Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Dmitry Gubin
[Regnum] 700 years ago, on August 4, 1326, the foundation stone for the Assumption Cathedral, the oldest surviving building in Moscow, was laid. The original white-stone church has been rebuilt, burned, served as a "plague cemetery" and the prey of thieves, misused, and destroyed—including for reasons uncommon in European Russia—but for centuries now it has stood unchanged, an embodied symbol of the Third Rome.
The construction of the first stone structure in the wooden city was a project of national significance and a source of particular pride for Prince Ivan Kalita. A year before the cathedral's foundation stone was laid, in 1325, Metropolitan Peter of All Russia moved from Vladimir to Moscow. The transfer of the church center from the ancient "capital city" to Kalita's domain was a significant boost for the ruler of the Moscow Principality: in the competition with Tver, Lithuania, and other contenders for the consolidation of Russian lands, and in the struggle against the still-powerful Horde.
Did the Mongols become Christian at some point?
On the other hand, Metropolitan Peter saw in Ivan Danilovich Kalita, as they would say today, a promising leader. The Moscow chronicles preserved the head of the Russian church's prophecy to the prince: "If you build a church to the Mother of God here, you will be more glorious than all... and your family will be exalted."
There was another compelling reason for the cathedral's founding. The record of the church's foundation follows in the chronicles immediately after the birth of Prince Ivan Danilovich's son, Ivan Ivanovich.
This ruler, who received the nickname Red (Beautiful) and Merciful, became the father of Dmitry Donskoy, who undermined the rule of the Golden Horde.
But at the time of the temple's foundation, in the 1320s, the yoke was still strong - and the diplomat and intriguer Kalita went to the khan's headquarters in the summer of 1327 to "bargain" for the title of Grand Duke.
He succeeded. From then on, the Dormition Cathedral, " the first stone church in Moscow on the square," officially became the center of church life. Bishop Peter, on whose initiative the cathedral was built, was buried here—from then on, it was here that metropolitans, and later patriarchs, of Moscow and all Russia were buried.
The first trial the Assumption Cathedral endured was the plague of 1352, one of the outbreaks of the infamous European pandemic known as the Black Death. It raged in Moscow from April to July. Metropolitan Feognost died from it, followed by the ruling family—Grand Prince Simeon Ivanovich the Proud himself, his sons, and his brother Andrei.
Of Kalita's descendants, only three males survived: Ivan II the Red, his son Dmitry, and Vladimir Andreevich, born forty days after his father's death. The latter two departed from this temple to Kulikovo Field and then survived the sack of Moscow by the Golden Horde Khan Tokhtamysh in 1382.
The church survived. The Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God was transferred there in 1395, after Moscow was saved from Tamerlane's forces. The conqueror was marching on the Russian capital, but was forced to abandon his campaign due to a combination of circumstances (from a harsh winter to fears of an attack by the Golden Horde, Timur's enemies). In Russia, this was considered a miracle and a manifestation of the Mother of God's intercession. After this, pilgrims flocked to the capital—to the Dormition Cathedral and the miraculous icon, which remained there continuously until the 1917 Revolution.
There's a saying: "Moscow was built three times and burned six times" (historians actually record six major fires). In 1470, a fire engulfed the Kremlin—it was already made of white stone—but the blaze was so intense that the northern aisle of the Assumption Cathedral collapsed due to the collapse of wooden parts.
Metropolitan Philip himself, a prominent ecclesiastical and political figure during the reign of Ivan III the Great, initially took on the task of restoring the church. Philip was the one who persuaded the Novgorodians not to fall under Lithuania's control, and later interceded for Novgorod before the all-powerful Prince Ivan.
The Metropolitan ordered the cathedral to be reinforced with logs, but this wasn't enough. It became clear that the cathedral needed to be seriously rebuilt and expanded.
The secular and ecclesiastical authorities decided to use the technical specifications for political purposes.
Metropolitan Philip (although he was once against the marriage of Ivan III with Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last emperor of Byzantium), believed that after the Turks received the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the main Orthodox shrine should become the first cathedral of Moscow - the capital of the only Orthodox state in the world.
However, the model chosen for the cathedral's reconstruction was not St. Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople, but the main church of the Vladimir-Suzdal Rus' period—the Dormition Cathedral in Vladimir. Metropolitan Philip dispatched stonemasons Krivtsov and Myshkin there to carefully examine the building and ensure that it would be no worse than what had been built four centuries earlier.
In April 1471, the architects began work. To ensure uninterrupted religious services, a wooden canopy was erected over the construction site. On November 22, 1472, an unusual wedding ceremony took place there: Grand Duke Ivan III married Sophia Palaiologina.
But the Dormition Cathedral became a symbol not only of grandeur but also of perennial problems: the rushed "delivery of the project" and the corresponding quality of work. In three years—very quickly—the white stone walls were erected "up to the vaults," but on the night of May 20, 1474, the structure, which had already been built "up to the upper chambers," collapsed.
The Simeon Chronicle describes the causes of the construction disaster as follows: “in the city of Moscow” a “coward” occurred, that is, an earthquake.
According to chronicles, tremors with their epicenter in the Carpathians were indeed recorded at this time, but historians noted that it was strange that the aftershocks of a disaster in the center of European Russia would have been so strong. There is evidence that after the collapse of the building, Prince Ivan III brought in a "commission" of Pskov craftsmen, who reported a defect committed by Krivtsov and Myshkin's team—the rubble stone had been bound with poor-quality mortar.
A number of historians and construction experts believe that two factors came together.
"Earthquakes are rare in our latitudes; no one plans for them. And this 'shaker' happened at a very unfortunate time: the walls were already up, but the roof holding them together wasn't. This played a fatal role. Although, according to chronicles, there were also complaints about the quality of the mortar. One way or another, everything had to be started from scratch," wrote architect Georgy Oltarzhevsky (whose designs were used to construct high-rise buildings in Moscow in the first half of the 20th century).
Ivan III's wife, Sophia Palaiologina, who had lived in Italy before coming to Russia, advised them to turn to a trusted specialist, the master Aristotele Fioravanti from Bologna. He already had a stellar portfolio: his last project was the palace of the Sforza Dukes of Milan.
Maestro Fioravanti was already preparing to leave for Istanbul to fulfill a commission from Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror. But Prince Ivan, through his ambassador, offered the master a fee he couldn't refuse, and so Aristotele Fioravanti and his son Pietro arrived in Moscow.
To prevent unforeseen situations like the accidental collapse from recurring, the prince took the reconstruction project of the Assumption Cathedral under strict control. Before beginning work, Fioravanti examined the churches of Novgorod, Suzdal, and Vladimir, particularly the cross-domed Assumption Cathedral, which the client had commissioned as a model.
"Aristotle used traditional Russian decorative elements in the exterior," Oltarzhevsky noted. The cathedral was built using domestic materials, following Russian models, and by Moscow builders. Advanced technologies of the time were also employed: the masonry, pillars, and ceilings were made of brick.
No longer a rush job, the temple was erected in two years. After which, a satisfied Ivan III commissioned Maestro Aristotle with a new project: building a Kremlin wall.
It was at this same time that the learned monk Philotheus formulated the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome: two Romes have fallen, the third stands, and there will be no fourth.
Stefano Torelli. Coronation of Catherine II, September 22, 1762. 1777
Since 1498, coronation ceremonies, renamed emperor coronations in 1724, have taken place in the Assumption Cathedral. All monarchs, except Vasily III (father of Ivan the Terrible), Ivan Antonovich, and Peter III, received the crown, scepter, and orb here, and were anointed.
The most important victories of Russian arms were also celebrated here. In 1625, the Lord's Robe, which the Persian Shah Abbas presented as a gift to Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, was placed here and kept here.
While Muscovites are grateful to the Italian Fioravanti for the Assumption Cathedral, other Europeans were far less successful. In 1612, during the Time of Troubles, the Poles committed this crime (having partied at the wedding of False Dmitry, who was married to Marina Mniszech in the cathedral —after which the nobles and magnates returned to plundering the Kremlin). In 1812, Napoleon's soldiers converted the cathedral into a stable, having previously plundered the church: it is known that 18 poods (295 kg) of gold and 325 poods (over 5.3 tons) of silver were melted down.
In November 1917, the cathedral was caught in an artillery shelling zone. Units loyal to the Bolsheviks used this method to deal with cadets. Subsequently, the cathedral suffered several requisitions of church valuables and remained a museum throughout the Soviet era (open to the public since 1955).
Currently, the Dormition Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, enjoys optimal status. It is an important part of the Moscow Kremlin Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve—the unique murals and relics housed here are under state protection and the supervision of art historians. At the same time, the cathedral has been restored to its status as an active church, with the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' as its rector.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Donald Trump is looking into ways to safeguard US AI infrastructure from potential threats emanating from China.
His administration is drafting a ban on US imports of Chinese data center components, four sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters.
The ban is meant to help insulate the infrastructure that underpins the US AI boom from potential threats.
At the center of the drafted ban being pushed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – which is charged with overseeing the US telecom industry – are optical transceivers, which allow data to flow through fiber-optic cables at lightspeed.
These quick-moving data pipelines ensure the AI models can process and navigate large amounts of information, and the ban would bar the importation of new Chinese-made transceivers.
The move is meant to prevent Chinese entities from stealing data, installing malware or disrupting US data centers, which house the chips necessary to create, train and run AI models.
'Transceivers definitely pose a risk,' AI policy expert Divyansh Kaushik told Reuters. 'As the data center buildout scales up, you want to make sure the data center supply chain is secure from the get-go.'
The FCC still may modify or cancel the ban altogether, sources told Reuters, indicating that the decision is not final.
The backdoor discovered by Baines automatically communicates to a specific IP address and Chinese-registered domain every 35 seconds, Baines said in a blog, opens new tab post on the company’s website. Whoever controls those domains could take control of the router and potentially use it to access other devices on the same network, he said.
[AI] Routers determine the shortest path by using **routing protocols** that evaluate available paths and select the one with the **lowest metric**. The specific algorithm and metric depend on the protocol:
* **Link-State Protocols (e.g., OSPF, IS-IS):** Routers build a complete map of the network topology and use **Dijkstra’s Algorithm** to calculate the shortest path tree. The metric is typically **bandwidth** (cost), meaning the path with the highest total bandwidth (lowest cost) is selected.
* **Distance-Vector Protocols (e.g., RIP):** Routers share their routing tables with neighbors and use the **Bellman-Ford Algorithm** to determine the best path. The metric is usually **hop count**, selecting the route with the fewest number of routers traversed.
The **best path** is defined as the route with the **lowest metric value**. If multiple paths have the same metric, routers may use tie-breaking rules or load balance across them.
#3
Anybody know where I could buy a new computer that is NOT Made in China?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/05/2026 13:23 Comments ||
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#4
Target, Walmart, Lowes and Home Depot would ALL shut down without Chinese imports. Try to find something made in USA there, I dare you. You won't find anything.
Some things we knew about, some I, at least, missed.
[PJMedia] There's been no shortage of press lately chronicling Europe's slow-motion identity crisis with its Moslem populations, and buckle up, because it's a full continent's worth of material.
Start with Spain, which is currently dealing with thousands storming the fences into Ceuta from Morocco — because nothing says "sovereign border" like a human wave crossing it in real time on camera.
The UK, meanwhile, spent years pretending its grooming gang epidemic wasn't happening, because acknowledging it might have required admitting the multicultural fairy tale had a body count.
La Belle France, not to be outdone, is now polling at 70% support for banning Islamic veils in public — and La Belle France doesn't do things by half measures, so don't be shocked if "considering" becomes "voting on" faster than Brussels can draft a strongly worded memo about it. They've already been closing mosques and dissolving organizations tied to extremism, which is French for "we tried tolerance, and tolerance did not go well."
Austria's chewing over dissolving Islam-linked organizations of its own.
Germany's playing it cautious—banning the loudest radical groups while pretending "keeping an eye on" the rest counts as a strategy.
The Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden are all somewhere on that same spectrum, each nation quietly admitting what none of them wanted to say out loud a decade ago: the open-door experiment isn't going the way the brochure promised.
Northern Ireland has also seen riots break out in Belfast. In Ireland as a whole, my research shows at least 10 attacks on churches across the island have also been documented in the same period—arsons in Westmeath, at Tinure, and vandalism at St. Augustine's in Drogheda in the Republic, plus six attacks on churches or chapels in Northern Ireland between April 2025 and March 2026.
[NYPost] It’s hard to find a better example of a failed trade law than the Jones Act — which has now slashed US cargo-ship production to just a few vessels a year, while China’s building more than 4,000.
President Donald Trump and Congress need to prioritize a repeal of this 100-year-old protectionist legislation ASAP.
The law was supposed to boost the US merchant-marine industry by requiring that all shipping between US points use American-made, -owned, -crewed and -flagged vessels.
But sky-high US manufacturing costs, which are passed on to shippers and ultimately consumers, made other alternatives — e.g., imports, land-based transportation — far more economical.
The perverse result: Demand for US ships has plummeted, even as building costs soared.
Shipyards have closed or become outdated; mariners are in short supply.
The entire Jones Act fleet now amounts to just 92 ships.
That means just 3.9% of domestic US freight is moved by sea, vs. 28% for the European Union.
The law also raises the costs of ocean-shipped goods, with places like Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Alaska socked.
Indeed, the shortage of Liquified Natural Gas tankers that meet the Jones Act requirements is so severe that it’s actually cheaper for New England to import LNG from overseas than buy American — the exact opposite of what protectionism is supposed to achieve.
Fact is, the industry in America is nearly dead: Though the United States accounts for a quarter of the world’s economic output, it produces less than 1% its commercial shipbuilding.
Economists have long seen the law as a failure in terms of trade.
“We’ve had the Jones Act for a hundred years and through that entire time the rate of domestic shipbuilding has decreased decade over decade,” notes Jennifer Chen, of Balsa Research, which has tracked the data.
But it’s also proved dysfunctional in maintaining a robust shipbuilding capacity for national-security purposes.
The US military has even had to charter foreign ships to transport soldiers, equipment and supplies during conflicts.
Imagine if we needed to fight a prolonged war that required both combat and transport ships — and if, say, a blockade prevented delivery of foreign ships from allies overseas.
The Jones Act has been hurting American consumers and jobs and undermining national security for too long.
#1
NAFTA would come to mind for me just reading the headline.
Posted by: chris ||
08/05/2026 5:45 Comments ||
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#2
The Jones Act is one that really needs to die. Instead of shipping something from a central-south American company to the US direct, it has to stop at a foreign port, wait for a US vessel and then bring the goods to the US. Adds some 200-400% just in transport and storage fees while China can just dump cheap crap straight into our Pacific ports.
If we want to have a nice trade block of the Americas to keep hostile nations out, the Jones act has GOT to go.
#3
The Jones Act is the only thing keeping our waterways from being taken over by illegal aliens just like they took over our trucking jobs. Think the Baltimore bridge collapse is bad? Plenty more of those on the way. They don't even pilot ships any more, third world crews set them on autopilot and watch DVDs in their staterooms.
[PJMedia] The Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... -linked Council on American-Islamic Relations ... the Moslem Brüderbund's American arm ... (CAIR) has been named a terrorist organization in Texas and Florida, and this is not just a symbolic gesture; it could, in fact, have far-reaching implications. But the unsavory gang of traitors, saboteurs and jihad enablers that calls itself a "leading advocate for justice and mutual understanding" is working energetically to protect its assets, albeit in ways that are, not surprisingly, questionable at best.
A recent Middle East Forum (MEF) exposé revealed that back on Nov. 26, 2025, with no announcement or publicity of any kind, CAIR transferred ownership of its national headquarters building at 453 New Jersey Avenue SE in Washington, D.C. from the Washington Trust Foundation, which the deed says was "formerly known as the Council on American-Islamic Relations," to the Sage Foundation. Sage Foundation paid the princely sum of ten bucks for this valuable property, which is within walking distance of the Capitol.
The Sage Foundation had existed for six months, as it was incorporated on May 13, 2025. And even now, what exactly the Sage Foundation is remains shrouded in mystery, for it "has no known federal tax determination, no filed Form 990, no stated charitable purpose, and a District status of ’Active — Not in Good Standing’ — it never filed its first required report."
MEF points out, however, that Sage’s "birth certificate reads like a CAIR staff directory. Incorporator: Eyas Abdeen, CAIR Foundation’s treasurer and a Washington Trust director. Registered agent: Lena Masri, CAIR’s general counsel, on a cair.com email. Address: the headquarters parcel itself. And one name from outside the directory — the registry lists Sage’s beneficial owner as Malik Conn, at 4151 Chain Bridge Road in Fairfax. That address is not a home; it is the office of NOVA Business Law Group, a Virginia firm where a Malik Conn works as a corporate and nonprofit transactional attorney. So the only human the District was told stands behind the entity now holding CAIR’s headquarters appears to be an outside lawyer, listed at his firm — which points not to a hidden principal but to something emptier still: no filing names anyone with an actual ownership stake in Sage at all. That is the finding."
Despite the fact that there is no information as to who exactly is involved in it, the Sage Foundation took over ownership of CAIR’s headquarters for the price of a single Hamilton. Sage, however, is not the sole owner. On February 13, 2026, Sage transferred 45% of the ownership of the building to the North American Islamic Trust ...holds titles to the real estate assets of Islamic centers and schools in more than forty States. Properties are operated primarily for the purpose of religious worship. In addition, NAIT pools the American Muslim community’s assets under its Islamic Centers Cooperative Fund, and publishes credible Islamic literature under its American Trust Publications. Through a wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary, NAIT develops financial vehicles that are compatible with both the Shariah and American law, e.g. mutual funds..... (NAIT) for $4,000,000, "more than the District values the entire parcel."
NAIT has designated the building a waqf property, such that Sage Foundation "shall not sell, convey, hypothecate, finance, encumber or otherwise dispose of" it without written approval from NAIT. A waqf is property that is designated for Islamic use, and cannot casually be sold to someone who will use it for non-Islamic purposes.
Investigative journalist Larry Estavan explains: "NAIT is not just another nonprofit. It is one of the most important Islamic property-holding institutions in America, and has long been criticized for its historical Moslem Brüderbund connections. NAIT’s own materials describe its waqf system as a way of placing Islamic community properties into a perpetual trust, so that they remain dedicated to Islamic purposes."
Those Moslem Brüderbund connections are significant: Both CAIR and NAIT have abundantly documented ties to the Brotherhood, which is dedicated, according to a captured internal document, to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within, and sabotaging its miserable house."
On Nov. 18, 2025, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ... governor of Texas. Abbott is a Republican. His 2014 Dem opponent, state senatrix Wendy Davis, thought the absolute, most pressing, most important issue facing the state was abortion. Abbott beat the pantyhose off her. His 2018 opponent, Lupe Valdez didn't dwell too heavily on abortion, but she lost too... declared CAIR a terrorist organization; the transfer of its headquarters took place eight days later. Now, that headquarters is out of reach of efforts to seize CAIR’s assets, should such an effort ever come to pass.
Yet every aspect of how this was done was questionable. The CAIR headquarters may not be worth $4 million, but it’s certainly worth a great deal more than $10. The Sage Foundation, the new principal owner of the property, has no publicly known owners or officers, but only a lawyer. Its deal with NAIT places the property beyond the reach of any potential law enforcement effort to shut down CAIR as a terrorist organization.
Unless RICO is invoked, I suspect. And also, being a listed terrorist organization must change things, once it is listed at the federal level as well as the key states of Texas and Florida. Another thing to add to the Trump administration’s To Do list.
Nailed it. The difference between fanatics and the rest of us is that fanatics do not care about bettering their living conditions, so long as they get to do their thing — in this case ridding first Israel and then the world of Jews so they can go on to conquer the world for Islam. The only precondition for peace that matters in Gaza is entirely clearing out Hamas and other jihadis. Then it will be seen whether the remaining Gazans choose to be good neighbours, or if they also will insist on going to war against Israel.
[PJMedia] President Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... 's Board of Peace laid out its comprehensive 15-point plan for the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip on Friday, following Trump's announcement Thursday that Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... has agreed to disarm.
The Board includes representatives from 28 founding nations, including a few questionable picks like Belarus (effectively Russia), Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... , and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund... When I read that Hamas has agreed to lay down arms, I automatically presumed it was only because they'd found better places to stash them. Still, let's look at the deal and see if there's anything in there that might work.
The first point lays out that plan's ambitious goals aimed at "ending the cycle of destruction, securing the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip, restoring normal life, enabling Paleostinian governance, reconstruction, security, recovery and economic development, rehabilitating damaged sectors and facilitate launching a credible political path that achieves self-determination and Statehood."
The devil, as always, is in the details.
Point 2 calls for "the cessation of military operations" by both sides, so that the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) "shall enter the Strip and start to assume its responsibilities" for governing the territory. Then there's point 3, which says that the International Verification Committee (IVC) must verify each step before both sides move on to the next.
Points 4 and 5 call on Hamas to turn over governing authority to NCAG, and for NCAG to "maintain the continuity of civilian institutions and public services" and basically to act as a decent government. There's also the matter of $400 million in international funds it's supposed to spend wisely.
Points 6 through 11 all deal with security in the Strip, and that's where the details get particularly devilish.
The quick and dirty version is that NCAG will run civilian affairs according to Paleostinian law and "good governance standards," and if you have doubts about compatibility, so do I. New police will "undergo a comprehensive vetting," and "all police weapons shall be transferred to the responsibility and authority of NCAG upon its entry into Gaza and the assumption of its missions." Heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels will all be decommissioned. The process of transferring authority to NCAG (and security to the International Stabilization Force [ISF]) will be done in stages and linked to a phased Israeli withdrawal.
There's also a "Social Peace Agreement" that seems to involve deradicalizing Hamas murderous Moslems that the peace plan insists on referring to as "militias." In fact, neither "terror" nor "terrorist" appear in any of the 15 points. There's also the little matter of the value of any "social peace" that's "signed in accordance with Paleostinian norms and laws."
But I digress.
Points 12-14 involve the ISF and withdrawal of Israeli forces. ISF "shall monitor compliance by all parties with the ceasefire, train the Paleostinian police, secure the protection and delivery of humanitarian assistance and essential supplies into Gaza Strip, and support the NCAG, at its request, in any other non-policing mission," but NCAG handles all internal policing.
The last point is reconstruction, supervised by the Board of Peace and NCAG, assuming things ever get that far.
Short-term, you have to doubt whether Hamas will actually disarm or just put on a pretense by giving up some weapons while stashing the rest even deeper underground. Looking further out, you have to wonder whether NCAG or even ISF will become wholly-owned subsidiaries of Hamas, just like the United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... Relief and Works Agency for Paleostine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) did.
And I'm having an impossible time getting past the absurdity of the Social Peace Agreement.
Probably better just to let Israel do now what they'll probably have to do later anyway and fully root out Hamas themselves.
[Reuters] SpaceX (SPCX.O), opens new tab is increasingly reserving space on its rockets to launch its own Starlink satellites, crowding out rival space companies that have long depended on Elon Musk's company to get their payloads into orbit.
Starlink's share of SpaceX missions has grown year after year, rising from 54% of the Falcon 9 rocket's manifest in 2020 to about 79% so far in 2026, according to a Reuters analysis of launch data compiled by astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell.
In recent months, at least seven spacecraft companies have been told that Falcon 9 is fully booked for all types of missions until 2028 or 2029, eight sources told Reuters. They added that the bottleneck is driven by SpaceX's plans to transition to the new Starship rocket, designed to be fully reusable and cheaper than Falcon 9.
Starlink's growing percentage of SpaceX launches reflects an economic reality. Analysts estimate that a single Starlink mission using Starship could bring in tens of millions of dollars more in revenue for SpaceX than launching a commercial customer's payload to space. That calculation is based on the expected returns of adding more satellites to Starlink's network.
The unit is critical to SpaceX's success, accounting for 60% of its revenue last year. Even as SpaceX transitions to the Starship rocket, the company's NASA obligations and its plans for Starlink are likely to occupy most of its launches.
#3
Got to hand the Conspiracy Theorists and their games of media play.
Read a WHAT IF Tin Hat comment on another site.
Asking.
What if MUSK has a deeper agenda at play.
Suggesting Is MUSK initially testing processes for sending atmosphere generating bio-agents to the Moon.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Anhar Kochneva
[REGNUM] For the sixth time on August 4, Lebanese residents have gathered in the area near the port of Beirut. They carry portraits of their deceased loved ones and posters with slogans. Exactly six years ago, one of the most horrific man-made disasters of our time occurred here – the explosion of a gigantic amount of ammonium nitrate.
'
Then, two explosions were heard in the Lebanese capital. The second, which occurred approximately half a minute after the first, is considered one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in modern human history.
Approximately 240 people were killed, some of whom remained alive for up to a year and a half after the explosion and died in hospitals, despite extensive efforts to provide them with necessary medical care. Among the dead were children, the elderly, and people of all ages.
Officially, citizens of 14 countries were killed. Second only to Lebanese were Syrians: the passenger bus terminal under the Charles Helou Bridge, from where buses and taxis departed for cities across Syria, was in the path of the blast. Many Syrians worked at the port and in areas damaged by the blast.
Among the dead were also Bengalis, Filipinos, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Ethiopians, citizens of France, Canada, the United States, Australia, Belgium, Armenia, Germany (including an embassy employee), and the Netherlands (including the ambassador's wife). Among the injured but surviving were several Russian citizens.
The death toll could have been an order of magnitude higher, had it not been for a fortuitous event: a powerful explosion occurred at 6:06 PM. By that time, the vast majority of employees had already left their desks and gone home. Luckily, for example, were those working at the office building of the Lebanon Power Company, which was literally torn through by the blast wave, as were the buildings of the local mobile operator.
Many residents of apartments in the affected areas, on the other hand, hadn't yet made it home from work. The bars on St. Michael's Street, a popular spot for partygoers, were also empty—regulars don't start gathering there until 10 or 11 PM.
The blast wave primarily caused damage to numerous buildings facing west. Often, on the same street, one could see broken storefronts on one side and intact or slightly damaged ones on the other.
Contrary to the popular belief that "half of Beirut was wiped off the face of the earth," only one old house was completely destroyed. The rest either had parts of walls knocked out, furniture broken, or windows and doors torn out.
Despite Lebanon's economic crisis, thanks to foreign aid, most of the damaged buildings have been repaired and restored over the past few years.
The evening and night of that day were marked by huge clouds of smoke billowing from the port area, the sirens of ambulances transporting the wounded to medical facilities across the country, and surgeries carried out by the light of mobile phone flashlights in hospital parking lots where the power had been cut off and wards and operating rooms were damaged.
And also - piles of glass on the sidewalks and roads and the howl of countless alarms, to which no one paid attention.
Even though six years have passed, the investigation into the cause of the tragedy remains unresolved. A widespread theory is that a certain welder was at fault, in other words, simple criminal negligence.
I seem to recall that at the time it was said the explosive had once belonged to Hezbollah, but they’d abandoned it in storage.
However, upon closer examination, the case appears more complex. This is particularly suggested by the strange deaths of several key witnesses.
Some political forces in Lebanon are persistently trying to place responsibility on the Lebanese Shiite party Hezbollah, but there is no evidence of its members and leadership being involved in the incident.
And the now deceased Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli bombing in September 2024, directly stated that he had information about the involvement of supporters and allies of the "Syrian opposition" in the explosion, who supplied practically unclaimed ammonium nitrate from a warehouse in the port to militants at home for organizing terrorist attacks.
Indirect confirmation of this version's validity comes from numerous calculations by experts, which indicate that the power of the explosion does not correspond to the declared quantity of hazardous fertilizer stored in the warehouse.
Also alarming was the fact that the explosions (the first was quite weak and caused a detonation) occurred after the government of Hassan Diab had made a preliminary decision to urgently remove a dangerous substance stored in the central part of the Lebanese capital.
It was this government that was ultimately made the "scapegoat" by the organizers and participants of the unrest that subsequently engulfed Lebanon. Even though the ammonium nitrate had been stored at the port for about six years—most of that time during Saad Hariri's premiership.
It was during these years that customs and other services repeatedly raised the issue of the inadmissibility of storing hazardous cargo within the port. The bombing of the warehouse could indeed have been an attempt to conceal the shortage of ammonium nitrate, if it was indeed being secretly exported to Syria.
A similar reason was mentioned as a possible cause after the explosion of a weapons depot in the Syrian city of Homs on August 1, 2013, just before an inspection was being prepared there.
According to another version, explosive devices could have been left near or inside the warehouse, delivered there by water by Israeli saboteurs, who might have known that saltpeter was being stored in Beirut and that it was planned to be removed from there.
Many people suspect that causing a catastrophe in the center of a state with which you are at war and trying to present it as a man-made disaster seems quite logical.
And the story of the Hezbollah members' pagers exploding only strengthened the suspicions of those who give this version the right to exist.
In any case, the investigation is under constant pressure. The Lebanese press and experts indicate that at least 70 high-ranking local officials and military personnel are among those potentially involved in this shady case.
As a result of these interventions, the investigation is practically at a standstill. And the relatives of the victims and the injured remain in the dark. The explosion at the Beirut port has forever changed the lives of countless families. And it will forever remain a sensitive issue for many Lebanese.
Every year on the anniversary of the tragedy, people come to honor the memory of the victims and once again demand an investigation and a fair trial for those responsible.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
