Wretchard.com

It sounds like ‘when’ not ‘if’. The reality of the Iranian threat means whoever the US backs in the Islamic civil war that they will be backing a “bad guy”. The only escape from this dilemma is to make both Iran and KSA irrelevant but the Greens through their policies will ensure they both remain vital.

“It’s not that the administration is mischaracterizing the intelligence, so much as overreacting to it,” said one U.S. government official briefed on it. …

The source added that the administration’s steps are a way to tell the Iranian government that the U.S. will hold them responsible for their surrogates’ actions.
A third U.S. government official close to the situation described the administration’s response this way: “It is meant to send a clear message and remove any ambiguity from a tense situation. We’re demonstrating the overwhelming capability we can bring to the region.” …

“I would characterize the current situation as shaping operations on both sides to tilt the field in preparation for a possible coming conflict,” continued the second source, who is also a U.S. government official. “The risk is a low-level proxy unit miscalculating and escalating things. We’re sending a message with this reaction to the intelligence, even though the threat might not be as imminent as portrayed.”

Daily Beast

We will hold social media platforms responsible for the hate infiltrating their platforms, because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy. And if you profit off of hate—if you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyberwarfare, if you don’t police your platforms—we are going to hold you accountable as a community.

Reason

What we don’t like to hear is hate speech. We will punish you severely for hate speech. We will punish you for what we don’t like to hear. And by the way this is called “preserving our democratic way of life “.

Something took over. An intellectual generation scornful of “thoughts and prayers ” were wholly defenseless against a hostile meme. Like the proud Martians in the War of Worlds they proved vulnerable to a virus against which humble men had been inoculated.

Tablet

“The second mistake I made was to listen too carefully to the British government. Cameron. Because the then prime minister asked me not to interfere, not to intervene in the referendum campaign,”

Hill

Barr has made plain that he intends to examine carefully how and why Comey, as FBI director, decided that the bureau should investigate two presidential campaigns and if, in so doing, any rules or laws were broken.

In light of this, the fired former FBI director apparently has decided that photos of him on Twitter standing amid tall trees and in the middle of empty country roads, acting all metaphysical, is no longer a sufficient strategy.

Hill

The increasing willingness of Twitter and Factbook to censor critics of the left was inevitable. It was unrealistic to think they would provide a platform for views their bigs disagreed with. The only practical response is to develop alternative channels. The segmentation of the Internet has been on for some time. This is the latest chapter.

Will Iran strike?

The Chinese communist party seeks to diplomatically isolate Taiwan by stripping it of its diplomatic allies, by meddling in democratic elections and by applying economic pressure through redirecting tourism and financial development away from the island, Randall Shriver, assistant secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Affairs, said during a Friday media briefing about the report.
“China has never renounced the use of military force and continues to conduct military exercises,” Shriver said.
However, China does not appear to be currently investing in the equipment likely required for a direct assault on Taiwan, such as large amphibious assault ships and medium landing craft necessary for a large beach assault, according to the report. The bulk of China’s recently created marine corps forces currently lack proper equipment or operational training. …

Instead, China’s recent spate of military exercises and the PLA Navy’s focus on building large aircraft carriers, escort cruisers and amphibious transport dock (LPD) ships suggest the military, for now, is geared toward blue water naval operations and smaller expeditionary missions.

USNI

One of my proudest professional accomplishments is a weird one: I convinced a handful of colleagues to just give up.
We were in a brainstorming session trying to solve a problem that had been giving us trouble for some time. We must have run through a half-dozen solutions, each more convoluted than the last, essentially trying to figure out how to fit a square peg into a round hole.
The real problem, we finally realized, wasn’t the one we were trying to solve. It was that we were so focused on finding a solution that we never stopped to question whether we should even be doing the thing causing us problems in the first place. The solution we were too tunnel-visioned to see turned out to be the simplest: Just stop doing that thing. Duh. …

Compounding the problem is that we sometimes force ourselves to stick with failing endeavors — even if we’re fully aware they’re failing — because we’ve already invested so much time in them. In one studythat examined this phenomenon (known as the sunk cost fallacy)

NYT

Who benefits from renewables? Ironically those who sell oil and gas. Since renewables are not currently technologically viable this forces those who prematurely rely on it to become more dependent on things like Russian gas. Wind power was the how Putin became indispensable to Germany.

Now comes a major article in the country’s largest newsweekly magazine, Der Spiegel, titled, “A Botched Job in Germany” (“Murks in Germany“). The magazine’s cover shows broken wind turbines and incomplete electrical transmission towers against a dark silhouette of Berlin.
“The Energiewende — the biggest political project since reunification — threatens to fail,” write Der Spiegel’s Frank Dohmen, Alexander Jung, Stefan Schultz, Gerald Traufetter in their a 5,700-word investigative story (the article can be read in English here).
Over the past five years alone, the Energiewende has cost Germany €32 billion ($36 billion) annually, and opposition to renewables is growing in the German countryside.

Forbes

The “College Football Captain” was praying too — as fervently as he could by Virtue Signalling for all he was worth — to satisfy whatever gods or universal righteousness he believed in. Such religious zealots go by many names, mutaween among them.

Wow. An elected Dem state rep, a “College Football Captain,” videos himself (presumably he’s proud of this behavior) harassing, insulting & haranguing an elderly lady who quietly prays for him. In what universe are elected officials supposed to treat their constituents like this

Ted Cruz on Twitter

WATCH: Pennsylvania State Representative @
BrianSimsPA harasses an elderly woman who is peacefully advocating for the lives of preborn human beings and women who are considering abortion.

Live Action on Twitter

At some point in the near future there will be more dead Facebook users than living ones. It will be a vast graveyard.

 The research by the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at Oxford University, describes an extremely conservative scenario in which Facebook gains no new users. In this case, at least 1.4 billion users will be dead by 2100 and the year 2070 would be the tipping point when the dead outnumber the living on Facebook. However, given it’s very unlikely Facebook user numbers will stay where they are now (at 2.2 billion,) this point will probably arrive far sooner. 

Technology Review

But you can curate yourself and leave a virtual version of yourself after have shuffled off the mortal coil. Provided you are not “weeded” by the Woke.

the main complication with trying to create digital versions of the dead is that people are complicated. “We’re extremely different when we talk to different people,” she says. “We’re basically like twenty thousand personalities at once.” For example, Mazurenko had said things to her that he might have left out of a conversation with his parents. She could consult with his family and other friends to figure out which information was too sensitive to share. Could any company realistically do the same?
Rahnama obviously thinks so. He says Augmented Eternity will take a step toward accommodating various personalities by tailoring the conversation according to context and letting users control what data is accessible to whom. So someday his daughter might consult with his digital family persona, while a former student could ask questions of his academic persona. He sees it as one way of leaving a legacy—a way to keep contributing to society instead of fading to black. 

Technology Review

“They say that Christians once existed. And white people too. They say these old ones created Augmented Reality.”

“Nonsense. Bernie made all.”

What better way than to install it? Russia has nowhere close to China’s tech reach.

The Chinese have taken the view, according to the DoD and other outside national security experts, that information dominance is key to winning conflicts. This could be done by denying or disrupting the use of communications equipment of its competitors.

Real Clear Defense

According to IPlytics, companies in China have applied for roughly 34% of the world’s major 5G patents as of March 2019, compared with South Korea’s 25%, and 14% each for the United States and Finland. Sweden stood at nearly 8%, and Japan at almost 5%, while Taiwan, Canada, the U.K., and Italy rounded out the top 10 countries, each with under 1% shares.

Venture Beat

Following on recent rocket attacks on Israel, whose funding is ascribed to Iran, the US is deploying a carrier group to the Middle East.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. is deploying a carrier strike group and a number of bombers to the Middle East to serve as a deterrent to Iran based on new intelligence that suggests allied interests and American forces could be imperiled, multiple U.S. officials said.

WSJ

“The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces,” Bolton said.

Times of Israel

The USS Abraham Lincoln, which is assigned the task, is just out of overhaul.

The difference between ISIS and other “hate groups” is that ISIS has the resources and organization of quasi state.

KATTANKUDY (Reuters) – Sri Lankan police on Sunday discovered a 10-acre camp in the eastern town of Kattankudy, where Islamist militants linked to the deadly Easter attacks are believed to have practiced shooting and bombmaking. 

Reuters

This is illustrated by the Islamist network in the UK. Though not necessarily part of ISIS it illustrates a high level of organization.

Young imams are being trained in a network of Islamic schools across the UK that have been accused of promoting intolerance and misogyny, a secret Government report has warned.
The report claims preachers emerging from some of the dozens of Darul Uloom madrasas scattered across Britain have views as extreme as those held by radical clerics who move to the UK from Islamic countries – and may spread them to worshippers.
The Mail on Sunday has identified 48 Darul Ulooms – which can be translated as House of Knowledge – that follow a strict syllabus called Dars-E-Nizami.

Daily Mail

Why is the British report ‘secret’? To prevent awkward political questions about the downstream of the oil industry, Western relations with the Gulf States, Iran or Pakistan all of which potentially fund various stripes of ‘Islamic organizations’. The Western elite has a special and financial relationship with organized religion and contrary to what the papers imply that relationship is with political Islam and not Christianity.

The great advantage of Beto, Elizabeth, Kamala and Pete is they are essentially firewalled from any Obama Era scandals. They are a promissory note, not a bounced political check or worse, a potential co-conspirator.

The DNC’s dilemma is polls show they can’t win from the extreme left. Their chance is in the center but Joe Biden is the last of the Mohicans and scandal may taint him. Meanwhile the unbridled woke are driving issues even further left making Joe even more vital. Hence the worry over Joe’s link to the Dossier.

Perhaps the most sensitive question is how high up this goes. Text messages between two key figures in the Comey FBI, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, say it goes very high, indeed. An Aug. 5, 2016 message from Strzok tells Page that “the White House is running this.” We don’t know yet if that’s true, or who might be involved, but the message suggests how significant the political stakes were then — and are now.
How do the Barr and Horowitz investigations affect Biden? In at least three ways. First, they could strengthen President Trump’s claim that he was the victim of dirty tricks by Obama appointees in law enforcement, intelligence, and national security. Second, they are likely to tarnish the reputation of the Obama administration, which is one of Biden’s strongest assets. Finally, if the Obama White House was directly involved (and we simply don’t know at this point), then Biden will have to distance himself from everyone involved. That’s obviously his best move. But it comes at a price. It makes him look like a marginal or clueless figure on a crucial foreign-policy issue, which Biden has always claimed as his area of expertise. (He headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)

Real Clear Politics

The Dossier is rapidly becoming poison. In a way you can’t blame the Dems from going hard left. They’ve been let down so badly by the old guard that even Marx looks good by comparison.

Russians likely fed salacious but untrue allegations about Trump to ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who was being paid in part by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to find dirt on Trump.
The Russians rightly assumed that Steele would lap up their fantasies, seed them among Trump-hating officials in the Barack Obama administration and thereby cause hysteria during the election, the transition and, eventually, the Trump presidency.
Russia succeeded in sowing such chaos, thanks ultimately to Clinton, who likely had broken federal laws by using a British national and, by extension, Russian sources to warp an election. Without the fallacious Steele dossier, the entire Russian collusion hoax never would have taken off.

Victor Davis Hanson

Tickets to the latest stop on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s speaking tour were going for as little as $20 on the secondary market as their 13-city adventure continued to struggle to find an audience.
The best seats in the house at Seattle’s WaMu Theater on Friday could be had for $829, a steep 54% drop from the $1,785 that the former first couple fetched when the tour was announced in early November.

NY Post

In its most detailed account yet, the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country’s president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly’s office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort’s dealings inside the country in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Chalupa later tried to arrange for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to comment on Manafort’s Russian ties on a U.S. visit during the 2016 campaign, the ambassador said.

Hill

The cramped space is home to Facebook’s newly opened operations center to oversee the European Union’s parliamentary election, which will be held May 23 to May 26 in 28 countries.

Modeled after the “war room” that the Silicon Valley company created before last year’s midterm elections in the United States, the people inside are tasked with washing Facebook of misinformation, fake accounts and foreign meddling that could sway European voters. A similar command post was set up in Singapore for elections in India.

NYT

I made a mistake when I gave my older children phones when they were 13,” she shares. “It ended my relationship with them, really. Not completely, but it became a very, very big part of their lives. They became too inundated with imagery and started to compare themselves to other people, and that’s really bad for self-growth.”

Vogue