@Snode
The original article is from Reuters. So there's that.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-spying-idUSKBN25T3CK

Evidence that the NSA was secretly building a vast database of U.S. telephone records - the who, the how, the when, and the where of millions of mobile calls - was the first and arguably the most explosive of the Snowden revelations published by the Guardian newspaper in 2013.

Up until that moment, top intelligence officials publicly insisted the NSA never knowingly collected information on Americans at all. After the program’s exposure, U.S. officials fell back on the argument that the spying had played a crucial role in fighting domestic extremism, citing in particular the case of four San Diego residents who were accused of providing aid to religious fanatics in Somalia.
...
“Today’s ruling is a victory for our privacy rights,” the ACLU said in a statement, saying it “makes plain that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records violated the Constitution.”

Thanks for this. Have a good one.

How? there's only one.

This should be interesting:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mass-surveillance-program-exposed-by-snow...

maybe this will help Julian Assange, if our lapdog media wakes up and reports it.

@NYCVG
Indeed. Eat the rich. ("When the poor have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich!")

Take good care.

"You can change our parties but not our policies."

Doesn't this explain the entire political theater jamboree? All Kabuki while the power is untouchable.

@Lookout
True. They are working on it and at the same emitting a load of CO2 etc. That said, there is hope. They can move quickly. They are smart and have from what I can ascertain, the interest of their country's peoples in mind. Still there is a great deal of extraction going on. Yin yang.

adding this from the new Forbes report. Love that it can undermine oil exports.

The continuing growth in renewable energy around the world is set to boost the power of China while undermining the influence of major oil exporters such as Russia and Middle East states like Saudi Arabia, according to a new report on the geopolitical implications of the changing energy landscape.

Thanks for all the links. Have a good one, be well.

with climate change

China Is Set To Become The World's Renewable Energy Superpower, According To New Report
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2019/01/11/china-renewable-en...

They are leading the world with solar production and installation. They are also planting lots of trees.

The 50-year project involves the planting of more than 88 billion trees and the results so far, says Beiser, have been "amazing".

"You can drive through areas where they have planted just millions and millions and millions of trees," he says.

"I stood on top of a hillside in one place in inner Mongolia and as far as you could see it was desert land that had obviously been forested."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-17/green-walls-in-china-and-africa-k...

China has planted billions of trees over the past four decades as part of its fight against expanding deserts, mostly in its north. Each year, the country sows seedlings over an area nearly the size of Ireland. It is even sharing its desert-control methods with others as part of its massive Belt and Road trade initiative.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02789-w

So I suggest China is more focused on climate than the US and most others. Our focus is war and fuel extraction by contrast.

Thanks for the OT and y'all have a good one!

@studentofearth
I watched the whole thing. Everyone should put it on their to-watch list.

At the end he says there are two trajectories for the future.

• Nuclear war (He emphasizes that he is not joking)

• Working together.

hmmmmm. oh well.

Take good care and thank you.

livable habitat? It certainly is an acute question. One we are using now, in the past or a hybrid? Our current economic expectations are ruining the earth's livable space for many life forms as an unrecoverable rate.

A little more on China's current economic model by Richard D Wolfe

[video:https://youtu.be/3Tbf2bpgs-E?t=20]

Socialist or capitalist: What is China’s model, exactly? not a transcript but his article covers some of the main points.

A key lesson of Chinese development is that economic objectives are better met faster if a dominant social agency prioritizes achieving them and can mobilize the maximum resources, private as well as public, to that end. China’s party and government were that agency.

In Western capitalism, no comparably empowered social agency possessed that power. Private and public sectors stayed separate.

Ideology and politics generally kept the public subordinate to the private. The private employers’ differing particular interests and profit-driven goals discouraged many kinds of coordinated behavior among them as did their system’s structures of competition. Party and state apparatuses depended on corporate donations and corporate-media supports.

Thus, in Western capitalism, no social agency played the national resource-mobilizing role that the party and government played in China.

Some Western capitalist countries embraced social democracy (as in much of Western Europe). There states provided major social supports (national health insurance, subsidized schools, transport, housing, etc) that enabled some state-mobilized national resources for social priorities.

The less capitalist countries embraced social democracy – the more committed to laissez-faire ideology and private-sector dominance – the less they could mobilize national resources. The United States and UK are prime examples of such countries; hence their poor preparations for and containments of the Covid-19 pandemic and the capitalist crash of 2020.

Our Anglo-Saxon economic traditions and glorification of Roman culture shapes our relationship to our enviornment.

The Romans in their heyday produced nearly 17,000 tons of copper annually, more than would be produced again until the Industrial Revolution in Europe. With this enormous output of copper came pollution that would be unsurpassed for almost two thousand years when the Industrial Revolution began.
...
The copper pollution of the Roman days still haunts us today. One former Roman copper mine and smelting site in Wadi Faynan, Jordan is still — two thousand years after it ceased operations — a toxic wasteland littered with slag from copper smelting. Researchers have discovered that vegetation and livestock in Wadi Faynan today have high copper levels in their tissue.

The Industrial Revolution: Picking up Where the Romans Left Off

Beginning in the late 1600s, copper smelting became a major industry in Great Britain. Copper ore from Cornwall and other areas and coal deposits throughout the country fueled the smelting of copper. An abundance of coal in Swansea, Wales made this coastal town a prime location for Britain’s copper smelting activities beginning in early 1700s. The copper industry drove the economy of this town. Wealthy English people often owned smelters, while local Welsh people worked as laborers in the industry. Just as in ancient Rome, copper smelting had its price. The town and once lush countryside surrounding Swansea was stripped of vegetation by noxious copper smoke that billowed from the smelter stacks and settled on the surrounding town and fields. Topsoil on denuded hillsides succumbed to erosion. Livestock developed strange new ailments like swollen joints and rotten teeth. Farmers blamed the smoke. The smoke also reportedly caused shortness of breath, decreased appetite, and other complaints in humans.

Heading out to do some fieldwork before the smoke and heat become intolerable. Take care.