Nest Of Spies

Led by the Chinese…

… but including intelligence officers from at least 20 nations including allies, the book says, the infiltrators are stealing an estimated $20 billion to $30 billion annually worth of cutting-edge research in products and technologies, other scientific, business and military know-how and political secrets.
[…]
Over 371 pages, the pair expose an astonishing parade of spy-vs.-spy and espionage stories, from Tretiak and other Russian post-Cold War escapades to allegations of India’s suspected involvement in the 1985 Air India disaster.
They reveal the hidden hand of Chinese intelligence in getting the House of Commons in 2007 to shame China’s old enemy Japan for its treatment of foreign women during the Second World War, allege political assassinations within Canada’s ethnic diaspora and explain how reductions to CSIS’s counter-intelligence budget mean some of the service’s elite agents, assigned to monitor suspected foreigners, no longer work weekends in Canada’s big cities.
But their chief message is denouncing “the silence and inaction” of a succession of federal governments more interested in trade and diplomatic relations than crime and punishment, demoralizing the relatively few CSIS and RCMP managers and counter- espionage agents who haven’t been re-assigned to post-9/11 counter-terrorism duties.

Available at Harper Collins

Now Is The Time At SDA When We Juxtapose!

Carol Platt Liebau (Harvard Law Review), February 20th – “[Tom Pirelli] did most of the day to day work. Barack Obama was nowhere to be seen. Occasionally he would drop in he would talk to people, and then he’d leave again as though his very arrival had been a benediction in and of itself, but not very much got done.”
AP News, September 15th – The Obama administration is holding off major decisions that could put its military forces on a firmer war footing in Afghanistan even as doubts grow about whether the United States can win there.

“Comments on this story are pre-moderated.”

Your tax dollars at work, Alberta;

“alberta always is the most polluting province of canada. there is nothing there that nobody knows.i don’t believe this is about to change. we are feeding the americans with that oil and we keep the pollution.”
“Has anyone else noticed that the greater the concentration of religious righteous in a Province, the greater the level of environmental destruction that is allowed to go on there?”
“Let the arrogant red neck cowboys spew all their garbage they want, they have shown they cannot be trusted to do the right thing so I believe it’s time to impose actions like this. If Alberta cannot see beyond its own nose and take steps to diversivy their own economy, then perhaps they should elect a new party to power who has a vision that in 40 years our lakes, rivers and forests are not dumps for Syncrude and Suncor. “

But Glenn Beck Is The Crazy One

Three’s the charm;

The scandal surrounding the left-wing activist organization ACORN has spread to New York, with employees at its Brooklyn office caught on video helping supposed ladies of the night get loans for their dream houses of ill repute.
Rather than reminding the women that prostitution is dangerous and illegal and advising them to change their careers, counselors at the social-services group shockingly offer suggestions on how they can launder their earnings.
[…]
ACORN workers in two other cities, Baltimore and Washington, DC, had already fallen hooker, line and sinker for the hidden-camera sting operation by two conservative activists.

Well, this should ensure an official investigation … right?
Obama’s Acorn connection;

…has not gone entirely unreported, its depth, extent, and significance have been poorly understood. Typically, media background pieces note that, on behalf of Acorn, Obama and a team of Chicago attorneys won a 1995 suit forcing the state of Illinois to implement the federal “motor-voter” bill. In fact, Obama’s Acorn connection is far more extensive. In the few stories where Obama’s role as an Acorn “leadership trainer” is noted, or his seats on the boards of foundations that may have supported Acorn are discussed, there is little follow-up. Even these more extensive reports miss many aspects of Obama’s ties to Acorn.”

Update – Journalists: your moral and intellectual superiors!

Deep Sixing A Democracy

Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?

Funny about our new president. He seems to reserve his harshest words, and biggest stick, for two little, struggling democracies: Honduras and Israel. (Obviously, Israel faces greater challenges than Honduras, no matter what shape the Central American country is in.) Would that he were a fraction as tough on bad regimes — Iran’s, North Korea’s, Sudan’s, Venezuela’s, Cuba’s, Syria’s — as he is on those little democracies Israel and Honduras. Funny, this president.
By the way, he called Chávez “mi amigo” — his friend. Would he call Micheletti that? Even Uribe? He yukked it up with Daniel Ortega (over the Bay of Pigs). Would he yuk it up with Micheletti?
Curious, our new American president.
P.S. He doesn’t accept the legitimacy of Honduras’s government. Does he accept the legitimacy of Cuba’s?

The Sound Of Settled Science

UCLA Newsroom;

UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth’s magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere.
[…]
Lyons and Kim were planning to study something unrelated when they made the discovery.
“We were looking to do something else, when we saw life is not the way we expected it to be,” Lyons said. “The most exciting discoveries in science sometimes just drop in your lap. In our field, this finding is pretty earth-shaking. It’s an entire new mode of energy transfer, which is step one. The next step is to understand how it works. It must be a completely different process.”

h/t Tech1

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