Hi friends, family & interested people!
This is our vehicle to keep you all informed of our comings and goings - within limits fitting our decorum of course. Have a good time reading our diary.
We also have sailing blogs at Water-Man-Water and Water Water Everywhere
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2K years of kindness
Posted on March 20th, 2023 No comments -
Media lies
Posted on March 10th, 2023 No comments
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Living the Skye Life
Posted on March 4th, 2023 No commentsI have followed this channel since they started. It caught my notice since I stayed in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland for a period of time. So far they have made it interesting but I like Jack Spaniel the best.
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Winter on Fire: Ukraines Fight for Freedom
Posted on February 21st, 2023 No commentsI have to warn you that this is bloody and a tearjerker too. I now understand more of why they fight and continue to fight in 2023. Putin started it in 2014 and continues to perpetuate his vision of a re-constituted Russia. Putin has to go.
The link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzNxLzFfR5w
Presidents Day (USA) 2023: I guess that tells you where the most American heart are.
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Military Court Records
Posted on February 6th, 2023 No commentsNew Pentagon Rules Keep Many Military Court Records Secret
by Megan Rose
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
In 2016, Congress passed a law that was supposed to make the military justice system more transparent, instructing the U.S. military’s six branches to give the public broader access to court records. Seven years later, the Department of Defense has finally issued guidelines for how the services should comply with the law, but they fall far short of the transparency lawmakers intended.
Caroline Krass, general counsel for the Defense Department, told officials from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and Space Force in a memorandum last month that they could mostly continue doing what they have been for years: keep many court records secret from the public.
In their 2016 law, lawmakers had envisioned a military justice system that operated much like federal courts, where the public has real-time electronic access to dockets, records and filings. Concerned about fairness and secrecy in the military system, Congress wanted the public to have similar access to records for courts-martial to allow for more scrutiny of how the military handles criminal cases, particularly sexual assault.
The law calls for the “timely” release of court records “at all stages of the military justice system … including pretrial, trial, post-trial, and appellate processes.”
The newly released Pentagon guidance, however, does little to make the system more open. The guidance tells the services they do not have to make any records public until after a trial ends. It gives the military the discretion to suppress key trial information. And in cases where the defendant is found not guilty, the directive appears to be even more sweeping: The military services will be allowed to keep the entire record secret permanently.
The Pentagon did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about the new guidance. A Navy prosecutor argued in a court filing last year that the military cannot act like its counterparts in federal court because the military system doesn’t have a clerk of court and needs to be “fluid and mobile.”
Despite the 2016 law, which required consistent standards across the military, the Pentagon for years let the individual services decide how to comply with the law, and public access to court-martial records remained extremely limited.
Frank Rosenblatt, vice president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said even before the new guidance was issued, the spirit of the law wasn’t met. Leaving access decisions “to the discretion of military officials really is a default towards secrecy,” he said.
In September, ProPublica sued the Navy for refusing to provide nearly all of the court records in a high-profile arson case. The Navy prosecuted a sailor for allegedly setting the USS Bonhomme Richard on fire. In 2020, the amphibious assault ship burned for more than four days and was destroyed, a more than $1 billion loss. A ProPublica investigation showed there was little evidence of the sailor’s guilt, and Seaman Recruit Ryan Mays was found not guilty at his court-martial.
ProPublica’s lawsuit was successful in getting the Navy to release hundreds of pages of court-martial documents in the Mays case. The suit also challenges the Navy’s overall policy for withholding records and is ongoing. The lawsuit could end up questioning Krass’ new directive as well for not following the 2016 law or abiding by the First Amendment and judicial rulings that grant timely access to court records.
ProPublica’s lawsuit appears to have spurred the new Pentagon guidance. ProPublica, along with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and other media organizations, also wrote a letter to Krass requesting she outline standards for the military to follow. The National Institute of Military Justice supported ProPublica’s lawsuit and wrote a separate letter to Krass.
However, nothing in the new policy would force the Navy or the other services to release similar court records in the future.
The guidance allows the military to withhold records when public access and scrutiny is often most important: leading up to and during a court-martial. Under the new policy, the military doesn’t have to make records public until after a verdict is reached and the trial record is certified. The guidance says the services can take up to 45 days after certification to release any documents.
That arbitrary time frame is out of step with how every other court is run, Rosenblatt said. After a trial is over, “the newsworthiness is gone,” he said.
Even then, only a limited part of the trial record has to be produced. The services do not have to provide transcripts or recordings of court sessions or any evidence entered as exhibits, according to the Pentagon guidance. And the Pentagon does not consider any preliminary hearing documents to be part of the trial record.
In the military, there is a proceeding called an Article 32 hearing to decide whether there is enough evidence for a trial. Under the new guidance, the military won’t have to put these hearings on the docket, so the public won’t even know they are happening.
Records from Article 32 and other preliminary hearings tell the public a lot about whether the system is just. That’s where citizens can review and assess what cases the military are deciding to prosecute, Rosenblatt said.
In Mays’ case, for example, the judge who presided over the Article 32 hearing recommended that the Navy drop its case against him for lack of evidence. The Navy ignored that recommendation and moved forward with the prosecution. The service then refused to make that recommendation public.
The new Pentagon guidance also allows the military to permanently seal the trial record if the defendant is found not guilty. This could also prevent an assessment of fairness. For example, if a general is accused of sexual assault and found not guilty, the military doesn’t have to release any court records about the case, and the public would not be able to scrutinize how the case of a high-ranking officer was handled.
The new guidelines make one change in favor of transparency. The military will no longer use Freedom of Information Act exemptions to justify redacting information from court records. FOIA law is not used to withhold or redact court records in any other court in the country, and it was inappropriately applied in military courts, Rosenblatt said.
For example, in the Mays case, the Navy cited FOIA to redact the names of witnesses who testified in open court at trial.
Krass’ new guidance says that the 2016 law makes access to courts-martial records “distinct from the right” to federal records granted under FOIA. Instead the federal Privacy Act, which regulates how the government can collect and release information about private individuals, should guide “which information and documents from the military justice system are to be made accessible to the public.”
Although Rosenblatt said eliminating FOIA from the military judicial process was progress, the Privacy Act also doesn’t belong in the equation. The guidance also leaves how to interpret the Privacy Act and release of documents up to the services.
“The Privacy Act,” Rosenblatt said, “is increasingly being weaponized to shield what’s going on in the military justice system from the public.”
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Crooked Tree
Posted on February 4th, 2023 No commentsThe crooked trees were left there
After all the work was done
Now they go for weeks
And never witness anyone
No one left to tell them if they’re
Growing right or wrong
But the whispering windOh can’t you see?
Molly Tuttle song
A crooked tree won’t fit into the mill machine
They’re left to grow wild and free
I’d rather be a crooked tree -
Extraordinary Measures: US Treasury
Posted on December 13th, 2022 No commentsBPC Economic Policy Analyst Brian Collins explains what extraordinary measures are, and how the U.S. Treasury Department uses them to pay the country’s bills after the debt limit has been reached.
The USA House of Representatives is again holding the People hostage as a slim majority with weak leadership seeks to prove a point; namely, deficit spending is worth bring down the government and disrupting the world economy.
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An Admiral’s Speech
Posted on December 3rd, 2022 No commentsWhat a great inspirational commencement message
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Four insatiable desires
Posted on November 20th, 2022 No commentsMan differs from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified: Four infinite desires — acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power.
However much you may acquire, you will always wish to acquire more; satiety is a dream which will always elude you.
The world would be a happier place than it is if acquisitiveness were always stronger than rivalry. But in fact, a great many men will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals.
Vanity is a motive of immense potency. Anyone who has much to do with children knows how they are constantly performing some antic, and saying “Look at me.” “Look at me” is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart.
Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates. In any autocratic regime, the holders of power become increasingly tyrannical with experience of the delights that power can afford.
Excerpt: Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970)
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Navigator Wood Stoves
Posted on November 17th, 2022 No commentsSafety First
This being published for the authors memory jog in the future. For safety reasons, the stoves should not be used on gasoline-powered transportation.
These iron stoves are cast in the northeastern United States and then shipped in sections to Navigator Stoves on Orcas Islands. The stoves are sold as plain iron with a traditional stove polish, but a customer can opt to add one of six porcelain enamels -grey, black, mint, deep mariner blue, dark green, or classic barn red.
Navigator Stoves prepares, polishes, and smooths the iron on each stove at his workshop, and then tweaks and assembles those ordered as polished iron. Stoves that are ordered with the porcelain coating are sent to the Midwest for coating, then flat-packed back to NS for polishing, tweaking, and assembly. Lead times vary from one week to eight weeks, depending on availability.
All three stoves are designed to burn natural wood and charcoal. The two smallest models are best for heating 300 square feet or less. The largest model, the Halibut, is able to burn coal. The stoves are not intended for use with any other fuel sources. For use in warmer months, Navigator has designed alcohol drop-in burners. The drop-in burner literally drops into the stove top and burns denatured alcohol. The burner element is self-pressurizing and is located in the cast-bronze burner housing to minimize fuel spills. One 2-ounce filling will burn for 20 minutes. Running in simmer mode, the burn time is doubled. Tests show it takes 8 minutes to boil a liter of water. The alcohol can be refilled for longer cook times.
Navigator Stoves also sells many of the accessories associated with installing and maintaining a wood burning stove, including stove pipes, deck heads, and heat shielding. Heat shielding can be a critical issue, and Navigator offers custom-made shielding panels made from either 20-gauge stainless steel or 16-ounce copper.
Sardine
The smallest and most popular model, the Sardine is a mere 12 by 12 by 11 inches, and weighs 35 pounds. The heat output is 7,500 to 18,000 BTUs.
Navigator Stoves suggests using this rule of thumb for determining required BTU: 15 x volume of space to heat = required BTUs. If extreme cold temperatures are expected, one might want to use a factor of 20. This compact Sardine is best suited for small boats or sleeping cabins aboard larger vessels. It is two-thirds the size of the Little Cod and costs $699 for plain iron and $1,199 for the porcelain enamel option.
Little Cod
First produced circa 1917, this solid-fuel stove was initially designed to keep fishermen warm and well fed as they jigged for cod. Simple and reliable, it is economical to run and maintain. It is intended for use in the galley, cabin, or pilothouse, or small spaces on land. By adding one or two of the alcohol drop-ins, it can essentially replace any alcohol stove onboard. The Little Cod measures approximately 13 by 18 by 14 inches and weighs 55 pounds. It produces 10,000 to 28,000 BTUs. It has a stainless-steel sea rail to keep cook pots in place, and has holes in the legs for securing stove to a platform. It is priced at $1,125 for iron and $1,675 with porcelain or $1,875 for red porcelain.
Halibut
The Halibut has cast-bronze sea rails and corner posts. It has a glass firebox door, stainless-steel ash pan and oven rack, an oven thermometer, and a Halibut relief on the door. The Halibut doesn’t come up to temperatures as fast as the little stoves, but it does offer the oven for onboard cooking of bread, potatoes, and pies. It can also burn coal, whereas the smaller stoves are designed for wood and charcoal only. The platform size for the Halibut is 26 inches wide minimum, and 18 inches deep. The oven is 9 by 9 by 8 inches, and the stove weighs 175 pounds. The approximate heat output is 25,000 to 35,000 BTUs. The stove costs $2,850 with porcelain.
Herring Prototype
Navigator Stoves is also currently working on a diesel/ biodiesel prototype stove. It is intended to be 28 inches tall with a 12-by-12-inch footprint, and weigh 55 pounds. The Herring will have a glass-plate front and a herring relief on the front plate. It is designed with a “blue flame” natural draft burner from Europe and no fan or electricity is required. Tests by Navigator have shown a very clean, steady burn. The expected BTU rating is 16,000. Navigator is also working on a design for a water heating loop.
Conclusion
The stoves can be installed by an experienced and involved do-it-yourselfer in a couple of weekends, with the lions share of the time dedicated to thinking and planning, rather than installing.