HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

SpaceX and an Unappreciated Strategic Defense Initiative Legacy By Henry F. Cooper

Posted By on June 7th, 2019

https://www.newsmax.com/henryfcooper/spacex-strategic-defense-initiative-sdi/2019/06/06/id/919214/

Ambassador Henry F. (Hank) Cooper, Chairman of High Frontier and an acknowledged expert on strategic and space national security issues, was President Ronald Reagan’s Chief Negotiator at the Geneva Defense and Space Talks with the Soviet Union and Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Director during the George H.W. Bush administration. Previously, he served as the Assistant Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Deputy Assistant USAF Secretary and Science Advisor to the Air Force Weapons Laboratory.

On the eve of the D-Day celebrations, SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule returned from the International Space Station (ISS), completing the private launcher’s 17th resupply mission to the manned orbital research facility. Its June 4 “splash down” completed the Commercial Resupply Services mission 17 (CRS-17) — that delivered 5,500 pounds of supplies for the astronauts and materials for ongoing experiments and research.

Dragon docked at the ISS for about a month, while the crew unloaded its cargo, and then began its de-orbit burn. SpaceX has provided an informative 30-minute recap of the CRS-17 mission, complete with an infrared capture of the return of the Falcon’s first-stage booster for a perfect landing on the drone landing ship “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Pacific Ocean.

This reuse of launchers for space operations was the objective of an important effort in President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known for its advocacy for space-based defenses against ballistic missiles and still the most cost-effective, but as yet unrealized, defense against ballistic missile attack for Americans at home and our overseas troops, friends and allies.

Lest you doubt that impressive SDI efforts preceded the impressive SpaceX achievements, consider the 1993-94 demonstration of SDI’s Delta Clipper-X, or DC-X, and later dubbed the Clipper Graham, after USA Lt. General Danny Graham who persuaded Vice President Dan Quayle and my predecessor SDI Director USAF Lt. General George Monahan to initiate the effort.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Triggering the Academic Lynch Mob By David Solway

Posted By on June 7th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/triggering_the_academic_lynch_mob_.html

In his indispensable volume of essays The Captive Mind, Polish-American poet and intellectual Czeslaw Milosz developed the concept of “ketman,” borrowed from Arthur de Gobineau, which he defined as the false stance adopted by a person “in order to find himself at one with others, in order not to be alone,” to experience “a feeling of belonging.” Ketman “brings comfort, fostering dreams of what might be, and even the enclosing fence affords the solace of reverie.” Milosz elaborated a related idea named the Pill of Murti-Bing, which people may swallow to relieve themselves of anxiety

The characteristic feature of the unctuous academic, sycophantic intellectual or administrative toady is precisely ketman, “his fear of thinking for himself.” Thus he surrenders to the tawdriness of hive comfort and herd security. Such apple-polishers are legion. “They do not know what one buys, and at what price,” Milosz continues, for what one buys is moral ignominy and what one pays is counted in the coin of cognitive servitude.

One of the classic ways to establish ketman is to isolate a common enemy Alinsky style and to denounce, reject or pursue him or her until the person is professionally destroyed. This is standard academic practice today. Thus, like a swarm of Murti-Bingers in an orgy of collective enthusiasm, the university scavengers have zeroed in on their latest bête noir, Canadian professor Ricardo Duchesne of the University of New Brunswick. Duchesne is, in my estimation, one of the important scholars and thinkers of our day, a defender of the moral and intellectual tradition of Western civilization. As Duchesne told CTV News, “I believe that Canada and all western nations have been set for full diversification through mass immigration… Who came up with this idea that all white nations must become racially diverse, whereas that’s not happening in Japan, Korea, China, Mexico — only in white nations?”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s food supply imperiled By Chriss Stree

Posted By on June 7th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/chinas_food_supply_imperiled_.html

China’s food supply is being imperiled as new reports warn that up to 50 percent of China’s 440 million pigs are now at risk from African Swine Fever infection.

The South China Morning Post reported that Chairman Chan Kin Yip of the Federation of Hong Kong Agricultural Associations claimed that Chinese mainland pig farmers told him African Swine Fever has spread to 30 percent of mainland pigs, while another Hong Kong pig farmer based in China told Yip the exposure rate is as high as 50 percent.

With $23.8 billion of agricultural imports from the U.S. in 2017, retaliatory tariffs directly aimed at President Trump’s rural voter base was expected to be China’s hammer to bludgeon the U.S. into abandoning its Trade War. Accounting for 17 percent of U.S. agricultural exports, Chinese customers were number one in soybeans; number two in pork and hay; number three in dairy and poultry; number four in beef, and number five in wheat. 

First detected in August 2018, the raging pandemic of highly communicable African Swine Fever has spread to every mainland province and Hong Kong. The virus causes blackened lesions, diarrhea, abortion, respiratory illness, and then death in 7 to 10 days.

With production declines of -35 percent and prices spiking +40 percent, the disease is wreaking havoc on the China’s $128 billion a year pork industry. Although Beijing has encouraged the provinces to provide financial support to large-scale pig farms, the loss of sales and cost to cull up to 220 million infected pigs is a huge burden on the people.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Islam’s War on the Christian Cross By Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on June 7th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/islams_war_on_the_christian_cross.html

A Muslim migrant in Rome recently stabbed a Christian man in the throat for wearing a crucifix around his neck.  The assailant, a 37-year-old Moroccan, is accused of attempted homicide; “religious hate” is cited as an “aggravating factor” in the crime.

This is hardly the first “religious hate” crime to occur in the context of the cross in Italy.  Among others,

A Muslim boy of African origin picked on, insulted, and eventually beat a 12-year-old girl during school because she too was wearing a crucifix. 
A Muslim migrant invaded an old church in Venice and attacked its large, 300-year-old cross, breaking off one of its arms, while shouting, “All that is in a church is false!”
After a crucifix was destroyed in close proximity to a populated mosque, Cinisello Balsamo’s mayor said concerning the identity of the culprit(s): “Before we put a show of unity with Muslims, let’s have them begin by respecting our civilization and our culture.”

What is it about the crucifix that makes some Muslims react violently?  Islamic hostility to the cross is an unwavering phenomenon — one that crosses continents and centuries; one that is very much indicative of Islam’s innate hostility to Christianity.

For starters, not only is the cross the quintessential symbol of Christianity — for all denominations, including most forms of otherwise iconoclastic Protestantism — but it symbolizes the fundamental disagreement between Christians and Muslims.   As Professor Sidney Griffith explains, “The cross and the icons publicly declared those very points of Christian faith which the Koran, in the Muslim view, explicitly denied: that Christ was the Son of God and that he died on the cross.”  Accordingly, “the Christian practice of venerating the cross… often aroused the disdain of Muslims,” so that from the start of the Muslim conquests of Christian lands there was an ongoing “campaign to erase the public symbols of Christianity, especially the previously ubiquitous sign of the cross.”

This “campaign” traces back to the Muslim prophet Muhammad. He reportedly “had such a repugnance to the form of the cross that he broke everything brought into his house with its figure upon it,” wrote one historian (Sword and Scimitar, p. 10).  Muhammad also claimed that at the end times Jesus (the Muslim ‘Isa) himself would make it a point to “break the cross.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Priorities of Palestinian Leaders by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on June 7th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14342/palestinian-leaders-priorities

Let us consider some of those “other priorities….” Last week, Palestinian sources revealed that the ministers of the Palestinian Authority government have given themselves a $2,000 raise in their monthly salary… at a time when the Palestinian leadership is claiming that it is suffering from a financial crisis.

Hardly a day passes without another Palestinian reported killed in Syria. The latest victim died under torture in a Syrian prison last week. The victim’s family has requested that his name not be published out of concern for their lives… His death brings to 606 the number of Palestinians who died under torture in Syrian prisons in the past eight years.

When was the last time a senior Palestinian official talked about the torture and arrest of Palestinians in an Arab country? They really don’t have the time: they are too busy condemning Israel and the US administration to take note of the fact that thousands of their people are being killed, displaced and tortured in Arab countries.

Palestinian ministers take yet more money for themselves from the pockets of their own people. Hamas leaders are obsessed with gagging anyone who dares to call them out for their violent and despotic behavior…. This is the Palestinian leadership in action. When, one might ask, might we see some reaction on the part of the international community and media?

Some 18 Palestinian journalists, political and social activists, and academics have been killed in Syria in recent years, while dozens of others have been arrested. This figure was recently revealed by the Action Group For Palestinians of Syria, a London-based human rights watchdog organization that monitors the situation of Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria.

This revelation, however, did not make it onto the radar of the international community or “pro-Palestinian” groups in the US, Canada, Britain and other Western countries. The most probable reason: Israel had nothing to do with the deaths of the Palestinian journalists, political activists and academics. They died in an Arab country (Syria). They were killed by their own Arab brothers, not by Israelis.

Had the Palestinians been killed or injured or arrested by Israel, their plight would have been immediately criticized by the international community, foreign journalists and media outlets. Yet, why should major media organizations report on these Arabs when they are victims of Arab brutality and repression?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Scorched Earth’: Mueller’s Targets Speak Out By Paul Sperry

Posted By on June 7th, 2019

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/05/30/scorched_earth_lives_upturned_muellers_targets_speak_out.html

Veteran journalist Art Moore was editing a story on the Trump-Russia probe last October when he heard a knock at the door. He saw a couple of men in suits on the front porch of his suburban Seattle home and thought they were Jehovah’s Witnesses making the rounds. But they weren’t missionaries there to convert him; they were FBI agents there to interrogate him, sent by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The G-men wanted to talk about WikiLeaks, specifically whether the Trump campaign had any connection to the hacktivist group’s release of thousands of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 election.

The two FBI agents – cyber-crimes experts Jared Brown and Aleks Kobzanets, the latter of whom had a Russian accent – grilled Moore, an editor for the news site WND.com, for about 90 minutes. Among other things, they asked about former WND correspondent Jerome Corsi and whether he had any advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ dumps of Clinton campaign emails. Corsi, who is friendly with the president, had used Trump confidante Roger Stone as a source during the campaign.

“They were clearly on a fishing expedition,” Moore said, recounting the incident to RealClearInvestigations publicly for the first time.

“They seemed desperate to find something to hang onto the narrative” of Russian collusion, he said.

A former Associated Press and Christianity Today reporter who co-authored a best-selling book on homeland security, Moore said he believed the special counsel secretly looked through not just his personal emails and text messages, but also his phone records, even though the agents assured him he was not a target of investigation.

Weeks earlier, two other agents had shown up — also unannounced — at the suburban Virginia home of his boss, WND.com founder and editor Joseph Farah, asking similar questions about WikiLeaks. They focused on staff editorial conference calls Corsi had joined in August and October 2016. They asked who normally edited the stories filed by Corsi. Farah mentioned Moore, and another team of agents was deployed to Gig Harbor, Wash., where Moore works from home.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

DHS official warns GOP senators about ‘rented babies’ at border

Posted By on June 7th, 2019

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/447288-dhs-official-warns-gop-senators-about-rented-babies-at-border

Mark Morgan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Republicans senators Wednesday that migrants from Central America are “renting babies” to make it easier to get across the U.S. border. 

Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), one of the Republican senators who attended the Wednesday lunch briefing with Morgan, said the official offered the information to underscore the crisis at the border.

“I can’t believe that this actually happens but that people down there in Central America or Mexico are renting babies to get across the border and then sending them back and renting them again to get across the border,” Grassley told reporters on Thursday.

“The public doesn’t know about it. I hope you guys will help advertise that, assuming the information that I heard yesterday was accurate because that’s a humanitarian crisis that we have to be concerned about,” he said.

Morgan previously raised the issue of migrants from Central America allegedly renting children to make it easier to get across the border and gain asylum in an April interview with the Epoch Times.

“They know now, you grab a kid, you’re in,” he said, citing protections for migrants established by the Flores Settlement and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.

“Grab a kid and you’re in. And so now you’ve seen a complete change in the demographics because of that. And now you’re seeing adult males coming along. And it goes even further, the children are being exploited,” he added. “An adult male who wants to get across will pay the cartels to basically rent the kid. It’s horrendous.”

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Sovereign People Need Data Sovereignty—Now By Ned Ryun

Posted By on June 7th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/06/a-sovereign-people-need-data-sovereignty-now/

It’s time the American people woke up and understood what the big tech companies, many of which are now publishers and telecommunications companies masquerading as neutral platforms, are doing with their personal data.

Respecting individual privacy is the most common concern you find in the media and elsewhere. But privacy is only part of the challenge before us—and a relatively small part at that. By feeding companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook untold amounts of personally identifiable data, Americans—specifically American workers—are helping sow the seeds of their own demise.

Many people don’t take the time to consider what happens to their data when they give it away. Where does it go? With whom is it being shared? How is it being used to accelerate the growth of new technologies, including artificial intelligence and automation?

The data being given freely to these tech companies and the amount of personally identifiable data being collected put the National Security Agency’s efforts to shame. Like it or not, all of this data isn’t being used simply to inform algorithms that help you make better movie selections or put funny cat videos into your Facebook feed or remind you that you’re about to run out of toilet paper.

All of that information is feeding projects such as Google Brain and Facebook’s artificial intelligence research and development. These are grand efforts by very large, private companies that have vast and untold implications for public policy. Yet these same companies are not being very transparent about their work.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats 2020: The Grievance Party A vicious identity politics and socialist platform. Larry Elder

Posted By on June 7th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273910/democrats-2020-grievance-party-larry-elder

Describing the Democratic Party as one built on “identity politics” used to be a pejorative. But Georgia’s failed 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, recently defended this description of her party. “I would argue that identity politics is exactly who we are,” said Abrams, “and it’s exactly how we won. … When we refuse to engage in the conversation of identity politics, when we refuse to acknowledge that we see you and we understand you and we understand the barriers that you face, then what we are met with is a lack of trust.”

Fellow Democrat and presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg apparently failed to get the memo. A week before Abrams embraced and even expressed pride in Democrats’ identity politics, Buttigieg was blasting President Donald Trump for his “racist” use of it. Trump, said Buttigieg, engages in “peak white identity politics” that creates a “crisis of belonging” in America “designed to drive apart people with common interests.” Buttigieg added, “When you do not belong, it doesn’t just put you in a bad mood; it puts you in a different country.”

By “identity” politics, Democrats really mean grievances. The party leaders push the narrative that blacks, Hispanics, gays, etc. are victims, whether due “inequality” or “sexism” or “racism” or “otherism.”

Take 2020 Democratic presidential contender Sen. Kamala Harris, who announced plans to end the alleged grievance of “unequal pay.” Harris claims women working full time make 80 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men. She insists it’s worse for minorities: Black women are only paid 61 cents on the dollar, Hispanic women 53 cents. Never mind that the Labor Department long ago debunked this myth.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ron DeSantis Challenges the BDS Movement : Caroline Glick

Posted By on June 7th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273943/ron-desantis-challenges-bds-movement-caroline-glick

“If you openly support BDS in Florida, you’re dead, politically.”

That was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s conclusion from the surprisingly large role the issue of the antisemitic “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) campaign against Israel played in his close race against Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum in Floridan’s gubernatorial election last November.

DeSantis edged out the hardcore progressive Democrat by a mere 0.4 percent, or 32,000 votes.

DeSantis made the remark during the course of his official visit to Israel last week. He led a massive trade mission of Florida business leaders, cabinet secretaries, and university presidents on a five-day trip to the Jewish state. During the course of the mission, Florida universities signed collaboration agreements with Israeli universities spanning a vast spectrum of undertakings from water purification to space research.

The mission merged the twin goals of increasing Florida-Israel economic, academic and commercial ties; and fighting anti-Semitism generally, and the BDS campaign against Israel specifically. Its success was a stunning expression of DeSantis’s state government’s friendship with Israel. It also placed the sharp contrast between progressive Democrats — like his opponent, Gillum — and DeSantis in stark relief.

Throughout his three terms in Congress, DeSantis distinguished himself as one of the most active defenders and promoters of the U.S. strategic alliance with the Jewish state. In contrast, in the years preceding Gillum’s general election run for Florida governor, he cultivated and benefitted from close ties with BDS groups.

DeSantis made his remark about the negative effect his opponent’s support for Israel’s worst opponents in America had on Gillum’s election prospects during a visit Wednesday to the Hub Etzion in the Gush Etzion industrial park. The Hub is a flexible work office space and a central meeting place for the growing hi-tech, small business and self-employed community of Gush Etzion and Efrat in Judea and Samaria.