States on my blog.

Categories
Photography

Practice makes perfect.

Surf practice in Ogunquit.
Surf practice in Ogunquit.

The waves in Ogunquit being quite reasonable, the area is ideal to learn surfing. But small waves do not necessarily mean that learning is easy. Practice makes perfect!

Click on the link for other photos of United States on my blog.

Categories
Photography

Morning fishing in Ogunquit, Maine

Early morning fishing in Ogunquit, Maine.
Early morning fishing in Ogunquit, Maine.

A fisherman profits from the beautiful morning to try to catch an Atlantic Striped Bass.

Since the fisherman will be on the beach for at least an hour, I have enough time to install a tripod on the beach and use the telephoto lens to bring in the man artificially. It is worth waiting for a few seagulls to fly nearby; this always add a bit of life to the scenery.

The compressed perspective offered by a telephoto lens and the significant cropping allow to increase the presence of the houses on the Ogunquit and Wells beaches, in United States.

Ogunquit fisherman with Atlantic Striped Bass web
Ogunquit fisherman with Atlantic Striped Bass web

The Atlantic Striped Bass can grow up to 1.5 meter  (5 feet) in length and weight up to 35 kg (77 pounds). Fishing laws are different for each State. I believe that in Maine, a fisherman cannot keep a fish that is less than 71 cm  (28 inches) in length.

Although I am quite far away from the fisherman, he has nonetheless noticed me. He turns around and proudly shows the Striped Bass that he just caught. A few seconds later, he puts the fish back in the water, knowing that the fish is still too small to be kept.

Click on the link for other photos of the United States on my blog.

Categories
Photography

Sunrise in Maine, United States 2019.

Sunrise in Maine 2019
Sunrise in Maine 2019

Many sunrise pictures are oversaturated to increase the visual effect. There comes a time when we forget that nature is full of subtleties and that it is not always necessary to exagerate the saturation to obtain an interesting effect.

For this photo of a sunrise in Ogunquit, Maine, I chose to show the natural colors at 5h30 AM, in August 2019. There is no violet-blue nor citrus yellow in the scenery. Nonetheless, depending on your position in front of the screen, the colours will always vary somehow.

Click on the link for other pictures of the United States on my blog.