8chan/8kun QResearch Posts (3)
#22769235 at 2025-03-16 15:23:05 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #27813: Sonday Mornin Night Shift Clean Up Edition
https://theferret.scot/space-agency-130-meetings-mod/
Star wars: alarm at space agency's 130 meetings with MoD
March 16, 2025
Senior officials from the UK Space Agency held over 130 meetings with the Ministry of Defence in 2024, prompting renewed concerns about the "weaponisation" of space.
The meetings discussed the spaceport being built at SaxaVord on Shetland, using nuclear reactors in space and collaboration with the US, NATO and arms companies. Two members of the agency's advisory board also work for the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
The subject of one meeting was kept secret because it was about a project that was "highly confidential and not in the public domain". Releasing its title risked "compromising our nation's security", said the agency.
The meetings, revealed in response to a freedom of information request, have been criticised by campaigners. Though Scotland's bid to build spaceports is marketed as scientific research, it is driven by the defence industry, they say.
They warn that space could become a "new frontier of conflict" that would put humanity at risk. They fear that spaceports could be "a trojan horse for the arms industry" and demand transparency.
The Space Agency and the MoD both stressed it was necessary to work together "to protect critical national infrastructure from space-based threats".
SaxaVord, on the northern tip of the most northerly inhabited Shetland isle, Unst, is leading the race to open a spaceport in Scotland. It told MPs in February that it would be ready for its first launch in July.
The Shetland News also reported in February that Scotland's richest man and biggest private landowner, Anders Holch Povlsen, had increased his stake in SaxaVord from 25 per cent to over 50 per cent, making him the majority shareholder.
The Ferret reported in 2021 that Povlsen secretly lobbied the Scottish Government against building another spaceport on the A' Mhoine peninsula in north Sutherland, near one of his estates.
In December 2024 work on the Sutherland spaceport was put on hold, with initial launches planned from SaxaVord instead. There are also spaceports planned for Machrihanish on the Kintyre peninsula, Prestwick in South Ayrshire and North Uist in the Outer Hebrides.
The UK Space Agency was asked to list all meetings by six of its senior staff with the MoD in 2024. The agency responded under freedom of information law with a six-page list taken from calendar records, showing over 130 meetings. Some were attended by more than one agency official.
Nine meetings of the agency's advisory board and its audit and risk assurance committee in 2024 also involved people who work for the MoD. According to the agency's register of interests, two of its non-executive board members, Kevin Shaw and Peter Watkins, are paid advisors for the MoD.
Most of the 130 meetings were given a title, summarising their purpose. On 15 January 2024 the Space Agency's chief executive, Dr Paul Bate, met the MoD for a "discussion on SaxaVord and next steps for His Majesty's Government".
Earlier the same month, agency director, Matt Archer, discussed SaxaVord with the government's National Security Strategic Investment Fund, which invests in defence.
On 27 March 2024 Archer met the MoD with Orbex, the Scottish space company that switched its planned launches from Sutherland to SaxaVord.
Archer attended four meetings in 2024 with the MoD to discuss NATO space plans. Along with the MoD, he also met with the US Space Force and at the US Embassy.
Chief executive Bate met four times with Major General Paul Tedman, for "catch-ups", lunch and a discussion on the MoD's strategic defence review.
Tedman was appointed as the UK's military space commander in May 2024, having previously been a deputy director at US Space Command.
The Space Agency's two deputy chief executives, Annelies Look and Chris White-Horne, also had lunch with Tedman on 22 October 2024.
In addition, Look and Bate had meetings with the MoD about the use of nuclear power in space, and White-Horne discussed "space defence civil alignment".
Alongside the MoD, Bate met with three big arms companies in 2024. They were the British arms multinational, BAE Systems; the European aerospace and defence company, Airbus; and the joint French and Italian venture, Thales Alenia Space.
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#16026367 at 2022-04-07 00:48:21 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #20270: Georgia Ballot Traffickers Were Using Democrat Officials’ Offices Edition
Georgia legislature passes bill banishing free speech zones
Georgia's legislature on Monday passed a bill that would abolish free speech zones at the state's public colleges, banning a system that critics say chills free expression.
Free speech zones are places on campus designated for demonstrations and other forms of expression. At public colleges across the U.S., they are sometimes the sole areas of campus where officials permit protests. Georgia's legislation specifies most outdoor spots on public campuses would be considered open areas for expression.
Georgia's public institutions could still create "narrowly tailored" rules governing when and how students can protest. Such rules, known as time, place and manner restrictions, are intended to avoid campus disruptions.
Free speech zones emerged amid the tumult of the 1960s and 1970s, created as spaces where college students could protest without fear of reprisal and so that unrest would potentially be confined.
However, college administrators began treating them as the exclusive spot where students could protest on public campuses, which courts have widely interpreted as unconstitutional.
One recent legal battle around free speech zones occurred at Los Angeles Pierce College, part of the Los Angeles Community College District.
A Pierce College student, Kevin Shaw, sued in 2017 after an administrator stopped him from passing out Spanish copies of the U.S. Constitution. Shaw was told he needed to obtain a permit and confine his activities to the campus' free speech zone, which was a little more than 600 square feet, slightly larger than the size of or three parking spaces.
The community college district settled with Shaw, abandoning its policy of designating free speech spots on its campuses and paying his $225,000 in attorney fees.
The number of campuses with free speech zones has been shrinking. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties watchdog that assisted Shaw in his lawsuit, found in a recent report only 25 of the roughly 480 colleges whose free inquiry policies it tracks had free speech zones. This amounts to about 5% of those campuses.
This is down from about 16% of colleges with free speech zones in a similar 2013 FIRE survey.
State legislatures have abolished campus free speech areas, including those in Virginia, Missouri, Arizona, Kentucky and Colorado.
https://www.highereddive.com/news/georgia-legislature-passes-bill-banishing-free-speech-zones/621605/
#4316852 at 2018-12-15 03:25:29 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #5501: Still High from Ocare's Fall Edition
LA college district abolishes free speech zones as part of lawsuit settlement
A Los Angeles college student who sued his school for allegedly curbing his right to free speech after it prevented him from passing out copies of the U.S. Constitution was vindicated in court this week.
The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), which represents nine schools, including Pierce College, agreed on Wednesday to settle a lawsuit filed against them last year by student Kevin Shaw after he was barred from passing out copies of the document because he wasn't in the school's designated "free speech zone," which measured 616 square feet or about the size of three parking spaces.
As a part of the settlement, the tiny area marked for students to exercise their first amendment rights will be abandoned altogether, revoking a district-wide policy that declared all property on the district's nine campuses to be "non-public forums" with speech restrictions. As part of the settlement, LACCD will pay Shaw's $225,000 in attorney fees.
"Though it was not without its difficulties, this experience has left me optimistic about the guiding principles of my country," said Shaw in a statement provided to Fox News. "Folks of all political dispositions rallied behind this case to declare in no uncertain terms: freedom of speech is essential to the educational process."
https://www.foxnews.com/us/la-college-district-abolishes-free-speech-zones-as-part-of-lawsuit-settlement.amp