Monthly Archives: June 2017

Misky’s Music Recommendations: Vince Staples, *Big Fish Theory* – The Daily Iowan

Posted: June 27, 2017 at 7:00 am

Long Beach native Vince Staples released his new album, Big Fish Theory, on June 23. The album follows his critically acclaimed Summertime 06 project, released in 2015.

By Gage Miskimen

gage-miskimen@uiowa.edu

There are plenty of fish in the sea that is hip-hop, but none have quite the fins of Vince Staples.

Staples released his sophomore album, Big Fish Theory, last weekend, and the project has the potential to move him into the mainstream.

Big Fish Theory takes a look at rappers and hip-hop in general from outside the fishbowl; Staples has always been an observer and critic of all aspects of society. The project analyzes how rappers act and how hip-hops looming influence on todays culture while continuing the theme from his 2016 EP, Prima Donna. That opened with a star rapper (presumably Staples) killing himself, and the rest of the project talked about how the fame and fans pushed him to that point.

Suffering from fame seems to be a constant theme in Staples music nowadays. On track three of Big Fish Theory, Alyssas Interlude, Amy Winehouses voice can be heard, taken from a snippet of an interview: Im quite a self-destructing person, so I guess I keep giving myself material, she says. Staples has been vocal about Winehouses death and unhappy with how the public has treated her.

Big Fish Theorys sound is innovative in terms of hip-hop. Electronic house beats are mixed with Staples introspective and confident verses in a way thats never been done successfully before.

The album is sprinkled with guests who add something extra. Artists credited throughout the album include Bon Ivers Justin Vernon, Kendrick Lamar, Ray-J, ASAP Rocky, Ty Dolla Sign, Kilo Kish, and Juicy J.

Though the album is great as a whole, there are particular tracks that stand out. The Vernon-produced Crabs in a Bucket is the opening track, and it kicks off in high gear, only giving the listener a few seconds to get comfortable before the bass hits. Crabs in a Bucket refers to the if I cant have it, you cant either train of thought. Crabs in a bucket will fight and climb over each other to reach the top, but their behavior inevitably does more harm than good to themselves and those around them, and Staples is comparing the crabs to rappers and society in general.

745 is another highlight of Big Fish Theory. The lyrics have Staples, driving around the city in a BMW 745, venting about his relationships with women. Staples typical nihilism shines on this track. This thing called love real hard for me/This thing called love is a God to me/and we all just Gods property/So feel free to fulfill the prophecy.

He has always felt like an outsider to hip-hop until recently. He has a Sprite endorsement deal, and radio shows in bigger cities such as The Breakfast Club on 105.1 are eager to interview him because of his dry humor and straightforward opinions. In Pitchforks Over/Under series on YouTube, Staples rated random things the hosts said from KFC to Tom Cruise, who he thought was underrated because the mission was impossible, and he pulled it off three times.

All this exposure, on top of his talent as a rapper, has brought him to the forefront of hip-hop. Staples lyricism, flow, and consistency in putting out high-caliber projects from mixtapes to full-length albums land him in the running for greatest rapper alive among Kendrick Lamar and thats about it. But honestly, listen to Staples, and see what hes accomplishing in his music, and one might consider him the heir to the throne.

Gage Miskimen is the creative director of The Daily Iowan this summer. He will examine and critique new music released every week. Have any recommendations of your own? Email him at gagemiskimen@gmail.com.

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All they needed was love: the Beatles’ spirit spoke to us all – Irish Times

Posted: at 7:00 am

The cover of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. It may be not be far from the truth to say that the Beatles were exponents of what is known as Christian humanism.

On June 25th, 1967, three weeks after the release of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles heralded a great leap forward in communications when they sang All You Need is Love live in the first satellite television broadcast. Transmitted to 24 countries, their performance reached an audience of 400 million.

In the era of Brexit, it is poignant to remember the moment, half a century ago, when the music of four Britons was transcending national barriers and enlarging the sum of human happiness.

It is true that war was raging in Vietnam in the summer of 1967 and that days after Sgt Peppers came out the Six Day War erupted between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

Yet the so-called summer of love over which the Beatles presided was not just moonshine. The trouble was that its utopian spirit was betrayed by hedonism and drug abuse. Its easy, runs the suspect refrain of All You Need is Love.

After the groups demise in 1970, John Lennon wondered what the Beatles had achieved beyond spawning a generation of narcissists in gaudy dress. His own idealism was not dead; he went on to compose Imagine.

Increasingly, though, idealism was no match for cynicism.

To the punk generation, Lennon was a charlatan who lived in luxury as he exhorted people to imagine no possessions. Yet punk, with its surly commitment to doing as you like, had more in common with the Beatles and the 1960s counterculture than was at first apparent.

So did Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative prime minister who came to power in 1979. It is often said that the 1960s cult of self-exploration yielded to the self-fixated individualism that defined Thatchers Britain.

HG Wells likened moments of historical promise to the sun briefly peeping through a cloudy sky. An image of Wells was among those selected by the Beatles to adorn the cover of Sgt Peppers.

Also included in their pantheon were James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw and Aldous Huxley. The latter appealed to them because of his essay The Doors of Perception (1954), in which he extolled the potential of psychedelic drugs to transform human consciousness.

Their heroes were humanitarians and internationalists who would recoil at the distinction between people from somewhere and people from nowhere made by Theresa May and champions of Brexit.

It is surprising perhaps that no great Christian personality figures among them. For where did the Beatles derive their commitment to love and peace from if not Christs example?

The groups flirtation with the Hindu guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has obscured the extent to which they remained quintessential products of Christian upbringings.

It was ironic that they were branded as infidels in the United States after John Lennon claimed that the Beatles were more popular than Christ. When they sang All You Need is Love they were preaching the Christian gospel.

A born mutineer, Lennon might have jibbed at being labelled any kind of Christian. But it may be not be far from the truth to say that the Beatles were exponents of what is known as Christian humanism.

The Beatles were a historical phenomenon shaped by a national past that was imperial and Christian. In the 20th century, Christian Britain fought two world wars, interrupted by the Great Depression of the 1930s, as it struggled to preserve its power.

The creation in 1945 of the welfare state was a tribute to the advocacy of progressive rationalists yet it also owed more than a little to Christs injunction to love your neighbour as yourself.

The social democracy that nurtured the Beatles had deep Christian roots. And what was the enduring assumption that Britain was a force for good, a nation with a global mission, if not the legacy of a Christian culture?

Christianity and empire retained their hold on the British imagination even as the Beatles appeared to be saying goodbye to all that. Arguably, they represented a continuation of the British empire by musical means, a late benign outpouring of imperial energies.

If the Beatles enjoy a special niche in world culture, it is because the generosity of spirit enshrined in their music speaks to people everywhere. Unlike the Brexiteers, they were not just British patriots. They were patriots for humanity.

Neil Berry is author of Articles of Faith: the Story of British Intellectual Journalism. He has written for the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement and Arab News

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Jonah Goldberg: Free speech not always a tool of virtue – MyDaytonDailyNews

Posted: at 6:58 am

Theres a tension so deep in how we think about free expression, it should rightly be called a paradox.

On the one hand, regardless of ideology, artists and writers almost unanimously insist that they do what they do to change minds. But the same artistes, auteurs and opiners recoil in horror when anyone suggests that they might be responsible for inspiring bad deeds.

Hollywood, the music industry, journalism, political ideologies, even the Confederate flag: Each takes its turn in the dock when some madman or fool does something terrible.

The arguments against free speech are stacked and waiting for these moments like weapons in a gladiatorial armory. Theres no philosophical consistency to when they get picked up and deployed, beyond the unimpeachable consistency of opportunism.

Hollywood activists blame the toxic rhetoric of right-wing talk radio or the tea party for this crime, the National Rifle Association blames Hollywood for that atrocity. Liberals decry the toxic rhetoric of the right, conservatives blame the toxic rhetoric of the left.

When attacked again heedless of ideology or consistency the gladiators instantly trade weapons. The finger-pointers of five minutes ago suddenly wax righteous in their indignation that mere expression rather, their expression should be blamed. Many of the same liberals who pounded soapboxes into pulp at the very thought of labeling record albums with violent-lyrics warnings instantly insisted that Sarah Palin had Rep. Gabby Giffords blood on her hands. Many of the conservatives who spewed hot fire at the suggestion that they had any culpability in an abortion clinic bombing, gleefully insisted that Sen. Bernie Sanders is partially to blame for Rep. Steve Scalises fight with death.

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And this is where the paradox starts to come into view: Everyone has a point.

The blame for violent acts lies with the people who commit them, and with those who explicitly and seriously call for violence, Dan McLaughlin, my National Review colleague, wrote recently. People who just use overheated political rhetoric, or who happen to share the gunmans opinions, should be nowhere on the list.

As a matter of law, I agree with this entirely. But as a matter of culture, its more complicated.

I have always thought it absurd to claim that expression cannot lead people to do bad things, precisely because it is so obvious that expression can lead people to do good things. According to legend, Abraham Lincoln told Harriet Beecher Stowe, So youre the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war. Should we mock Lincoln for saying something ridiculous?

As Irving Kristol once put it, If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book. You have to believe, in other words, that art is morally trivial and that education is morally irrelevant.

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If words dont matter, then democracy is a joke, because democracy depends entirely on making arguments not for killing, but for voting. Only a fool would argue that words can move people to vote but not to kill.

Ironically, free speech was born in an attempt to stop killing. It has its roots in freedom of conscience. Before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the common practice was that the rulers religion determined their subjects faith too. Religious dissent was not only heresy but a kind of treason. After Westphalia, exhaustion with religion-motivated bloodshed created space for toleration. As the historian C.V. Wedgwood put it, the West had begun to understand the essential futility of putting the beliefs of the mind to the judgment of the sword.

This didnt mean that Protestants instantly stopped hating Catholics or vice versa. Nor did it mean that the more ecumenical hatred of Jews vanished. What it did mean is that it was no longer acceptable to kill people simply for what they believed or said.

Words matter. Art moves people. And the law is not the full and final measure of morality. Hence the paradox: In a free society, people have a moral responsibility for what they say, while at the same time a free society requires legal responsibility only for what they actually do.

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Oklahoma Joe: Freedom of speech is not limitless – Journal Record (subscription)

Posted: at 6:57 am

Joe Hight

Freedom of speech doesnt mean freedom from ramifications.

Ive often wondered that, especially considering recent events. Of the five some may even say six rights granted to us by the First Amendment, many may say speech is the most important. As my Media Ethics students have told me, Without freedom of speech, you wouldnt have the other freedoms.

Thats debatable, but the freedom to say or write or create is not limitless.

Examples are many, but here are a few recent ones:

Ten prospective Harvard students admissions were rescinded after they posted offensive messages and memes in the Facebook chat group Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens. The Boston Business Journal reported the teenagers mocked sexual assault, the Holocaust, child abuse, and ethnic and racial groups.

Comedian Kathy Griffin was fired as CNNs New Years Eve commentator after posing with a fake bloody Donald Trump head. Then, as Vanity Fair reported, she joked with photographer Tyler Shields, We have to move to Mexico today because were not surviving this, OK? She later tearfully apologized, while also attacking the Trumps for seeking to ruin her life.

Milo Yiannopoulos resigned as editor of Breitbart News, lost speaking engagements and a book contract for remarks endorsing sexual relations with boys as young as 13. He apologized but not before saying he was a victim of child abuse himself. Conservative radio personality Charlie Sykes reacted by telling The New York Times, Weve created a competition for being the most offensive and the most outrageous in order to stay relevant, and then we must rally around and defend you.

Has our need for attention proliferated to the point that Sykes is correct? Is social media behind it? Last week, I wrote about unacceptable snarky and attack tweets in the aftermath of the shootings of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and four others at a practice for the congressional baseball game.

Have we taken freedom of speech too far?

Oklahoma State University professor Joey Senat is among the experts I turned to on First Amendment and freedom of information issues. He wrote in response to my question that obscenity, deceptive advertising and child pornography do not receive First Amendment protection. He also pointed to the U.S. Supreme Courts Brandenburg Test that is used to determine the difference between speech advocating an abstract idea (which is protected by the First Amendment) and speech intended to incite imminent lawless action (which is not protected).

Even when speech is protected by the First Amendment, it can be punished, he wrote. Freedom of speech receives a great deal of protection in this country, i.e., a preferred position. To say that ramifications exist isnt to say that freedom of speech and government regulation of speech are co-equal. The scale balances in favor of speech.

But when does it go too far? Should colleges cancel a speakers planned speeches because they dont share the majority of students viewpoints? Otherwise, known as Hecklers Veto? Should people protesting at a site be escorted out and even banned because their remarks dont agree with our own?

As Joey writes, Political speech receives more protection than does commercial speech. Government must have a compelling reason to regulate political speech. The First Amendment applies only when the government is doing the censorship. Private entities may censor without violating the First Amendment.

In the end, freedom of speech doesnt give you absolute freedom. But it is a freedom we must continue to defend, along with our other First Amendment rights.

Joe Hight is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame editor who is the University of Central Oklahomas endowed chair of journalism ethics and president of his family-owned business Best of Books in Edmond.

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College panel: Free speech on campus under siege from students – Hot Air

Posted: at 6:57 am

TheNational Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA) is holding its annual convention this week in Chicago. Inside Higher Ed reports on an interestingdiscussion that took place today about free speech on campus and how to protect it. Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) says campus speech is mostly under assault these days not from misguided administrators, but from students.

For most of my career, we were usually running up against administrative overreach campus leaders doing things that were a bad idea, or were sometimes well intentioned but still flawed, Lukianoff said during a panel discussion about the tension between free speech and inclusivity on campuses at the associations annual conference here.

Students, he said, were traditionally the best constituents for freedom of speech. But thats no longer the case, with many more students demanding that speakers be disinvited, calling for the firing of professors or suspension of fellow students whose speech they deem hurtful, and the like.

There was agreement among the panel that what todays students mean by safety on campus is not what administrators are there to guarantee:

Students do come to college expecting to be in environment that supports them, said [Wake Forest Universitys vice president for campus life Penny] Rue. To the extent they come to college expecting safety, I can guarantee them physical safety. But psychological safety and leaning into learning moments are not always aligned.

Just because it creates hurt is not enough, [University of Chicagos Jeffrey] Stone said. Almost all controversial speech harms people, upsets or offends them The First Amendment does not allow you to restrict speech because it harms them.

Some on the panel felt many students simply dont understand the importance of the First Amendments protection of free speech because of a basic lack of civics education in high school. Rue, the campus lifeVPat Wake Forest, suggested that needed to be addressed in college as part of the curriculum. However, both Lukianoff and Stone suggested college professors may not be the best solution to this problem. Stone pointed out that many professors, think hate speech shouldnt be allowed on campuses.

The discussion at this panel event does suggest there are still some adults left in the room, but increasingly they are playing defense against waves of students and some professors who genuinely dont see free speech as a fundamental right that needs to be protected from the hecklers veto. Even when students go off the rails, as happened recently at Evergreen College, you have administrators like President George Bridges who seem intent on making sure students suffer no consequences for their illiberal actions.

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Atheism vs Faith – Aleteia – Aleteia EN

Posted: at 6:57 am

My father-in-law is one of the fairest, most patient, and most virtuous people that I know. Hes always available to help out, his capacity for forgiveness is immense, and when hes unavailable its usually because hes caring for or teaching people in his community. Hes intellectual honest, and hes a profoundly decent human being. Hes also an atheist.

Hes part of the reason why I have respect for people in the atheist community, and why when I write about atheism I usually have positive things to say. I dont think its true that all atheists are fundamentally driven by selfishness, pride or immorality. Sometimes people are atheists because theyve been intellectual or morally scandalized by poor catechesis or by the bad behavior of those who represent the gospel. Others may just be like those laborers standing around in the marketplace who havent yet been called into the fields. Conversion, after all, is a grace that comes to us according to Gods timetable.

Ive found, though, that when I speak well of the atheist community people often believe that I must be one of them or very shortly about to join their ranks. Of course I cant guarantee that I will never lose my faith (nobody can), but an atheist Im definitely not.

I am a skeptic, and Ive been around for long enough to know that skepticism is a deep-seated personality trait that isnt going anywhere. Ive never been capable of the kind of faith that is comfortable and stable. I constantly question everything and Im always searching for better answers not just in order to be able to better answer other peoples doubts, but also in order to be able to answer my own. I have tremendous respect for those who are capable of simple childlike trust in God and in the Church. Im just not that kind of kid. For me, being like a little child means being like that 3-year-old who always has to ask a hundred-thousand whys.

This kind of skepticism does, I think, represent a kind of sincere fidelity to truth. Its a difficult form of fidelity, however, because Christianity is not simple, easy or clean. I dont just mean that in the sense that its complex, demanding and youll get dirty so you should gird up your loins and take up your cross. I mean that the beauty of the faith is constantly obscured by power games, superstition, simony, charlatanism and various other forms of self-serving vainglory. We dont receive a pristine doctrine, because the teaching that we receive is presented to us by sinful human beings. We receive the Body of Christ the Body of Truth scarred, broken, pierced and crucified.

Because religious truth is so often abused and misused, it can be tempting to just be done with it. For me, though, thats not really a live option. Basically, whenever I get to the point where I can no longer see God through all of the mirages and smokescreens that men have erected in order to make God into an instrument of human purposes, I have a crisis of faith. Usually, I decide that Im for sure leaving the Church. Often, I conclude that atheism is the only intellectually honest option.

Now, this is the point where I do something that I wouldnt do if I actually were an atheist. I go and talk to God about it. And God listens very patiently while I explain all of the reasons why I cant believe anymore. And we talk it through. And usually there are some jokes at my expense. And by the end of the conversation, I remember that ultimately religion is about forging a relationship with a Being who is my author, my creator, my lover and my friend. A Being who is infinitely greater than even the most beautiful human representations, and who can never be reduced to any simple human agenda. A Being who is both revealed and concealed in every molecule, every galaxy, every human heart, every word that is uttered, every inmost thought, and every grand historical movement. A God who is in all, with all, through all, for all, of all, beyond all, beneath all, and above all.

When it comes right down to it, this relationship is sufficiently real, sufficiently profound, and sufficiently important to me that Im not sure that Im actually capable of atheism. No matter how skeptical I may be, the fundamental claim that there is a God with whom it is possible to have a deep and life-giving relationship is one I find it impossible to deny. I just have way more first-hand experience of grace than I can easily explain away.

For me this is the bottom line. I know God. I love God. And having encountered Him, I cannot go back to being an atheist.

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Colorful Nebula Forms a Cosmic ‘Spirograph’ in Hubble Telescope … – Space.com

Posted: at 6:55 am

Planetary nebula IC 418 looks like a glowing orange and purple jewel in this Hubble image from 2000.

Space is bejeweled with the stunning IC 418, a planetary nebula with purple and orange coloring enveloping a bright white core. The nebula lies close to 2,000 light-years from Earth on the way to the Lepus constellation.

Planetary nebulas like IC 418 are thelast stage of evolution for a star like our sun; it was once ared giant before it ejected its outer layers into space several thousand years ago. Since its eruption, the nebula has expanded to about 0.1 light-year in diameter, representitives from Space Telescope Science Institute in Marylandsaid in a statement.

The hot, white core visible in the image is the stellar remnant of the red giant, and its ultraviolet radiation creates the fluorescence in the nebula around it. The ejecta will continue to spread into the cosmos over the next several thousand years. The star will cool and fade over billions of years as a white dwarf.

This isthe fate of Earth's own sunin some 5 billion years from now.

The camera filters used to isolate light from different chemical elements are represented by the added colors. Red, at the outer edge of the nebula, shows ionized nitrogen emission this is the coolest gas in the nebula. Green shows hydrogen gas emission. Blue, at the center closest to the star, reveals ionized oxygen emissions this is the hottest gas in the nebula. TheHubble Space Telescope revealed the designs and textures within the nebula for the first time, and experts are still searching for their origin.

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Bloomberg View: NATO can fight terrorism one sinking boat at a time … – Omaha World-Herald

Posted: at 6:55 am

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has now formally enlisted in the fight against Islamic State. It can begin by helping to stem the flow of refugees trying to reach Europe from North Africa.

This would be more than a humanitarian exercise; it would be a counterterrorism operation. Wherever refugees gather in hopelessness, violent extremists have a fertile recruiting ground. And the number of refugees is staggering.

Nearly 200,000 people fleeing violence and poverty tried to cross the Mediterranean last year, and at least 5,000 died in the attempt. The U.N. estimates there are more than half a million refugees, asylum seekers and displaced people in Libya alone.

Neither the fractured Libyan government nor the European Union can cope with the numbers, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in makeshift refugee camps some of which are controlled by human traffickers and resemble concentration camps, according to a German government report.

Those who make it across the Mediterranean dont fare much better. Most end up in overcrowded camps in Italy, where social services are lacking and applications for asylum languish.

Those intercepted in Libyan waters are sent back. Sometimes the traffickers dump their human cargo in the sea to avoid capture.

So what can NATO do? With more than 700 ships at its disposal, it can do a lot.

For starters, it can build on Italian-led Operation Sophia, which has saved thousands of lives but is woefully inadequate to the task.

NATOs sophisticated surveillance capabilities, such as long-range patrol airplanes and satellite imagery, can monitor ports in Africa and the Middle East and aid in search-and-rescue efforts.

NATO can also help the EUs efforts to professionalize the Libyan coast guard.

The alliance can foster far more naval cooperation and intelligence sharing among its members, and with intergovernmental entities such as Interpol. This should also involve another underutilized asset: private shipping companies, which are obligated to respond to other vessels in distress.

NATO could also encourage member states to build more camps on Mediterranean islands and could aid with construction, perimeter security, health care and the like.

NATO patrols in the Mediterranean could provide a more direct benefit in the fight against terrorists: stemming the flow of arms from the Middle East to Islamist terrorists in North Africa. Islamic State already has a foothold in Libya and is trying to expand into Tunisia.

Two years ago, the civil war in Syria caused the exodus of millions, which set off a political crisis from Greece to the U.K. and created a lasting rift between Turkey and its NATO allies.

That time, the alliance watched from the sidelines. Now, as fighting intensifies and conditions deteriorate in Syria, NATO cant afford to make the same mistake.

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NATO general sounds warning about Putin’s HUGE modernisation of Russian military machine – Express.co.uk

Posted: at 6:55 am

General Petr Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee issued the stern warning during a breakfast briefing hosted by Politico.

General Pavel said: We in uniform, we define the threat based on two major elements. One is the capability, the other is the intent.

When it comes to capability there is no doubt that Russia is developing their capabilities both in conventional and nuclear components.

When it comes to exercises, their ability to deploy troops for long distance and to use them effectively quite far away from their own territory, there are no doubts.

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We face a huge modernisation of all Russia military

General Petr Pavel

When it comes to intent, its not so clear because we cannot clearly say that Russia has aggressive intents against NATO.

The General went on to add that the North Atlantic alliance was bolstering its own capabilities saying; there are elements that have to worry us and we have to stay ready.

So we take this even potential threat very seriously. We do everything possible to be ready both in terms of capabilities and readiness, to face any potential threat that would mirror the situation we know from Crimea, from eastern Ukraine, not to be repeated against any NATO ally.

He added: We also observe an increased and more assertive attitude in both political and militaryleadershiptalking about taking all necessary measures to face NATO military build-up. We face a huge modernisation of all Russia military.

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U.S. President Donald Trump and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May react during a ceremony at the new NATO headquarters in Brussels

General Pavel dismissed the idea the vote for Britain to leave the European Union posed a challenge to the alliance.

He said the UK would continue to be a pillar state despite uncertainty after 17.4million people voted to exit the EU.

He said: In my view, it doesnt pose a challenge to Nato the United Kingdom is firm and one of the pillar states of the alliance, its one of the strongest Nato allies military wise in Europe so we dont see any direct challenge for Nato coming out from Brexit.

He suggested the opposite was happening with many representatives of the UK expressing their more focused approach to the military alliance.

The comments come after the US and Donald Trump a key ally to the UK post-Brexit continued to send warning signals to Nato over its spending commitments.

Speaking last month at a Nato meeting of member states, the US President reminded fellow members they were not paying their fair share.

He said: I have been very very direct in saying that Nato members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations.

But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what theyre supposed to be paying for their defence.

Nato members are expected to spend two per cent of GDP on their military budget, as the alliance looks to bolster its global presence.

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There Is Now Proof the NSA Overindulges in Data Collection – Observer

Posted: at 6:54 am

National security officials are continually reassuring Americans that their communications arent getting caught in massive dragnets, and that when it does happen, the communications are handled responsibly. But recently-released opinions from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)the seven-judge panel charged with oversight of National Security Agency (NSA) spying programsshow just the opposite is true.

The heavily redacted documents, released on June 13 by the Department of Justice in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), show troubling abuses of surveillance powers granted under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.

Section 702, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008, authorizes the intelligence community to collect data and metadata of foreign communications, while preventing the agencies from intentionally targeting American people. The goal of this type of online surveillance is to catch the communications of foreign terrorists before they make their way to the United States. Two of the main programs, PRISM and UPSTREAM, were disclosed by the leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.

As the Washington Post pointed out in 2014, nine out of 10 internet users who have had their data collected under Section 702 were ordinary internet users and not actual surveillance targets. According to the FISC, around 56,000 Americans per year have their communications accidentally sucked up in this process. That means the types of hiccups and compliance issues that these new documents illustrate could be impacting thousands of Americans annually.

One Court opinion, released last week, shows the NSA has engaged in significant overcollection of the content of communications of non-target U.S. persons and persons in the U.S. This type of data collection is supposed to be expressly prohibited. If these allegations are true, this shows even more rampant hypocrisy within the intelligence community, who constantly defend and justify Section 702. If this overcollection is happening, theyve been blatantly lying.

During a June 7 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, NSA Director Mike Rogers continually downplayed issues of inadvertent collection of Americans communications under Section 702. Amid bipartisan questioning from Sens. Ron Wyden and Marco Rubio, he defended the program, calling it vital to national security andsaying it offers insight into foreign powers that could not be matched without the program.

Its bad enough that the intelligence apparatus is collecting too much of Americans communications under Section 702, but theyre also mishandling it once they have it. A 2010 FISC opinion states that the NSA had a compliance incident and failure to purge information that was required to be destroyed under the targeting and minimization procedures from certain NSA data repositories. Minimization procedures require the NSA to stop collecting data once it is determined that the target is within the United States. If the surveillance state is failing to comply with such a basic check on its power and holding onto communications that it should not be keeping, that is an egregious abuse of the powers it is given. It shows a lack of responsibility and failure to own up to mistakes on the part of the NSA.

A 2013 document, also released this week, highlights a similar compliance incident that concerned the [redacted] post-tasking checks NSA conducts to help ensure that [redacted] tasked for collection pursuant Sections 702, 704 and 705(b) of the Act are not being used from inside the United States. The term tasking refersto NSA requests for data or metadata from private companies, which can help NSA officials track the whereabouts of a target. This is particularly used under PRISM, which allows NSA to collect data from at least nine major internet companies servers.

Despite all of the abuses the documents highlight, some members of Congress continue to wholeheartedly endorse Section 702. On June 6, Sen. Tom Cotton introduced legislation to make Section 702 permanent, getting rid of the requirement that it be voted on every five years.

As a justification for the program, Cotton invokes the same need for foreign insights that Rogers mentioned in his testimony, while ignoring the inadvertent collection of Americans data. That type of disregard for Americans privacy is pervasive on both the left and the right.

While not surprising, these documents serve as yet another reminder of the continuing abuse of surveillance powers granted under Section 702. Hopefully the vast revelations of surveillance overreach from groups like EFF can jolt congressional representatives to let Section 702 sunset when its time comes on December 31. But based on Congress overwhelming support for reauthorizing Section 702 in 2012, and Cottons introduction of a bill to make it permit, civil libertarians shouldnt hold their collective breath.

Dan King is an advocate for Young Voices and a journalist residing in New Yorks Adirondacks. He writes about free speech, civil liberties and LGBT issues. He can be found on Twitter @Kinger_Editor.

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There Is Now Proof the NSA Overindulges in Data Collection - Observer

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