Peggy Noonan: The Alitos did nothing wrong, and the dishonest activist is nothing but a Stalinist rat

  

 But there was something quite inhuman in what the left-wing activist did. She treated human beings as if they were mere means to her end. She acted out admiration to perform reputational harm. She presented herself falsely to inflict damage. That the content she produced was disseminated by honest grown-up journalists is to their discredit.

She claims to oppose polarization but fans it, further alienating those who already lack trust in institutions like the court and professionals like journalists. She presents another warning to those who hold or are adjacent to high office: You can’t assume good faith on the part of fellow citizens who seek you out.

More than that, it is deeply Stalinist. In Stalin’s time private life was dead, and private comments too. Neighbor spied on neighbor and reported back subversive comments to the Central Committee. People became spies, rooting out ideological error. 

More.

Steve Sailer on communist fellow traveler J. Robert Oppenheimer the movie: wut, lol, yikes, sheesh, um, holy cow, and yeah that's California

admirably (perhaps excessively) historically accurate

the welcome clarity of the sound

the porkpie hat with the wide Western brim 

the movie is overly critical of Oppenheimer 

a nuclear weapon hasn’t been used in anger since 1945 

Oppenheimer had a long track record of misjudging Stalin’s character . . . as head of the world’s most glamorous academic organization, the Institute for Advanced Studies, a job at which he was superb due to his polymathic near-infallibility of judgment

I try to hold glass-half-full opinions of scientists like Oppenheimer and Millikan and admire them for their historic accomplishments rather than cancel them for their mundane political opinions [even though] The Soviets tested their first fission bomb in 1949, largely due to having (at least) four spies at Los Alamos [thanks to J. Robert Oppenheimer's mundane political opinions]

Here.

Divided Democrats help more divided Republicans pass record high $886 billion NDAA which extends 5.2% pay raise to U.S. military, leaves woke policies intact, authorizes four more months of domestic spying authority

Congress passes $886 billion defense policy bill, Biden to sign into law :

 Congress has passed an NDAA for 63 straight years.

The roll call vote is here. 

 

IRS whistleblower says FBI confirmed authenticity of Hunter Biden laptop in November 2019, almost one year before New York Post laptop story

“In October 2019, the FBI became aware that a repair shop had a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden and that the laptop might contain evidence of a crime. The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID,” Shapley said.

The laptop’s contents linked Joe Biden to his son’s dealings, including in China and Ukraine — contradicting his public claims he never discussed business with his son Hunter or brother James Biden.

Despite the FBI’s internal corroboration, 51 former US intelligence agency leaders signed a pre-election letter saying that the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” ...

But behind the scenes, “when the FBI took possession of the device in December 2019, they notified the IRS that it likely contained evidence of tax crimes,” Shapley said.

Shapley, who has worked at the tax agency for 14 years, supervised a 12-person team that determined Hunter Biden had failed to pay $2.2 million on $8.3 million in income earned between 2014 and 2019 from foreign countries where his father held sway as vice president, such as China, Romania and Ukraine.

The case was resolved Tuesday with the announcement of a probation-only plea deal with the first son, despite investigators attempting to recommend felonies, Shapley and another IRS whistleblower told the committee.

On October 19, 2020 — the same date the “spies who lie” letter was fed to Politico — Shapley said he emailed Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf to tell her: “We need to talk about the computer.”

More.

Every damn time: The Army Times won't show the picture of the US Army reservist found guilty of spying for China, you have to go to the South China Morning Post for that

 Ex-Army reservist convicted of acting as Beijing agent...  

Former Chicago graduate student Ji Chaoqun convicted of spying for China part of larger plan: analysts

 

The most important thing to the Army Times obviously is to hide the man's identity, because you know, racism.

Nevermind the lunacy of recruiting foreigners to serve in the US military.

This country is so screwed it's almost indescribable.

 

 

 

While America has been bogged down in Afghanistan, China has been building nukes

 From Bill Gertz:

China is building a third missile field that will hold more than 100 new DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles, The Washington Times has learned.

Construction of a silo array for DF-41s was identified from satellite imagery by U.S. intelligence agencies in the past several weeks and appears equal in size to two other new Chinese missile fields recently identified, according to Pentagon officials familiar with intelligence reports on the strategic development.

Adm. Charles Richard, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, said Thursday that the first two missile fields being built are part of China‘s “explosive” expansion of nuclear forces. ...

Analysts at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, first told The Washington Post in June that commercial satellite photos had revealed the construction of scores of silos near Yumen in China‘s Gansu province for the new missiles. Some missile sites were placed underneath a 230-foot cover in an attempt to conceal the silos from the prying eyes of satellite spies.

Last month, the Federation of American Scientists discovered the second DF-41 field some 240 miles northwest of Yumen near the city of Hami in Xinjiang Province. Xinjiang is also the location of China‘s active nuclear testing site, which the Pentagon said recently had begun increased operations after years of limited, irregular activity.

Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon nuclear policymaker, said the discovery of a new missile field is significant and indicates that Beijing’s ICBM force will soon be more powerful than U.S. nuclear forces were at the height of the Cold War.

“It is now beyond any reasonable doubt that China is going for large-scale strategic nuclear superiority over the U.S.,” said Mr. Schneider, now with the National Institute for Public Policy. “The new silos will give China the ability to deploy thousands of strategic nuclear warheads on DF-41 ICBMs.”

Mr. Schneider said he believes the main motivation for the large buildup is that Beijing is planning some type of military action in the next few years and hopes to deter a U.S. military response to action against one of China‘s neighbors, such as Taiwan. ...

Until the discovery of the DF-41 silos, China‘s land-based, silo-deployed ICBM force consisted of around 20 DF-5 ICBMs.

More.

 

 

US spies were primary actors acting illegally in Election 2016, using opposition research from a foreign country: Brit Christopher Steele PAID the Russkies for the Dossier, the main tell it was bogus from the start

Rick Perry's Dept. of Energy infested with Chinese spies on US and China payrolls, stealing sensitive military information

Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence had trouble investigating because of the “language barrier” and “insular nature” of the group of Chinese nationals working on six sensitive projects paid for by the U.S. government.

More here.

This Russian spying scandal primarily populates four years of two no-scandal Obama terms

People keep repeating the myth of "no immigration from the 1920s-1960s" because Rush Limbaugh spread it in 2014

Conservatives Don’t Hate Immigrants!:

Every time I tell people that there was no immigration in this country for over 40 years, from the 1920s to the 1960s, seventies, they’re shocked. You’d be amazed at the number of people that do not know we totally closed the borders after the wave of European immigration in the 1920s. And we did it for one reason. That mass arrival of immigrants needed to be assimilated.

The truth is between 1920 and 1965 inclusive we let in 10.1 million, 4.5 million of which came in between 1920 and 1930. It was the Great Depression and World War II which brought immigration down to a trickle. There were no jobs for the people already here in the 1930s for cying out loud, and we didn't want any Nazty Spies comin' in in 1940 either.

You can examine the data for yourself here:

Legal Immigration to the United States, 1820-Present

So now Clapper agrees with AG Barr because what the FBI did to Trump meets the dictionary definition of spying, but hey! we don't use the dictionary definition 'cause it's icky!

Thread.

Trump's FBI Director, Christopher Wray, doesn't deny that the FBI may have LEGALLY spied on the Trump Campaign

FBI boss says it did NOT spy on Trump's 2016 campaign despite his boss Bill Barr using the word and says he knows of NO 'illegal surveillance'

James Comey: "I've never thought of court-ordered electronic surveillance as spying"

Thread.

It all depends on what the meaning of "is" is, remember?

LOL: Senate Democrats suddenly upset about unfounded spying allegations three years into Russian collusion hoax

The DOJ looks set to investigate the investigators.

One more time, Democrat General Michael Flynn is not a criminal but a victim of an Obama political hit job

Why Michael Flynn Was Set Up:

What was Flynn's real sin?

As the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from July 2012 until he was forced out in August 2014, he clashed mightily with the Obama administration's policies on ISIS and the Iran nuclear deal, among other things. As a result, the decorated general put himself "on the wrong side of history" and at odds with the Obama-friendly deep state.

The outspoken general continued to rock the boat after he left the administration.

For instance, in November 2015 during an appearance on Fox News, Flynn called for an investigation into the ISIS intel-skewing scandal, recommending that it "start right at the top."

"Where intelligence starts and stops is at the White House," Flynn said. "The president sets the priorities and he's the number one customer. So if he's not getting the intelligence that he needs and he's not paying attention to what else is going on, then something else is going wrong between him and the advisers that he has."

Obama already despised Flynn. But his hate likely turned to fear when his former DIA decided to throw his support behind Donald J. Trump, another boat-rocker who had a real chance of winning.

As Sheld noted, Obama made a point after the 2016 election of advising Trump not to hire Flynn. But Trump didn't listen.

Next thing Flynn knew, government spies were listening in on his innocuous phone conversations with Kislyak, his name was unmasked by someone in the Obama administration, and the contents of the call were leaked to the Washington Post (which remains the only serious crime to have emerged in the Russia investigation). ...

On January 12, 2017, a "high-ranking" Obama official leaked Flynn's intercept to David Ignatius at the Washington Post, which is a felony.

Our so-called friends the Chicoms installed spychips on thousands of servers used by Apple, Amazon and a host of others

The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies:

The chips had been inserted during the manufacturing process, two officials say, by operatives from a unit of the People’s Liberation Army. In Supermicro, China’s spies appear to have found a perfect conduit for what U.S. officials now describe as the most significant supply chain attack known to have been carried out against American companies.

"Key allies" persuade Trump to rescind declassification order for FISA materials involving Carter Page

"The guards of a tyrant are foreigners" cuts both ways.

The English aren't worth it, Mr. President, and neither are your "key allies". End the disease of secret courts.

The Orange County Register comments here:

Trump has now asked the DOJ’s inspector general to review the unreleased classified material quickly. The president said he still may declassify the documents, and there’s good reason to do so. If government power was misused to spy on an American citizen and a political campaign, Congress should look at reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, at a minimum.

So Senator Dianne Feinstein's driver was a spy for China for almost 20 years, apparently from 1993-2013

What a joke our country is.

Dianne Emiel Goldman Berman Feinstein Blum has been on the Senate INTELLIGENCE Committee since 2001, but never knew.

Feinstein had a Chinese spy connection she didn’t know about — her driver

How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies

Details Surface About Chinese Spy Who Worked For Sen. Feinstein

Federal Air Marshalls go from armed on-board cops to spying on US citizens under new Trump TSA "Quiet Skies" program

From The Boston Globe story here:

Quiet Skies represents a major departure for TSA. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency has traditionally placed armed air marshals on routes it considered potentially higher risk, or on flights with a passenger on a terrorist watch list. Deploying air marshals to gather intelligence on civilians not on a terrorist watch list is a new assignment, one that some air marshals say goes beyond the mandate of the US Federal Air Marshal Service. Some also worry that such domestic surveillance might be illegal. Between 2,000 and 3,000 men and women, so-called flying FAMs, work the skies.

Since this initiative launched in March, dozens of air marshals have raised concerns about the Quiet Skies program with senior officials and colleagues, sought legal counsel, and expressed misgivings about the surveillance program, according to interviews and documents reviewed by the Globe. ...

Agency documents show there are about 40 to 50 Quiet Skies passengers on domestic flights each day. On average, air marshals follow and surveil about 35 of them.

Edward Snowden documents help The Intercept identify eight AT&T buildings central to NSA spying on global internet, phone, email, chat

From the story here:

THE EIGHT LOCATIONS are featured on a top-secret NSA map, which depicts U.S. facilities that the agency relies upon for one of its largest surveillance programs, code-named FAIRVIEW. AT&T is the only company involved in FAIRVIEW, which was first established in 1985, according to NSA documents, and involves tapping into international telecommunications cables, routers, and switches.

In 2003, the NSA launched new internet mass surveillance methods, which were pioneered under the FAIRVIEW program. The methods were used by the agency to collect – within a few months – some 400 billion records about people’s internet communications and activity, the New York Times previously reported. FAIRVIEW was also forwarding more than 1 million emails every day to a “keyword selection system” at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters.

Central to the internet spying are eight “peering link router complex” sites, which are pinpointed on the top-secret NSA map. The locations of the sites mirror maps of AT&T’s networks, obtained by The Intercept from public records, which show “backbone node with peering” facilities in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

One of the AT&T maps contains unique codes individually identifying the addresses of the facilities in each of the cities.

Among the pinpointed buildings, there is a nuclear blast-resistant, windowless facility in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood; in Washington, D.C., a fortress-like, concrete structure less than half a mile south of the U.S. Capitol; in Chicago, an earthquake-resistant skyscraper in the West Loop Gate area; in Atlanta, a 429-foot art deco structure in the heart of the city’s downtown district; and in Dallas, a cube-like building with narrow windows and large vents on its exterior, located in the Old East district.

Elsewhere, on the west coast of the U.S., there are three more facilities: in downtown Los Angeles, a striking concrete tower near the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Staples Center, two blocks from the most important internet exchange in the region; in Seattle, a 15-story building with blacked-out windows and reinforced concrete foundations, near the city’s waterfront; and in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, a building where it was previously claimed that the NSA was monitoring internet traffic from a secure room on the sixth floor.

The peering sites – otherwise known in AT&T parlance as “Service Node Routing Complexes,” or SNRCs – were developed following the internet boom in the mid- to late 1990s. By March 2009, the NSA’s documents say it was tapping into “peering circuits at the eight SNRCs.”