Weekend Update 19/05/2018 How Obama Lost Syria. Batteries.

"When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife."

Prince Philip.

As it’s Royal Wedding Weekend, this weekend something a little different.  No not a Royal Wedding edition, although Windsor is just a short 11 mile drive up the road from where I’m writing today’s update, today all that’s wrong with the American War Party’s middle east regime change strategy, plus why lithium-ion batteries probably aren’t the future of the 21^st century.

But first the big question of today, if “love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage,” who’s the horse and who gets to ride in the carriage?

Now back to how Uncle Scam’s Middle East regime change proxy war went so disastrously wrong.

'I gave the US trucks and ammunition to Al Qaeda': The chaotic US effort to arm Syrian rebels

May 16 2018

REYHANLI, Turkey –  U.S. military equipment and ammunition, sent to Syria as part of a failed Obama administration plan to find and arm moderate forces to defeat ISIS, were instead simply handed over to an Al Qaeda group, according to the man who said he himself brokered the deal.

“I communicated with Al Qaeda’s branch, Al Nusra, to protect and safely escort me and my soldiers for two hours from North Aleppo to West Aleppo,” Maj. Anas Ibrahim Obaid, better known on the battlefield as Abu Zayd, told Fox News from his home in the western Aleppo area. “In exchange, I gave them five pickup trucks and ammunition.”

Those trucks and ammo were issued to him by the United States in 2015, part of a $500 million Department of Defense effort to "train and equip" a new "ideologically moderate" force to battle ISIS. The program, one of at least two designed to funnel arms to so-called moderate Syrian rebels, proved to be a spectacular failure for the Obama administration.

Zayd, who said he defected from the Syrian Army to the opposition in 2012, described a program that was rife with inconsistencies and incompetencies. 

He claimed the main prerequisite for inclusion in the program was proof of association with a group that had fought ISIS, the Islamic State. That was followed by a few basic questions, like, "With which faction did you fight?" and "What do you think about ISIS?"

After undergoing training in Turkey, the first batch of 54 trained fighters crossed back to Syria in July 2015 – only to be almost instantly ambushed by Al Nusra militants. Several of the men were kidnapped, and their U.S.-issued weapons were stolen.

Zayd said he was part of a second group to be sent into Syria -- this time without proper firepower. 

The U.S. trainers "wanted us to go into Syria without weapons because of the ambush, and said we could get the weapons inside instead. This was crazy,” Zayd recalled. “We refused.”

The weapons issue was worked out, and the rebels eventually started their journey back to Syria on Sept. 19. But Turkish border guards found something else in their bags: Syrian regime flags, rather than the flags of the opposition group the fighters were being sent to support. 

Zayd said fighters charged back to their base in Turkey, demanding answers. U.S trainers took responsibility for the “flag mistake,” Zayd said, and the following day the rebels continued back to Syria.

But morale was already a problem, Zayd said, and fighters who were being paid a $250 monthly salary by the Defense Department began defecting. His group of 72 shrank to just 25, he said.

----Over Skype from his living room, Zayd showed off an assortment of M-16 and M-24 sniper rifles, as well as ammo, mortar rounds and machine guns. He claimed most in his arsenal were U.S.-issued, with more in a nearby warehouse.

Sources close to Zayd told Fox News his American-funded goods routinely surface on the black market, and constitute something of a lucrative business. Zayd today remains a commander for the Free Syrian Army.

A second Obama administration program, "Timber Sycamore," was started by the CIA in late 2012 with the similar aim of arming rebels. This particular operation was active along the Turkish border to Syria's north, and a Jordanian crossing in the south, referred to as the “Southern Front.”

But Syrian opposition figures say this program was also compromised, with arms falling into the hands of ISIS or Al Nusra.  

The program initially supplied light weapons. But as the Syrian civil war intensified, the U.S. strengthened its commitment by providing selected rebels with American “tune-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided” antitank missiles, better known as BGM-71 TOWs.

One opposition group backed by Washington in 2014 to use the TOWs was the FSA group Hazem Movement.

“We became optimistic we could overthrow the regime,” Asem Zidan, 27, formerly a media activist for the FSA’s Hazem, told Fox News. “And the TOW missiles helped us to prevent the regime pushing forward for some time ... but it wasn’t enough.”

Zidan said only 10 TOWs at a time were issued, which he said fell well short of what was required to defeat regime forces. And matters only worsened when Al Nusra started to attack and “steal their weapons.”

Another rebel fighter, Suheil Alhamoud, 30, who defected from the Syrian Army in March 2012 -- where he was a specialist in missiles – also expressed frustration over what he called insufficient efforts to help.

After a string of several successful attacks against ISIS forces, Alhamoud said that in late November 2014 he received a supply of malfunctioning TOWs, believed to have come from surplus Saudi stockpiles. But despite having a stated range of more than two miles, some missiles would travel no more than 150 feet.

“I suffered a lot because of that,” Alhamoud contended. “And so the regime and the terrorists advanced. We were told more TOWs would come, but it took weeks for them to arrive.”

Alhamoud also conceded that Al Nusra managed to steal a number of TOWs, many of which have since landed on the black market, fetching up to $30,000 apiece. 

More

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/05/15/gave-us-trucks-and-ammunition-to-al-qaeda-chaotic-us-effort-to-arm-syrian-rebels.html

Finally, some reality on our battery future.

Big Battery Boom Hits Another Roadblock: Fire-Fearing Cities

By Mark Chediak

18 May 2018, 11:01 GMT+1 Updated on 18 May 2018, 18:29 GMT+1

The new era of big batteries has already drawn scrutiny after fiery electric-car crashes across America and Europe. Now, U.S. city planners are worried about the same risk of hard-to-control blazes as these power-storage units make their way into basements and onto rooftops.

“You can have these things go on fire, and then hours or days later, they can reignite,” presenting a new challenge for first responders, said Paul Rogers, who led New York City’s effort to establish battery safety standards until he retired as a lieutenant with the fire department earlier this year. Firefighters -- “if they act inappropriately -- they could get killed,” he said.

Improvements in energy storage are revolutionizing how and when electricity is used. Batteries now fuel everything from handheld devices such as smartphones to the electric cars proliferating around the world. In the latest trend, racks of batteries stacked up to the size of studio apartments are being installed in urban spaces like office buildings and shopping malls. The units allow buyers to tap into lower cost and renewable energy and supply backup power during widespread outages.

But the same chemistry that makes lithium-ion batteries so effective also poses a hazard. While fires are rare, an overheating unit can ignite. And while water can put out a battery blaze, it takes a lot more of it than usual. A few high-profile fires involving everything from mobile phones and laptops to electric cars and even jumbo jets has some city officials calling for more caution and clearer standards before storage units end up in buildings.

An effort by New York to review the safety of these battery systems has already limited their deployment, according to the research group Electric Power Research Institute. At this point, not a single lithium-ion battery system has been installed inside a building there, though there have been four approved for outdoor spaces, New York utility Consolidated Edison Inc. said.

For its part, New York’s fire department says it isn’t deliberately slowing installations. The agency just wants to ensure “these installations meet appropriate safety standards,” said Ronald Spadafora, the department’s chief of fire prevention.

The way Rogers puts it: “A lot of code officials, they don’t know what to do with” the lithium-ion batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries have gotten a lot cheaper -- dropping almost 80 percent since 2010 -- as demand increased for electric cars. That’s increased the appeal for utilities to integrate batteries that can store the intermittent energy produced by wind and solar farms. Commercial building owners can deploy batteries to buy energy when it’s cheap, and then use it to power air conditioners and lights during hot summer days when electricity prices surge.

California, New York and Massachusetts have set targets to increase the amount of storage on their grids, and New York City wants to have 100 megawatt-hours deployed by 2020 -- enough to power anywhere from 25,000 to 80,000 homes for an hour, based on wide-ranging estimates of residential electricity use.

As rare as battery fires are, periodic blazes in e-cigarettes, laptops and even battery packs on one of the most sophisticated jetliners in the world, the Boeing Co. 787, have led to government restrictions and frightening headlines. In 2012, an energy storage system made up of lead-acid batteries caught fire next to a wind farm in Hawaii.


The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has opened investigations into two recent fires involving Tesla Inc. cars, along with an earlier blaze last year. And the agency charged with setting vehicle safety standards, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said it was gathering information on a recent episode in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Swiss police are examining a fatal Tesla crash last week that triggered a fire. 

----In San Francisco, the fire department says lithium-ion batteries in buildings with capacities larger than 20 kilowatt-hours must comply with city and California fire codes for stationary battery systems. Rules include placing the batteries in separate rooms with automatic sprinklers, ventilation and smoke detection systems.
New York has been more cautious in greenlighting installations, partly because America’s largest city is so densely urban. The fire department said it has taken time to develop its own guidelines to allow for researchers to conduct tests that would help determine the appropriate safety measures.  

“A lot of municipalities are waiting to hear what New York is doing,” Rogers said.
More 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-18/the-big-battery-boom-hits-another-roadblock-fire-fearing-cities

BU-304a: Safety Concerns with Li-ion

Learn what causes Li-ion to fail and what to do in case of fire.
----Let’s examine the inner workings of the cell more closely. A mild short will only cause elevated self-discharge and the heat buildup is minimal because the discharging power is very low. If enough microscopic metallic particles converge on one spot, a sizable current begins to flow between the electrodes of the cell, and the spot heats up and weakens. As a small water leak in a faulty hydro dam can develop into a torrent and take a structure down, so too can heat buildup damage the insulation layer in a cell and cause an electrical short. The temperature can quickly reach 500°C (932°F), at which point the cell catches fire or it explodes. This thermal runaway that occurs is known as “venting with flame.” “Rapid disassembly” is the preferred term by the battery industry.

Uneven separators can also trigger cell failure. Poor conductivity due to dry areas increases the resistance, which can generate local heat spots that weaken the integrity of the separator. Heat is always an enemy of the battery.

Most major Li-ion cell manufacturer x-ray every single cell as part of automated quality control. Software examines anomalies such as bent tabs or crushed jelly rolls. This is the reason why Li-ion batteries are so safe today, but such careful manufacturing practices may only be offered with recognized brands.

Why Batteries Fail

Quality lithium-ion batteries are safe if used as intended. However, a high number of heat and fire failures had been reported in consumer products that use non-certified batteries, and the hoverboard is an example. This may have been solved with the use of certified Li-ion on most current models. A UL official at a meeting in the Washington, D.C. area said that no new incident of overheating or fire had been reported since Li-ion in hoverboards was certified. Fires originating in the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 were due to a manufacturing defect that had been solved. The main-ship battery in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner also had defects that were resolved.

Incorrect uses of all batteries are excessive vibration, elevated heat and charging Li-ion below freezing. (See BU-410: Charging at High and Low Temperature.) Li-ion and lead acid batteries cannot be fully discharged and must be stored with a remaining charge. While nickel-based batteries can be stored in a fully discharged state with no apparent side effect, Li-ion must not dip below 2V/cell for any length of time. Copper shunts form inside the cells that can lead to elevated self-discharge or a partial electrical short. If recharged, the cells might become unstable, causing excessive heat or showing other anomalies.

----Li-ion batteries that have been exposed to stresses may function normally but they become more sensitive to mechanical abuse. The liability for a failed battery goes to the manufacturer even if the fault may have been caused by improper use and handling. This worries the battery manufacturers and they go the extra mile to make their products safe. Treat the battery as if it were a living organism by preventing excess stress.

With more than a billion mobile phones and computers used in the world every day, the number of accidents is small. By comparison, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that your chance of being struck by lightning in the course of a lifetime is about 1 in 13,000. Lithium-ion batteries have a failure rate that is less than one in a million. The failure rate of a quality Li-ion cell is better than 1 in 10 million.

----What to Do When a Battery Overheats

If a Li-ion battery overheats, hisses or bulges, immediately move the device away from flammable materials and place it on a non-combustible surface. If at all possible, remove the battery and put it outdoors to burn out.

A small Li-ion fire can be handled like any other combustible fire. For best result use a foam extinguisher, CO₂, ABC dry chemical, powdered graphite, copper powder or soda (sodium carbonate). If the fire occurs in an airplane cabin, the FAA instructs flight attendants to use water or soda pop. Water-based products are most readily available and are appropriate since Li-ion contains very little lithium metal that reacts with water. Water also cools the adjacent area and prevents the fire from spreading. Research laboratories and factories also use water to extinguish Li-ion battery fires. Halon is also used as fire suppressant, but this agent may not be sufficient to extinguish a large Li-ion fire in the cargo bay of an aircraft.

A large Li-ion fire, such as in an EV, may need to burn out as water is ineffective. Water with copper material can be used, but this may not be available and is costly for fire halls.

When encountering a fire with a lithium-metal battery, only use a Class D fire extinguisher. Lithium-metal contains plenty of lithium that reacts with water and makes the fire worse. As the number of EVs grows, so must the methods to extinguish such fires.
More
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/safety_concerns_with_li_ion

"My wife, Mary, and I have been married for forty-seven years, and not once have we had an argument serious enough to consider divorce; murder, yes, but divorce, never."

Jack Benny.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April.

DJIA: 24,163 +255 Down. NASDAQ: 7,066 +282 Down. SP500: 2,648 +188 Down.

All three slow indicators moved down in March and continued down in April. For some a new bear signal, for others a take profits and get back to cash signal.