Some residents of Berkeley, Calif., want to put a measure before city voters that would require a public hearing before letting military recruiters set up a new office within 600 feet of homes, parks, public health clinics, libraries, schools, or churches, reports the Contra Costa Times. The effect, says the newspaper, is to engender a “more complicated city process that sometimes can be stalled or nixed in city bureaucracy.” The group pushing this measure would need to get 2,000 signatures within the next six months for it to appear on the November ballot. But, the newspaper reports that may not be the slam-dunk the group expected, since it’s sparked some public outcry against the initiative.
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…