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Reuters / November 20, 2015 The head of Daimler AG's commercial truck operation said the company will invest $375 million at a complex near Detroit to build diesel engines for medium trucks, expanding a strategy of building and selling trucks, engines, transmissions and axles as a package. The 5-liter DD5 and 8-liter DD8 are Daimler’s new generation medium-duty diesels introduced in Europe three years ago. The proprietary diesels will be available in the Freightliner M2 starting next year with initial engines built in Daimler’s Mannheim, Germany plant. Full U.S. production of the MD engines is scheduled for the end of 2018 and availability will then be expanded to DTNA’s Western Star, Freightliner, Custom Chassis and Thomas Built Bus brands. Currently Cummins supplies all of DTNA’s medium-duty engines. Once the Detroit engines are introduced, the company will continue to offer Cummins engines as an option, according to Martin Daum, president and CEO of DTNA. “The success of our integrated powertrain for heavy-duty vehicles in the US is phenomenal, said Wolfgang Bernhard, head of the Daimler Trucks and Bus business during the inauguration ceremonies. “Already, over 40% of the Freightliner Cascadia models are supplied with the DT12 automated manual transmission. So, naturally, it makes sense to now also produce this bestseller locally. … And I am really excited, that in the future we will also produce our medium duty engines DD5 and DD8 here. This is a major step in executing our global platform strategy.” Daimler had previously expanded its Detroit operations to produce automated manual transmissions for heavy trucks, which have been "a runaway success," said Wolfgang Bernhard, head of Daimler's global commercial truck operations. Bernhard said he expects demand for medium and heavy trucks will be "slightly softer" in North America next year, but should still be above relatively strong 2014 levels. European demand will be flat and Brazil will "continue to be very difficult," he said. Earlier this week, rival truck maker AB Volvo said it planned to idle its North American factories for a total of 2.5 weeks in December and January to reduce swelling inventories. Bernhard said Daimler, which controls about 40 percent of the U.S. heavy truck market, is not cutting back. Production at its Detroit engine and transmission factories is still running around the clock, seven days a week, he said. Daimler's latest investment in Detroit builds on a strategy Bernhard has pursued to bring engineering and manufacturing of the company's commercial trucks under one roof. Traditionally, especially in North America, heavy truck makers such as Paccar and Navistar have purchased engines, transmissions, axles and other major components from suppliers such as Cummins, Eaton, Caterpillar and Dana. Government demands to cut carbon dioxide emissions are putting more pressure on commercial vehicle makers. Bernhard said Daimler's response will be to design and engineer itself more of the technology in its vehicles. "We can perfectly optimize those components to each other to get the best fuel economy and reliability," he said. Bernhard said Daimler is also using its own technology to develop autonomous driving systems for future commercial vehicles. He said trucks that could drive themselves on open freeways could be available by 2020. Daimler is testing autonomous driving technology on heavy trucks in Germany and the United States. Press Release - http://media.daimler.com/dcmedia/0-921-656186-1-1867081-1-0-0-0-0-1-0-1549054-0-1-0-0-0-0-0.html?TS=1448246422942

$3 billion over 41 years: How the Clintons methodically cultivated donors https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/clinton-money/

This is a must-read, to better understand how the Middle East arrived at its latest dire situation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How the US fueled the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq The Guardian / June 3, 2015 The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday, the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting. The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition. That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva Convention. But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – and allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call. For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after ISIS overran huge chunks of Iraqi and Syrian territory and proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate). The campaign isn’t going well. Last month, ISIS rolled into the Iraqi city of Ramadi, while on the other side of the now nonexistent border its forces conquered the Syrian town of Palmyra. Al-Qaida’s official franchise, the Nusra Front, has also been making gains in Syria. Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, and claim significant successes. Privately, U.S. officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war and risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf. A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became ISIS) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria. Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria. That doesn’t mean the US created ISIS, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of ISIS against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control. The calculus changed when ISIS started beheading westerners and posting atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage. It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the Nato-orchestrated war in Libya, where ISIS last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte. In reality, US and western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against ISIS in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq and Syria fit such an approach perfectly. What’s clear is that ISIS and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction and division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.

Volvo's truck deliveries increased Sydsvenskan / November 19, 2015 Volvo Group's truck deliveries rose to 20,193 vehicles in October, an increase of 2 percent compared with the same month in 2014. The increase was unexpected. Analysts had expected an unchanged delivery volume. For the year to date, October figures show a rise of 3 percent to 171,470 trucks delivered. In Europe, October sales rose 15 percent to 8,688 vehicles. Sales in North America rose 6 percent to 6,246 vehicles. In South America, there was also a sharp incline, with a reduction in deliveries of 31 percent to 1,293 vehicles. In Asia, there was also a decline of 3 percent to 2,818 vehicles. Deliveries of heavy trucks over 16 tons rose 3 percent to 17,248 vehicles. Medium-duty truck sales (7-16 tons) fell 13 percent to 1,295 vehicles. Light truck sales (under 7 tons) rose 11 percent to 1,650 vehicles. The monthly figures include truck sales for the Volvo, UD Trucks, Renault Trucks, Mack, Dongfeng and Eicher brands.

AB Volvo Press Release / November 19, 2015 In October 2015 deliveries from the Volvo Group’s truck operations amounted to 20,193 vehicles. In October, Volvo Group truck deliveries rose by 15% in Europe and by 6% in North America. On the other hand, deliveries decreased by 31% in South America and by 3% in Asia. In total, Volvo Group’s wholly-owned operations* delivered 20,193 trucks, which was 2% more than in October 2014. Volvo brand global sales reached 11,368 units, including 3,738 deliveries in North America, down 1 percent globally but up 5 percent in North America compared to October 2014. Mack brand global sales reached 2,673 units, including 2,486 deliveries in North America, up 10 percent globally and 9 percent in North America compared to October 2014. Renault brand global sales reached 4,533 units, up 16 percent globally and 34 percent in Europe compared to October 2014. Production in North America will be adjusted [decreased] as a consequence of lower demand and high inventories in the distribution channel. * Excluding Eicher, Dongvo and Dongfeng .

Kenworth Truck Company Press Release / November 19, 2015

Kenworth Truck Company Press Release / November 19, 2015

Mack World Headquarters under construction at 2100 Mack Boulevard in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1969, under Zenon C.R. Hansen's leadership "The Truck Capital of the World." Construction began in 1967, and it was completed in late 1969. Mack World Headquarters was officially opened in April 28, 1970. .

Mack AC trucks stored along Lawrence Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard) in Allentown in 1918, awaiting shipment to Europe. This is the truck that gave the company its name. Mack Trucks, then known as the International Motor Co., was another local company that had its identity shaped by the war. The company had come to Allentown in 1905 from New York and was headed by the Mack brothers, Jack, William, and Augustus or ‘Gus,’ and was already well known as a maker of buses and trucks. By 1914 it had merged with a number of other truck companies to become the International Motor Co. Its major contribution to the war effort was the sturdy, rugged Mack AC truck. In 1917 about 150 of these trucks, with their distinctive front that resembles a face, were sold to the British. .

Today marks 40 years of manufacturing for Mack's Lower Macungie plant The Morning Call / November 19, 2015 Forty years ago Thursday, Mack Trucks' then-new manufacturing facility in Lower Macungie Township completed its first highway truck, a Mack F711ST model. Now, all Mack trucks built for the North American market are assembled at the sprawling 1 million-square-foot facility. The facility also assembles Mack trucks for export to countries outside North America, such as Venezuela and Peru. "Over the past 40 years, we have proudly assembled thousands of Mack models for customers around the world," Stephen Roy, president of Mack Trucks North America, said in a statement. "Each employee's precision and dedication also has helped solidify Mack's reputation for building some of the toughest, highest-quality and most durable trucks on the road." The local plant had another productive month in October, according to a report released Thursday by Mack's parent company, the Sweden-based Volvo Group. Mack delivered 2,673 trucks worldwide in October, up 10 percent from 2,421 one year earlier. Of those trucks, 2,486 — 93 percent of the worldwide total — were delivered in North America. Heavy truck production is expected to peak this year. For example, Volvo expects the total North American retail market for heavy-duty trucks to approach 310,000 trucks in 2015. The company is anticipating lower — but still solid — demand of 280,000 trucks in 2016. To adjust to the market, the local Mack plant will likely be hit with layoffs. Mack spokesman Christopher Heffner said in an email Thursday "it's still too soon to say how many employees will be affected." Construction of the Lower Macungie plant moved fast. Site preparation for the facility began in May 1974, Mack said, with construction beginning shortly thereafter. The massive plant was completed in less than one year. The plant's layout was designed in-house by Mack employees to "maximize manufacturing efficiency and flexibility," the company said. But the plant now requires some refurbishing. Wade Watson, vice president and general manager of Mack's Lehigh Valley operations, said last week that Mack wants to expand the building's south end by adding receiving docks, which would improve efficiency, and a new facade, aimed at boosting customer experience. If all goes according to plan, Watson said he hopes to have both improvements completed by the end of 2017. "We're committed to the Lehigh Valley," Watson said Nov. 11. "We're looking at ways to invest and make it a more efficient operation here, so that's the intent." While looking to increase productivity, Mack's Lower Macungie plant is already a model of energy efficiency. In 2013, Mack announced the facility was the first U.S. manufacturing facility to receive a platinum-level Superior Energy Performance certification in the Mature Energy Pathway category. The certification acknowledged the plant improved its energy performance by nearly 42 percent between 2002-03 and 2012-13. Employment at Mack has also changed over time. A 700-strong workforce produced some of the first trucks at the Lower Macungie plant, which pumped out Mack CF model fire apparatus, Mack F model cabover highway trucks and off-highway models like the Mack M series mining trucks and the Mack Pack articulated bottom dump. Now, Mack has 1,866 employees locally. That's up from 812 in the Lehigh Valley in December 2009. The Lower Macungie plant has been commemorating its 40th anniversary throughout this year. Employee celebrations took place earlier this summer and banners and branding have been displayed in the facility. In conjunction with the anniversary, Mack also announced it would be changing the name of the facility from Macungie Cab & Vehicle Assembly to Mack Lehigh Valley Operations. "This new name identifies our heritage, but also more accurately captures our operational footprint and the contributions of our employees who live throughout the region," Watson said in a statement Thursday. "Although we are celebrating four decades of success at our plant, we have been revitalizing the facility with innovative systems and tools that already give our operation a very modern feel, and we are not yet complete with our updates." The new facility name will begin to appear on signage and other material in the coming weeks, Mack said. .

Fleet Owner / November 19, 2015 First Mack highway truck assembled at the Lehigh Valley Operations manufacturing facility – an F711ST model – rolled off its production line on Nov. 19, 1975. Today all Mack trucks are assembled at the facility. Mack Trucks noted that its Lehigh Valley Operations manufacturing facility Mack, located in Lower Macungie Township, PA, crossed the four-decade mark on Nov. 19 this year. Site preparation for the one million square-foot facility began in May 1974, with construction completed in less than one year. The plant’s layout was designed in-house by Mack employees, without the help of outside consultants, to maximize manufacturing efficiency and flexibility. With a 700-strong workforce, the first trucks produced at Mack Lehigh Valley Operations included Mack CF model fire apparatus, Mack F model cabover highway trucks and off-highway models like the Mack M series mining trucks and the Mack Pack articulated bottom dump. In conjunction with this anniversary mark, Mack said it is changing the name of the facility from Macungie Cab & Vehicle Assembly to Mack Lehigh Valley Operations, highlighting the site’s regional impact. “This new name identifies our heritage, but also more accurately captures our operational footprint and the contributions of our employees who live throughout the region,” said Wade Watson, VP and GM of Mack Lehigh Valley Operations. “Although we are celebrating four decades of success at our plant, we have been revitalizing the facility with innovative systems and tools that already give our operation a very modern feel, and we are not yet complete with our updates.” .

Transport Topics / November 19, 2015 Volvo will cut heavy-duty truck production in North America in December and January “as a consequence of lower demand and high inventories in the distribution channel,” it said in a press release Nov. 19. "In North America, we will take 2 1/2 stop weeks in addition to the normal Christmas and New Year's leave," Volvo spokeswoman Kina Wileke told Reuters. Volvo, which in North America sells trucks under its namesake brand as well as the Mack brand, said the production stops would take place on the Volvo Trucks side. During an earlier earnings-related conference call, acting CEO Jan Gurander said dealer inventory had reduced the order intake at both Volvo and Mack. Also, he said he expected the North American market to decline by about 10% in 2016, calling that a "normalization."

In the fight against ISIS, Russia isn’t taking prisoners RT / Op-Edge / November 18, 2015 The so-called Islamic State should have learned by now: they've picked a fight against the wrong guys. We have entered "take no prisoners" territory. For Russia, now all the gloves are off. Especially after online terrorist magazine Dabiq published a photo of the alleged bomb that downed the Metrojet airliner killing 224 people: a crude device inside a can of Schweppes, placed under a passenger seat. Also published were photos of passports of Russian victims, allegedly taken "by the mujahedeen." Their collective fate was sealed the minute the Director of the Federal Security Service Aleksandr Bortnikov told President Putin, about the Metrojet crash on October 31 in Egypt that: “We can say with confidence that this was a terrorist act.” Caliphate goons may run – in the deserts of ‘Syraq’ and beyond - but they can’t hide, as per Russia’s presidential message: “We will search for them everywhere - wherever they are hiding. We will find them in any spot on the planet and we will punish them.” The message comes with extra enticement; the $50 million bounty offered by the FSB for any information leading to the perpetrators of the Sinai tragedy. Putin’s message instantly turned heavy metal in the form of a massive, impressive Russian barrage over 140 Caliphate targets, delivered via 34 air-launched cutting-edge cruise missiles and furious action by Tu-160, Tu-22, and the Tu-95MC ‘Bear’ strategic bombers. This was the first time the Russian long-range strategic bomber force has been deployed since the 1980s Afghan jihad. And there’s more coming - to be stationed in Syria; an extra deployment of 25 strategic bombers, eight Su-34 ‘Fullback’ attack aircraft, and four Su-27 ‘Flanker’ fighter jets. The tanker truck riddle At the G-20 in Antalya, Putin had already unveiled who contributes to ISIS’s financing – complete with “examples based on our data on the financing of different [iSIS] units by private individuals.” The bombshell: ISIS’s cash, “as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them.” It doesn’t take a Caltech genius to figure out which members. They’d better take the “you can run but you can’t hide” message seriously. Additionally, Putin debunked - graphically – to the whole G20 the myth of a Washington seriously engaged on the fight against ISIS: “I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil.” He was referring to ISIS’s oil smuggling tanker truck fleet, which numbers over 1,000. Acting on Russian satellite intelligence, the Pentagon then found tanker truck convoys stretching “beyond the horizon,” smuggling out stolen Syrian oil, and duly bombed 116 trucks. For the first time. And this in over a year that the ‘Coalition of the Dodgy Opportunists’ (CDO) is theoretically fighting ISIS. The only such bombing that happened before was by the Iraqi Air Force. The US “strategy”, which Obama recently turbocharged, is to bomb (aging) Syrian oil infrastructure currently expropriated and exploited by ISIS. Technically, this is the property of Damascus, and thus belongs to the Syrian people. And yet Washington seemed so far to be more focused on other “people” [Halliburton] who could make a bundle rebuilding the devastated infrastructure, disaster capitalism-style, in case “Assad must go” works. Russia once again went straight to the point. Bomb the transportation network – the oil truck convoys – not the oil infrastructure. That will eventually drive oil smugglers out of business. The key reason the Obama administration had not thought about this before is Turkey. Washington needs NATO member Ankara for the use of the Incirlik air base. And then there’s the sensitive subject of who profits from ISIS’s oil smuggling. Turkish Socialist party member Gursel Tekin has established that ISIS’s smuggled oil is exported to Turkey by BMZ, a shipping company controlled by Bilal Erdogan, the son of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At a minimum, this violates UN Security Council resolution 2170. Under the light of Putin’s message of going after anyone or any entity engaged in facilitating ISIS’s operations, Erdogan’s clan better come up with some really good excuses. That jihadi boot camp Putin’s vow to go after anyone or any entity that facilitates/collaborates with ISIS should logically imply a trip back to ‘Shock and Awe 2003’: the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq that created the conditions for the establishment of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, directed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi up to 2006. The next significant step was Camp Bucca, near Umm Qasr in southern Iraq; a mini-Guantanamo where at least nine members of the future metastasis of al-Qaeda – Islamic State (IS) – was spawned. ISIS/ISIL/Daesh was born in an American prison. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (a.k.a. Caliph Ibrahim) did time there, as well as ISIS’s previous number two, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, and most of all ISIS’s conceptualizer: Haji Bakr, a former colonel in Saddam Hussein’s Air Force. Hardcore Salafi-jihadist meet former Ba’athist notables and find a common purpose; an offer the Pentagon could not refuse and in fact - willfully - let prosper. GWOT (the Global War on Terror), after all, is a Cheney-Rumsfeld-coined “Endless War”. The US neoconservative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism) regime change obsession ended up bolstering ISIS’s reach in Syria. The whole process exhibits multiple ramifications of imperial folly, past and future, that can be identified like splinters from a suicide bomb; from CIA-trained/weaponized, Wahhabi-drenched mujahedeen (“Reagan’s freedom fighters”) metastasizing into ‘Al-CIAada’, to Hillary Clinton admitting Saudi Arabia is a top source of terrorist financing. Paris 2015 – as well as Sinai 2015 – essentially is a side effect of Baghdad 2003. Putin knows it. For now, the task is to annihilate ISIS once and for all. .

A few excerpts from Hillary Clinton's speech at the Council on Foreign Relations on Thursday. 'Islam itself is not our adversary.' 'Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.' Clinton mocked three words – 'radical Islamic terrorism' – that Republicans often accuse President Obama of purposefully avoiding. Clinton instead referred repeatedly to 'radical jihadism' as a global scourge, but didn't explain how the concept of jihadism is consistent with the notion that followers of the world's second largest religion are uninvolved. Blaming 'radical Islamic terrorism' for vicious attacks of the sort that killed 129 people last Friday in Paris, she said, 'is not just a distraction.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Following Clinton's speech, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said: 'Hillary Clinton is the architect of the failed Obama foreign policy that has presided over a steep increase in radical Islamic terrorism and the rise of ISIS,' Priebus said. 'Rather than putting forward a new plan to defeat ISIS, Hillary Clinton offered soaring platitudes and largely doubled down on the existing Obama strategy.' 'Across the world, the Obama-Clinton foreign policy lies in tatters. From the failed reset with Russia, to the weak nuclear deal with Iran, to her State Department’s refusal to add Boko Haram to its list of terror organizations, Hillary Clinton has demonstrated she is the wrong person to take on and defeat the growing threats facing the United States.'

If you don't care for Obama, of course that's absolutely your right (I'm neutral on him). A diverse range of opinions make BMT the leading truck website of its kind in the world. However, vulgar insulting remarks, I feel, are uncalled for. First of all, it's demeaning to the BMT forum. I'm confident that we can all can speak on a higher plane than that. And second, like him or not, we should all still show a certain degree of respect for the President of the United States. The problems in the Middle East, and the United States, have been going on for years, long before Obama was in the picture. So trying to blame him for the issues before us just isn't going to fly.

Oshkosh has one of the most arrogant company cultures in America, up there with Caterpillar and Allison. (The folks at Ferrara are good people)

Vlad, correct me if I'm wrong. My understanding is the Russian Air Force has been severely underfunded since the fall of the Soviet Union (although its gotten some funding in recent years). This must be the first major overseas combat deployment in decades. That the Russian military aircraft industry, as the least funded of the major world powers (since the fall of the Soviet Union), can create combat aircraft as good as it does with modest resources, is testimony to the excellence of its engineering teams. Not only that, it’s damning to the western aircraft makers. The Russian Air Force in Syria....."Going Downtown"

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. I will say though that the Kurds are a double-edged sword. Turkey as well.......at times a good ally, but unhelpful when ISIS was forming. It's an extremely complicated issue, but one the Middle East needs to work out on its own. We can't "make" the Middle East change, rather it has to want to change, and do it on its own. As non-Muslim western outsiders, they're not going to listen to us. For decades, to each degree we tried to force change, elements simultaneously resisted. Thus I say, only when the Middle East (Arab League) countries realize the necessity to help themselves and change, will peace blossom in the region.

Transport Brazil / November 5, 2016 Brazilian truck, off-road utility vehicle and farm tractor manufacturer Agrale (http://www.agrale.com.br/en) has launched an all-new light truck range for year 2016. The new models are designated A7500, A8700 and A10000, and feature a spacious new cab as well as a long list of standard features. Key specifications for the trucks are 3.8-liter Cummins ISF in-line four cylinder engines rated at 152 and 162 horsepower with SCR after-treatment system, electronic common rail injection system; Eaton transmissionsm, front and rear Dana axles (A8700 and A10000), Dana air brakes and ABS. Agrale A7500 152 horsepower Cummins ISF 3.8 with 443 Nm of torque Eaton FSO 4505C manual 5-speed overdrive 3,860mm wheelbase 4,560 kg GVW. Agrale A8700 162 horsepower Cummins ISF 3.8 with 600 Nm of torque Eaton FSO 4505C manual 5-speed overdrive 3,500mm or 4,200mm wheelbase 5,630kg or 5,590 kg GVW. Agrale A10000 162 horsepower Cummins ISF 3.8 with 600 Nm of torque Eaton FSO 4505C manual 5-speed overdrive 3,750mm or 4,350mm wheelbase 6,695kg or 6,590kg GVW. .

Associated Press / November 18, 2015 Oshkosh subsidiary Pierce Manufacturing is recalling 910 fire trucks because the wheels could come loose while being driven. The recall covers the Arrow XT, Dash, Enforcer, Lance and Quantum models from the 2006 and 2007 model years. Boots that cover the ball joints can rip and cause the joints to fail, increasing the risk of a crash. The recall comes after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating the trucks in March. The agency received a complaint in January from a fire department that a driver had trouble steering a truck and never felt in control. Mechanics found problems in the ball joints, which connect wheels to the steering system. No injuries were reported. Dealers will inspect trucks for torn boots and replace worn ball joints starting Nov. 30. Related reading: http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/index.php?/topic/39143-us-safety-agency-probes-pierce-fire-truck-steering-problems/?hl=pierce http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/index.php?/topic/37610-pierce-fire-trucks-recalled-after-wheel-falls-off-portland-ladder-truck/?hl=pierce http://koin.com/2014/11/03/pierce-recalls-fire-trucks-when-wheel-falls-off/ http://www.abc2news.com/news/region/anne-arundel-county/anne-arundel-county-pulls-fire-apparatus-out-of-service

Transport Engineer / November 18, 2015 Starlings Transport and Storage says it has selected Renault Trucks’ Range T for trunking work, following head-to-head comparisons against other OEMs’ tractors looking at fuel consumption and driver acceptance. The Norfolk-based pallet freight distributor has added three 44-tonne Range T460 tractor units to its 25-strong mixed fleet and, according to director Matt Starling is about to order another two. “We carried out direct comparisons, testing vehicles back-to-back with other brands, and we were impressed by the initial fuel figures from the Range T,” states Starling. “The drivers were also very positive, preferring the Renault Truck’s driveline and commenting on the space in the cab, which has been much improved,” he continues. “We currently have three trucks on the road ... They are running fully-freighted, often at full weight and are performing very well under pressure.” Starlings Transport has run Renault trucks before, reporting good experience with Renault Premiums for Pallet Network local deliveries. “The market is buoyant again, but highly competitive and we needed the best possible trucks offering optimum reliability, a good return on fuel as well as a competitive deal,” explains Starling. “Quite simply, compared to their competitors, BRS and Renault Trucks offered the best package overall.” The latest three Renault Range T tractors were all supplied by Renault Trucks’ dealer Norfolk Truck and Van on three-year contract hire through BRS. .

MAN Truck & Bus Press Release / November 18, 2015 MAN Genuine Parts "ecoline" is a range of replacement parts that have been fully reconditioned by MAN, the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or an external partner to the same standards as MAN Genuine Parts. Pre-used MAN components are completely reconditioned during this process, with all wearing parts replaced. The truckmaker's sophisticated remanufacturing process ensures that MAN Genuine Parts "ecoline" parts features the same quality as new MAN Genuine Parts, allowing us to offer the same warranty as for new MAN Genuine Parts. .