>>21817439

You fedbois took time out to update your resume's?

Still waiting on that beer run

I found this about ancient Persians

The ancient Persians were an Indo-Iranian people who migrated to the Iranian plateau during the end of the second millennium B.C., possibly from the Caucasus or Central Asia. Originally a pastoral people who roamed the steppes with their livestock, they were ethnically related to the Bactrians, Medes and Parthians. In the fifth century B.C. the Greek historian Herodotus described them as being divided into several different tribes, the most powerful of which was the Pasargadae, of whom the Achaemenid clan was a part.

"We first hear of the Persian people from Assyrian sources," an ancient ethnic group indigenous to the Middle East, Daryaee told Live Science.

The ninth-century B.C. Assyrian king, Shalmaneser III, recorded encountering a people who were settled in the area that is now southwestern Iran and went by the name Parsua. This reference, written in cuneiform, appears on his "Black Obelisk," which was found in 1846 and commemorates and records Shalmaneser III's deeds and military campaigns. Scholars suggest the limestone obelisk was probably engraved in 825 B.C., according to the British Museum. The translated reference to the Persians reads as follows:

"Moving on from the land Namri, I received tribute from twenty-seven kings of the land Parsua. Moving on from the land Parsua I went down to the lands Mēsu, Media (Amadāiia), Araziaš, (and) Harhār, (and) captured the cities Kuakinda, Hazzanabi, Esamul, (and) Kinablila, together with the cities in their environs."

By the first millennium B.C., the Persians were well established in southwestern Iran, with their capital at Anshan, an old city of the Elamites, an ancient ethnic group from the Iranian plateau. The Persians were ruled by kings who claimed descent from a semi-mythical king named Achaemenes. For several centuries, the Assyrians and later the Medes, an Indo-Iranian people who were settled in northwestern Iran, dominated the Persians, according to World History Encyclopedia. But during the mid-sixth century B.C., an ambitious and capable ruler named Cyrus came to power. Later known as Cyrus the Great, he revolted against the Medes, conquered them, and then embarked on a campaign of conquest, adding the kingdoms of Lydia, Elam and Babylon to his burgeoning empire. At the time of his death in 530 B.C., his Achaemenid Empire stretched from the Balkans in Europe to India, and, as previously discussed on Live Science, is considered to have been one of the largest empires, both geographically and in terms of population, in the ancient world.

More:

https://www.livescience.com/who-were-the-persians

>>21817561

>>21817655

Yeah, somehow I never really get around to doing an actual cleaning of my folders

Canada #65

Europe Prepares List Of US Goods It Will Target With Tariffs If Trump Wins

by Tyler Durden Friday, Oct 18, 2024 - 05:45 AM

With Trump inching ever closer to unleashing the "most beautiful word in the dictionary" on America's trading partners - especially after tonight's disastrous Kamala Harris interview with Bret Baier - the European Union is bracing for the worst and according to Bloomberg, has already prepared a list of American goods it could target with tariffs if the former president wins the US election and follows through on his threat to hit the bloc with punitive trade measures.

Citing "people familiar with the bloc’s thinking", Bloomberg writes that new levies against US firms aren’t a base case for the EU and will only be used to retaliate against a move by the White House. In other words, a threat to Trump when, not if, he becomes president again. Which is a bold move for Brussels, let's see how it pays off for them when Trump and Europe, so desperate to export its goods anywhere now that China no longer wants much of what Europe has to sell and which exports far more to the US than it imports, launch a tit-for-tat trade war.

Trump caught the EU by surprise in 2018 when he hit European steel and aluminum exports with tariffs. In that instance, the bloc targeted politically sensitive companies with retaliatory duties, including Harley-Davidson motorcycles and Levi Strauss jeans. Since Trump’s win in 2016, the EU has adopted several trade defense tools, including an instrument to respond to economic coercion. Unfortunately for Europe, in the years since, the continent has been flooded with cheap Chinese EV models which have crushed what little is left of the German economy (now that cheap Russian gas is a thing of the past), and has forced it to fight for its "manufacturing powerhouse" survival. Which is why any trade war with the US will only lead to an accelerated demise of what is already a continent barely hanging on.

Meanwhile, Trump is unlikely to be scared off by the threat of retaliatory tariffs: “to me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariffs,’ Trump said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, where he reiterated his desire to impose broad tariffs against trading partners post the election. “It’s my favorite word.”

Trump has said that as president, he would target countries like China with tariffs anywhere from 60% to 100%, with a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports from other countries. He could also impose counter-measures against European digital services taxes that implicitly go after US technology champions.

“Our allies have taken advantage of us. More so than our enemies,” Trump said. “Our allies are the European Union. We have a trade deficit of $300 billion with the European Union.”

The news is the latest development as the EU prepares an impact assessment of the consequences of the November ballot, paying particular attention to the scenario in which Trump emerges as victor. Regardless of who wins the election, trade relations with the US will be a top priority. In the event of a Harris win, the EU will seek to sort out several of the irritants left unsolved during Biden’s presidency such as a permanent deal to get rid of the remaining steel and aluminum tariffs, said the person.

Harris has cast Trump’s tariffs as a tax on American consumers, even though her senile, demented boss whom she overthrew in a quiet palace coup in July, has refused to drop any of them

Even though Biden’s rhetoric has been more conciliatory than Trump’s, and his alignment with the EU over Ukraine has helped to repair the transatlantic relationship, EU officials remain conscious that his trade policy still has much in common with his predecessor’s ‘America First’ approach. The Europeans were shaken, in particular, by Biden’s $390 billion-plus subsidy program to support green technology, which offers companies an incentive to shift investment from Europe to the US.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/europe-prepares-list-us-goods-it-will-target-tariffs-if-trump-wins

>>21817883

>>21818013

I done said

Frigate program delayed as shipyard is a ‘few hundred’ workers short

By Megan Eckstein Thursday, Jan 11 2024

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy’s first Constellation-class guided-missile frigate will arrive late amid workforce shortages, a program official said Thursday.

Fincantieri’s Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin won a contract in April 2020 to build the first 10 ships. Construction on the first frigate began in September 2022, and four ships are now on contract.

The yard is a “few hundred” workers short, Andy Bosak, the deputy program manager, said in a presentation at the Surface Navy Association’s annual conference, although he declined to say exactly how much it would delay the program.

“Much like the rest of industry … we are working on increasing the ship workforce, both the blue-collar and white-collar workforce,” he said.

As a result, “we do have a challenge in the schedule. We are working this. Fincantieri has communicated to us challenges within the schedule. We are doing our analysis, as the Navy does, doing deep dives on causes and effects and various different levers of which we can pull within that shipyard,” Bosak added.

He said Navy leaders will decide what to do going forward, and therefore determine the exact schedule impact.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced Thursday he has directed the ship acquisition community to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the Navy shipbuilding portfolio “to provide an assessment of national and local causes of shipbuilding challenges, as well as recommended actions for achieving a healthier U.S. shipbuilding industrial base that provides combat capabilities that our warfighters need, on a schedule that is relevant.”

This study is due in 45 days.

“I remain concerned with the lingering effects of post-pandemic conditions on our shipbuilders and their suppliers that continue to affect our shipbuilding programs, particularly our Columbia Class Ballistic Missile Submarines and Constellation Class Frigate,” Del Toro said in a statement.

Fincantieri Marinette Marine deferred to the Navy when asked for comment.

The delay comes as the Navy is increasing its procurement rate of the frigates. After buying one ship a year since fiscal 2020, the Navy in FY24 asked for two ships. This will begin a “sawtooth pattern” of alternating between one and two ships a year, as Fincantieri completes other ships on the production line and learns how to increase its throughput of frigate work.

Bosak said Fincantieri is finishing up the last remaining littoral combat ship work and will wrap up the Multi Mission Surface Combatant program for Saudi Arabia. Then, it will have more space and workforce to focus on the frigate.

Bosak said during his presentation Congress has allocated $50 million in FY23 to bolster the small surface combatant industrial base. The Navy and Fincantieri created a process to identify where they’d get the most out of the money, which includes initiatives aimed at the workforce at the yard and efforts to support suppliers.

He added that the frigate program is leveraging work done by the submarine community, which has established training pipelines and partnerships across the country to train new workers in welding, machining and other trades.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2024/01/11/frigate-program-delayed-as-shipyard-is-a-few-hundred-workers-short/

>>21818076 (me)

guess who may be available, and who is helping?

Titanic Shipyard Owner Harland & Wolff Set to Enter Administration This Week

Bloomberg September 16, 2024

The owner of the shipping yard that built the Titanic is entering administration, a type of insolvency procedure in the UK, for the second time in five years.

Harland & Wolff Group Holdings Plc, which has been on the brink after Britain’s new Labour government rejected the struggling business’s appeal for state support, confirmed the move on Monday.

The process will likely start this week, according to the company’s statement, with Teneo lined up as administrators. Harland & Wolff will cut some jobs and wind down non-core operations, including a ferry service on the Isles of Scilly — which lie to the south west of England — and a small business in the US. More job cuts could follow in core areas.

The company’s assets have attracted the attention of defense companies including Babcock International Group Plc, according to reports published last week,with advisers from Rothschild & Co. leading a sale process.Monday’s statement said a “number of parties” have expressed interest in buying some or all of its subsidiaries.

The company sought emergency funding earlier in the summer to avoid falling into administration for a second time, having previously collapsed in 2019. However, Labour ministers rejected a £200 million ($264 million) loan facility that had been provisionally agreed by the Conservative administration that they defeated in the July 4 election. That prompted the Harland & Wolff Chief Executive Officer John Wood to leave his role.

UK-based InfraStrata bought Harland & Wolff out of administration in 2019 as part of a wider bet on the industry. But a very high level of overdue sums owed to creditors and material losses across its business activities make the outlook for the group challenging, according to Monday’s statement.

As part of the attempts to grow the business, the firm joined a consortium led by Spain’s Navantia SA that won a contract to build three ships for the Royal Navy. The company has been in contact with the Spanish firm on the terms of a plan to be able to resume work on that project in the Belfast yard.

Unite, a trade union representing workers at Harland & Wolff’s Belfast and Appledore dockyards, issued a statement demanding urgent action to preserve the future of the company’s workforce. The union expressed a preference for a single buyer for all the company’s yards and called on the UK government to intervene if the right buyer isn’t found.

Jobs in the shipyards won’t be affected by the administration process, a government spokesperson said in an emailed statement. They added that the private sector was in the best position to resolve the situation, rather than leaning on taxpayers.

https://gcaptain.com/titanic-shipyard-owner-harland-wolff-set-to-enter-administration-this-week/