[CATO] Six years ago, the world was introduced to a previously unknown government contractor who revealed the National Security Agency (NSA) was conducting an unparalleled level of warrantless electronic surveillance. Edward Snowden’s explosive revelations about NSA’s telephone metadata collection program triggered an uproar at home and abroad, culminating in the 2015 passage of the USA Freedom Act‐legislation that supporters claimed would "end" the kind of mass surveillance Snowden had exposed to the world.
During the debate over Snowden’s revelations, federal officials (including President Barack Obama) asserted the surveillance program had saved lives‐going so far as to claim, without any evidence, that the program had foiled dozens of terrorist plots against the United States. And even after Obama’s own hand-picked review group found the telephone metadata program not worth it (as did the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) in their report), Congress renewed the program in 2015 via the USA Freedom Act.
Supporters claimed the new legislation would effectively end the NSA bulk telephone metadata program. Others, including myself, felt the bill was somewhere between terrible and disastrous, because its reforms didn’t go far enough. Last year, critics who predicted that USA Freedom Act would not end NSA’s telephone bulk collection were, ironically, vindicated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which admitted that in fact three times as much American telephone data was being collected than before the law’s enactment.
Amazingly, earlier this year NSA recommended to President Donald Trump that the telephone metadata program be terminated, claiming the program was too cumbersome to continue to execute and not worth the effort‐a tacit admission that critics were right all along.
[Reason Foundation] Here are cooperative ways for government agencies and the private sector to promote widespread commercialization of space transportation and accelerate the pace of exploration and economic development of space.
America’s future success in space depends on restructuring our approach for financial sustainability. While NASA has contracted with the private sector for innovation and cost savings, it continues to use the same antiquated and constraining structure that was first developed for exploring space. This carries an opportunity cost that slows the private sector’s plans to harness space’s many viable materials and properties, compared to the pace it could attain with a more market-friendly approach. Such activities could help solve Earth’s most pressing problems and foster a space industry that sustains itself financially.
Many space-based activities have commercial potential. For example:
#1
Use NASA as program managers for dynamic resource management across industry 'privateers' to minimize redundancy and dead end development, and maximize integration effort scheduling.
Unlikely, but a step in the right direction with the merger of Raytheon and UTC.
[Rudaw] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...Qatar's colony in Asia Minor.... ’s latest military offensive against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Kurdistan Region has been underway for two weeks now. Launched on May 27, Operation Claw is so far proving to be the most significant offensive Turkey has mounted against the PKK since at least last summer, but how strategically or tactically significant will it ultimately prove to be?
Turkey claims that it has "neutralized" ‐ read as captured, maimed, or killed ‐ 43 PKK fighters since Operation Claw commenced. The operation is taking place in the Hakurk region near the Kurdistan Region’s borders with both Turkey and Iran, indicating that Turkey wants to limit the PKK’s movements between Turkey and its Qandil Mountain stronghold.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
06/11/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[Hot Air] An enjoyable exchange between one lawyer who was disbarred and another who might be. (But almost certainly won’t be.)
Gaetz is right that John Dean ...Nixon Watergate whistle-blower. He's been blowing the same whistle ever since, and the act never seems to get old with a certain set... is being used here as a prop, a point I made myself earlier. He’s also right about Dean’s "cottage industry" of attacking Republican politicians with a heavy emphasis on Nixon comparisons. He wrote three books during the Bush era, one called "Worse Than Watergate" about Dubya’s presidency, one entitled "Conservatives Without Conscience" about the failed leadership of the Republican coalition, and then the capper, "Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches." Many cable-news talking heads have defined "niches" but Dean’s is unusually clear and narrow: He’s the ghost of Republican scandals past (as Gaetz almost refers to him here) who pops up from time to time to assure liberals that, whoever the GOP villain du jour happens to be, he’s worse than Nixon.
Gaetz thinks Dean does this for money. Maybe, although I think it’s mostly for status. Surely Dean doesn’t need a stipend from CNN after years as an investment banker and successful author tailoring his work to Democrats who like to be told that it’s the other party that’s to blame for all of America’s problems. It must be psychologically seductive for Dean to be seen as a sort of moral tutor by one half of the country after he was disgraced by Watergate. His "every Republican is Nixon" shtick is a way to reclaim the high ground while constantly reminding people of his claim to fame. He’s never really discarded his famous role as witness against a corrupt Republican president when you think about it; he renews it every time a new Republican is sworn in, and instead of giving his testimony to the Judiciary Committee, he gives it to Anderson Cooper.
Until today, when he was back at the site that made him famous.
[Liberty Nation] Much to the chagrin of the globalist, free trade Republicans who still inhabit important positions within the party establishment, President Trump is an enormously popular chief executive among GOP voters. Which means those who would dearly love to return the party to the not-so-halcyon days of the Bush-McCain-Dole era face a delicate balancing act heading into the 2020 elections.
CONCEDING THE OBVIOUS
It has become crystal clear, if not clear to Bill Kristol, that a NeverTrump challenger for the 2020 nomination is a hopeless proposition. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R), whom the Trump-hating Kristol had eyeballed as a potential candidate, has read the writing on the wall. Hogan has declared that he will not run against the president. Even as he backed out, however, he detailed once again the stark division between party apparatchiks and actual grassroots Republicans.
"In a telephone interview, Hogan told the Washington Examiner that he received enthusiastic encouragement from Republican thinkers, donors, and elected officials impressed with his ability to connect with a broad cross-section of voters in deep blue Maryland," the Examiner’s David M. Drucker wrote on June 4. No doubt there is truth in this statement. But one big thing is missing in that formula: actual support from real voters. "There wasn’t a groundswell among the average Republican primary voter," Hogan admitted. "They seem to be, at this point, very happy with the president."
This has been the missing ingredient in the half-baked NeverTrump cake all along, of course. Party professional hangers-on who lack an authentic support base of their own have continued to dream of ejecting a president who strongly appeals to GOP voters. "I think there’s broad consensus that no one is moving toward a run," Rob Stutzman, an anti-Trump Republican consultant in California glumly related to the Examiner.
“For years, boycott promoters Never Trumpers have disguised themselves as ‘human rights activists conservatives,’ managing to raise tens of millions of euros dollars from Western countries and American citizens who thought they were contributing to causes supporting justice and equality,” Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said in a statement. “Over time though, we have revealed that the supposed ‘human rights’ NGOs conservative 'action organizations' are, in reality, filled with antisemitic progressive operatives with deep ties to terrorist DNC groups fixated on destroying the State of Israel the republic.”
enthusiastic encouragement from Republican thinkers, donors, and elected officials impressed with his ability to connect with a broad cross-section of voters in deep blue Maryland,
And:
"There wasn’t a groundswell among the average Republican primary voter,"
They're so smart, they can't even put two and two together.
Ya, sure! Who knows more about climate science than elementary school kinder?
"I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day," says Greta Thunberg
"After years of depression, eating disorders, and anxiety attacks, she finally receives a medical diagnosis: Asperger’s syndrome, high-functioning autism, and OCD. She also suffers from selective mutism‐which explains why she sometimes can’t speak to anyone outside her closest family. When she wants to tell a climate researcher that she plans a school strike on behalf of the environment, she speaks through her father."
The book Scenes from the Heart ("Scener från Hjärtat," 2018) recounts these medical difficulties and the events that led to Greta Thunberg’s now-famous "school strike for climate," in which hundreds of thousands of children have refused to attend school to protest about government inaction over climate change. We are offered a story of "a family in crisis and a planet in crisis"‐two phenomena that are presented as inextricably linked. The book posits that oppression of women, minorities, and people with disabilities stem from the same overarching root problem as climate change: an unsustainable way of life. The family’s private crisis and the global climate crisis, the authors argue, are simply symptoms of the same systemic disorder."
Do read this article by Paulina Neuding, to avoid being surprised when the next 'school strike' near you is for gay rights of 6th graders.
It highlights how professional activists and her family have capitalized the OCD of a mentally challenged little girl, it also opens a window into just who and what are these individual activists seemingly challenging status quo just because they can. While she counts down the days to her nobel prize, her parents negotiate $ million book contracts for the girl who was used to bring civil disobedience activism to junior high. Also see : https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/02/18/stop-scaring-kids-stiff-about-climate-change/
Miss Thunberg has also found support from the likes of AOC since her brand of activism supplements the Green New Deal, institutionalizes 'hooky' and teaches student unionism to children. More fodder for the maniacal left, more futures to destroy, more placards and fists in the air and more half-educated voters with activist mobocracy as the new norm.
#1
Maybe if more people laughed in her face, she'd finally seek the psychiatric help she so desperately needs. Does her country do lobotomies? She's a good candidate, along with her parents.
#2
"I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day," says Greta Thunberg
Why exactly is feeling panic and fear the goal? I'd rather live my life without those things, thank you. And if that is what you want for me, well, I don't want them for myself..or for you, either. Grow up.
Posted by: Tom ||
06/11/2019 8:49 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Ask her to explain how the CO2 cycle work, in detail.
#4
I think if I lived in Sweden I'd welcome a little warming.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/11/2019 11:46 Comments ||
Top||
#5
I think the greater villains are the media, the latch-on professional activists, politicians and union academics using the quirk of a mentally retarded girl and her parents-in-denial to progress their own agendas. She's the next nobel laureate, after malala yousafzai. For no reason other than she can't sleep or study or let anyone else either.
[Jpost] The UK’s MI5 and the Metropolitan Police uncovered the foundations of a Hezbollah plot when they raided four sites in London in September 2015, according to a shocking report in The Telegraph.
Although then prime minister David Cameron ... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ... and home secretary Theresa May were briefed on the raid, it was "kept hidden from the public," the report says.
Continued on Page 49
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.
[Reason Foundation] Here are cooperative ways for government agencies and the private sector to promote widespread commercialization of space transportation and accelerate the pace of exploration and economic development of space.
...Nixon Watergate whistle-blower. He's been blowing the same whistle ever since, and the act never seems to get old with a certain set...
[Liberty Nation] Much to the chagrin of the globalist, free trade Republicans who still inhabit important positions within the party establishment, President Trump is an enormously popular chief executive among GOP voters. Which means those who would dearly love to return the party to the not-so-halcyon days of the Bush-McCain-Dole era face a delicate balancing act heading into the 2020 elections.
David Cameron
