“We’ve Gone To A Liberal Form Of John Bolton”: Rand Paul Blasts Biden’s Foreign Policy
March 7th, 2021Via: ZeroHedge:
This week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a confirmation hearing for Wendy Sherman, nominated by the Biden White House to serve as deputy secretary of state.
The career diplomat answered the usual questions on how she views United States posture toward American rivals and official enemies like Russia, China, and Iran. Once again it was Sen. Rand Paul who had the most direct pushback and biting criticism against an administration that seems bent on returning to the foreign adventurism and unilateral military interventionism of the Obama and Bush years.
“We’ve gone to a liberal form of John Bolton,” Paul said of President Biden during his turn to question Sherman. Paul is especially outraged over Biden’s Syria strike without consulting Congress last week.
Bioethics and the New Eugenics
March 6th, 2021Via: Corbett Report:
Homeless Encampments In Downtown Los Angeles In The Rain
March 6th, 2021Via: German In Venice:
NY Testing ‘COVID Passport’
March 4th, 2021Via: Fox:
With the limited resumption of sporting events at venues in New York, Madison Square Garden and the Barclays Center will be used as testing grounds for a new digital pass that could confirm the owner’s COVID status. It will confirm an individual’s vaccination or recent negative coronavirus test.
First tested at the Brooklyn Nets game at Barclays Center on Feb. 27, the Excelsior Pass created with IBM, was tested for a second time during the New York Rangers game on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden.
Home Invasions: All the Ways the Government Can Lay Siege to Your Property
March 4th, 2021Via: The Rutherford Institute:
Americans are not safe in their homes.
Not anymore, at least.
This present menace comes from the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized mercenaries who are waging war on the last stronghold left to us as a free people: the sanctity of our homes.
The weapons of this particular war on our personal security and our freedoms include an abundance of laws that criminalize almost everything we do, a government that views our private property as its own, militarized police who have been brainwashed into believing that they operate above the law, courts that insulate police from charges of wrongdoing, legislatures that legitimize the government’s usurpations of our rights, and a populace that is so ignorant of their rights and distracted by partisan politics as to be utterly incapable of standing up to the government’s overreaches, incursions and power grabs.
SpaceX Successfully Launches and Lands Starship Prototype… Then It Exploded
March 4th, 2021Via: Space Flight Now:
The latest prototype of SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle — Starship SN10 — took off from the company’s South Texas test site and flew to an altitude of more than 30,000 feet Wednesday, then descended to a controlled vertical landing after two previous test vehicles crashed at touchdown. Minutes later, the 16-story test rocket exploded in a fireball, but the test flight appeared to be a major step forward in the early stages of the Starship program.
‘So… Just How Concerned Should We Be About America’s $28 Trillion Debt?’
March 4th, 2021Via: WLBT:
And if you keep stacking the $100 bills, eventually past the peak of the world’s tallest building, going a little over half-a-mile into the air, this would be one billion dollars.
But we’re going for a trillion.
This would have you stacking $100 bills into the stratosphere and past the International Space Station. You would have to stack these bills 631 miles above Earth’s crust. That would equal one trillion dollars. Now imagine 28 stacks of 631 mile-high $100 bills.
That’s America’s debt.
Skydio: Drones With ‘Most Advanced AI Ever’ Coming Soon To Your Local Police Department
March 3rd, 2021Via: Forbes:
It claims to be shipping the most advanced AI-powered drone ever built: a quadcopter that costs as little as $1,000, which can latch on to targets and follow them, dodging all sorts of obstacles and capturing everything on high-quality video. Skydio claims that its software can even predict a target’s next move, be that target a pedestrian or a car.
The technology is futuristic, but not exactly brand-new. DJI, which claims yearly revenues above $2 billion, has been making drones with similar autonomous flying features since at least 2016. Some police who’ve used Skydio claim its drones are better at flying in tight, tactical situations—like inside buildings or through a forest—but DJI, which is valued north of $15 billion, has a significant market advantage. Analysts put its U.S. market share at between 70% and 80%, with no other manufacturer above 10% (worldwide numbers are similar).
Skydio’s real advantage might simply be that it is not Chinese. The company bills itself as an all-American alternative to DJI (even if it admits that some of its plastics and metals are made in China).
China’s ‘Sharp Eyes’ Program Aims to Surveil 100% of Public Space
March 3rd, 2021Via: Dave Gershgorn:
One of China’s largest and most pervasive surveillance networks got its start in a small county about seven hours north of Shanghai.
In 2013, the local government in Pingyi County began installing tens of thousands of security cameras across urban and rural areas — more than 28,500 in total by 2016. Even the smallest villages had at least six security cameras installed, according to state media.
Those cameras weren’t just monitored by police and automated facial recognition algorithms. Through special TV boxes installed in their homes, local residents could watch live security footage and press a button to summon police if they saw anything amiss. The security footage could also be viewed on smartphones.
In 2015 the Chinese government announced that a similar program would be rolled out across China, with a particular focus on remote and rural towns. It was called the “Xueliang Project,” or Sharp Eyes, a reference to a quote from communist China’s former revolutionary leader Mao Zedong who once wrote that “the people have sharp eyes” when looking out for neighbors not living up to communist values.
The Navy Plans To Launch Swarms Of Aerial Drones From Unmanned Submarines And Ships
March 3rd, 2021Via: The War Zone:
The U.S. Navy has handed a contract to Raytheon for versions of its Coyote small unmanned aerial vehicle configured as loitering munitions, also known as “suicide drones.” The service says that it specifically wants them to support the development of unmanned surface and underwater vehicles as platforms to launch drone swarms, which could offer a slate of game-changing capabilities.
