Been a pleasure hanging out here the past two weeks. One NC reader suggested I gauge interest in an IRL meetup in Los Angeles. Any takers? Bring it up in the comments and I’ll subsequently figure something out.
Jacqueline Barber Will Stay In Her Home Housing Justice Foundation. Spectacular news. Barber is an ex-cop who Occupy Our Homes Atlanta has been helping out. Victories are often too few, but they’re sweet.
Why Oh Why Can’t We Have Better Press Corps Stooges? New Economic Perspectives
Summers Faces Key ‘No’ Votes if Picked for Fed WSJ. Says Merkley, Brown, and Warren are a no. That means at least two Republicans on the Banking Committee would have to cross over for Summers to clear it. Mark Begich, not on the Banking Committee panel, is an on-the-record no here.
The Federal Reserve Nomination NY Times Ed Board. Pretty strongly against Summers.
Editorial Board: A Dodd-Frank capitulation on mortgage down payments Washington Post. Even stronger. Mirabile dictu!
Exclusive: JPMorgan to stop making student loans Reuters. More money in servicing them?
Syria:
Iran will support Syria ‘to the end,’ says military chief AP. The two countries have a security pact not unlike NATO.
Iran Plots Revenge, U.S. Says WSJ. As I was saying.
Pentagon Is Ordered to Expand Potential Targets in Syria With a Focus on Forces NYT
President Obama’s political capital spreads thin Politico
Wooing the left First Read
‘This is not Iraq’: The transcript of Kerry’s MSNBC interview MSNBC. Appalling.
Chris Hayes on Syria: ‘Here is where I stand’ MSNBC
It’s Not War, So Stop Saying That William Rivers Pitt (h/t Lambert)
Poll: Majority Of Americans Approve Of Sending Congress To Syria The Onion
Failed Policy — The 401(k) Shrinks In A Growing Economy The National Memo
Nearly Half Of U.S. Births Are Covered By Medicaid, Study Finds Kaiser Health News
European Central Bank Chief Tamps Down Optimism NYT. A new theory: it’s all Syria’s fault!
Risk Ahoy: Maersk, Daewoo Build the World’s Biggest Boat Businessweek (h/t Lambert, who says to read to the end for the Maersk CEO’s assessment of the economy)
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch:
US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet The Guardian. You can run but you can’t hide.
How to remain secure against NSA surveillance Bruce Schneier
Garrett Brown Faces 105 Years in Jail Rolling Stone
Major NOAA report: Climate change intensified 2012 record heat in U.S. Washington Post
Shoddy gun paper excites right wing Pruning Shears
Lousy War-on-Terror Arguments Used to Justify Preemptive Strike Against Neighbors Lowering the Bar
Inmates End Hunger Strike in California NYT
New York man killed by remote-controlled toy helicopter Bangor Daily News (h/t Lambert)
I was 16 when my mom died. I raised my sisters the best I could. Slate
Are dolphins basically wet bats? Genetic study reveals surprising similarities. CSMonitor
In Gut Research’s Latest Advance, Bacteria From Thin Humans Can Slim Mice Down NYT
Antidote du jour:
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Well done for spelling Yves.
(Do Americans use “spell” that way – to mean doing someone else’s work to let them have a break?)
Some of us do.
But only for a spell
!
Never heard “spelling” used that way. Do you also say “filling in”, or is that only a U.S. phrase?
As in “Bob is filling in for Bert while ….”: yes, we use that.
“… filling in for Clifford Banes, who is wandering along I-97 in a bathrobe with no memory of who he is”
“Well done for spelling, Yves”
No, Americans would not use the sentence above and it’s doubtful they’d understand what you meant. I wouldn’t have.
They’d say “Good job covering, Yves” or Good job filling in, Yves”, assuming Yves was the one doing the work while somebody else took the break (Yves a travaille pendant quelqu’un etait en vacances). Or you could say “Good job covering for Yves” or “Good job filling in for Yves (for a spell)” if Yves took the break (Dave a travaille pendant Yves etait en vacances).
Actually, I didn’t read it as intended, because sometimes people spell “Yves” incorrectly.
today’s article, plus an earlier schneier piece, entitled ‘The Only Way to Restore Trust in the NSA’ lead me to seriously question his integrity:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/the-only-way-to-restore-trust-in-the-nsa/279314/#comments
it’s not a game, greenwald is not ‘playing’. it’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s not ufo’s, more than one whistleblower has come forward saying that the nsa is capturing everything.
he begins today’s article by saying that windows has a back door and that the vast majority of commercial encryption products are broken. he finishes up by telling us to keep on using windows, as he does, and that ‘encryption is your friend’.
(insert einstein quote re: insanity here)
‘Conspiracy theories’ (which Schneier manages to use twice in his brief essay) is an obligatory trope when the MSM addresses government atrocities, suggesting that they’re all in your head.
No one trusts the NSA, Schneier laments.
Earth to Bruce: no one trusts the MSM that disseminates your pabulum either.
Bruce Schneier is genuinely expert, IMO, but that does not preclude a personal agenda I would object to. How many academics with legitimate “credentials” have sold their expertise and reputations to organizations and enterprises with malevolant agenda? Lots.
These academics confuse intellect with wisdom.
They may be intellectual but they are not wise to sell their souls to malevolent entities.
I think not confused but mendacious and venal.
Perhaps they don’t deserve the politeness of the term ‘confused.’
The Atlantic article has “two” and “articles” as links to two URLs. As of a few minutes ago, one is back behind a paywall. The other of the two links is to an August 28th article in FireDog Lake: http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/08/28/nsa-has-been-spying-on-members-of-congress-for-a-long-time/
This “sub-plot” goes back to ex-NSA man Russell Tice’s allegations, where Tice talked by phone to Sibel Edmonds and co-interviewer, Sibel Edmonds being at Boiling Frogs Blog. This past summer, I listened to the podcast of that, and here was Sibel Edmonds asking questions “with baited breath” of Russell Tice (!). Tice related that while at NSA around 2003-2006, he had copies of “phone numbers to tap”, although his job was SysAdmin. Subsequently, Tice “talked” to the main-stream media, who seemed to be uninterested, who might have thought he was a crackpot… I say 3pox on every mainstream medium for mostly ignoring Tice. Three cheers to Boiling Frogs Blog for telephoning/interviewing Russell Tice. So, I’m saying Bruce Schneier most probably wasn’t aware of alleged Beltway VIP wire-tapping, as told by Tice to B.Frogs and as recounted in the FDL article.
As regards trap-doors in closed-source software, that’s a very old-hat concern. Schneier was co-author of “Applied Cryptography — Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C”, 1st publication 1993 (a good book on crypto).
I contend that believing that there is safe way to communicate on the intertubes is delusional.
THINK FOLKS!
If you waste the time to encrypt something you are just asking for them to crawl back through the lines, enter your computer and read/take anything they want.
Just like it is delusional for those gun nuts to think they can take on the US military, thinking that we can claw back our privacy with encryption is equally so.
The problems we have need to be faced directly and the more out we are the less they will have to make our efforts look bad. I have not intention of hiding my distaste for our current plutocratic led empire.
The choice is to
1. blend in and look like everyone else
or
2. wear a tin foil hat when you visit a Gucci shop.
I dimly remember reading or hearing several years ago that the FBI publicly demanded that the makers of various electronic products and systems (I don’t even digi-know enough to know what to call them) put FBI-accessible backdoors in them. The makers of those products publicly protested and refused.
I wonder if that was all a public diversion to keep anyone from noticing that the NSA secretly requested these same product-makers
put in NSA-accessible back doors and the all these same product-makers secretely agreed.
The Clipper Chip, in the 90s under Clinton. That was, in fact, the conversation Snowden wants us to have. We had it, the NSA’s desire for Stasi-like total surveillance capability was decisively rejected (by a strange bedfellows coalition, IIRC), and then the NSA, with the connivance of the leadership of both legacy parties, and under Presidencies of both legacy parties, went ahead and did it anyhow. And here we are!
Thanks. Now that you tell me what it was called, I remember knowing it all the time. So the NSA request came quietly secretly many years later then?
Heck, it looks like they set a massive technical and bureaucratic structure, rather like the Manhattan Project in its scale and secrecy, except nuking Comstitutional governance, so I’m not sure if “request” was the word.* But I’m not clear on the timeline at all. For all I know, there were parallel tracks, Clipper on one track, the unconstitutional stuff on the other.
NOTE * Say, who signed off on this thing, anyone? Clinton, Bush the Younger, Obama? Looks like all three….
Why assume they didn’t just do it of their own volition?
Because I don’t think the government is led from the middle. I think the Czar knows.
“I raised my sisters when I was sixteen”. More proof that men are evil and women are the noblest creatures ever to inhabit the earth. Yawn, Yves. Yawning like a hippopotamus.
Dear Jensen;
Methinks thou dost protest too much.
(Todays list is done by David Dayen, a man the last time I enquired. The tale so Slated being, to my jaundiced eye, a screed about the degeneracy of institutions that is us. She, the author, mentions clearly the familys necessity to avoid any exposure to the ‘authorities.’ Anyone with experience with any branch, type, or iteration of “Family Services” can tell you why that was so. There are too many ‘villains’ here to pin the blame on only one.)
Chris Hayes and where he stands:
”
Of course, we should be honest here. Assad is a maniacal butcher and what he’s done is unspeakable. At the same time many—though certainly far from all—fighting against him are jihadis who have also committed atrocities. And I’ve heard people I’m quite allied with ideologically talk about a political resolution to this war or a diplomatic solution, I sometimes get the sense that that’s just a phrase those of us on the left use to assuage our conscience so we can point towards a solution to this bloodshed and misery that doesn’t involve missiles.
But maybe there isn’t a political or diplomatic solution. I don’t think there was ever really a political solution to our own civil war here in the US, which didn’t feature any chemical weapons but left 600,000 dead and rotting in blood-soaked fields. If there had been a political solution, Lincoln would have loved to find it, but ultimately history’s verdict is that the side of the war defending bondage and evil had to be vanquished definitively.
And that may be the case here in Syria, in which case, those of us who oppose military intervention both for practical reasons and on principle, need to have the moral courage to stare into the gaping maw of horror that is the Syrian civil war and the Assad regime and the murder of hundreds of innocent children and say: We can’t make this situation better. We just can’t.
Except that, too, is not quite right. There are things we can do. If our primary concern here is alleviating the misery of the Syrian people, 2 million of whom have been turned into refugees, there are many concrete things we can do that don’t involve missiles.”
————————————————————
I saw Mr Hayes on TV, and he seemed very upset over this whole march to war being played out in the press. He dropped the usually polite facade of comraderie with a writer, Jonathan Chait who favors missile strikes as being better than doing nothing at all byjust watching the slaughter on TV. I am glad he is upset. He seems to see what I see: that the use of violence in this instance will only produce diminishing returns in terms of exertion to produce even the smallest of desirable outcomes. The only outcome to be certain of is to add to the slaughter and bloody your hands. That is not a policy for the US right now or ever in any geopolitical situation.
The diminishing returns of the use of violence is what brought the IRA to eventually stand down and seriously negotiate the terms of the peace and the political restructuring of N Ireland back into the fully integrated Republic of Ireland. That situation serves only as a lesson to the Obama administration, not a fanciful dream of a peace to be found in Syria as of yet. Syria’s civil war looks more and more like a fight to the death. One of the reasons for that is the plentitude of outside forces who have entered the Syrian war, not so much on the side of rebels as against Assad. There seems to be no unified command for even a plurality of the combined groupings of rebel fighters, many of whom now appear to be foreigners, Jihadists and Al Queada like forces bent on destroying Assad, for their own purposes.
The chief propaganda weapon driving the American pretext for war is the gassing of babies and children, that the gas is a violation of international war to be punished and the baby killing is the emotional motivating factor to get the US military to act not out of anger, but as the sword of a just cause. Real Politik knows that dead is dead, whether by bullets or bombs or gas, dead is dead. The Obama Administration and its chief weepy proponent of dead baby revenge politics, Sec John Kerry, with UN Ambassador Samantha Powers as the Chair of the Atrocity Prevention Bureau, can not alter the Syrian conflict to produce any intended affect for the sake of justice, human decency or even the punishment of a war crime. Again, all the US military missiles can do is increase the body count to NO purpose.
Unless you take the intangible product of message transmission to communicate hegemony. Unfortunately, when a Hegemon must rely on its military might to communicate it is not acting as a hegemon, but as a heavily armed participant in a war. If you can not get your closest long standing allies to go to war with you, England, and you can’t move the diplomatic process an inch, and you can’t produce anything resembling a desired outcome, why do you just launch missiles to show that missiles can be launched if you claim some sort of transgression against the international order? Because the international order, is not the social order?
If the international order is only sustained by continually and relentlessly holding the gun of the US military to the head of just about any nation in the world that steps out of line, then we have declined from the status of hegemonic order, to a chaotic situation that requires brute force. A hegemonic order, and the word order is important, provides stability and enough in it for the national interests of those who go along with the hegemon. The net benefit is better for all involved and the hegemon has not only the military might, but the diplomatic soft power and economic incentives to get almost everyone, almost all of the time, to along with most of the proposals from the hegemon, for sustaining the international order.
That has broken down. The Obama administration is using he need to sustain the international order, as if we were still capable of administering such control, as the ultimate justification. Order vs chaos. As I maintain, the chaos is upon us. The faulty rhetoric of punishment will not call back the unleashed dogs of war.
And when you look at Syria as Russia’s only and most important ally in the Arab world, in the Middle East and its access to the Meditarranean with over 30,000 Russians in Syria and a Russian Navy outpost at the Syrian port of Tartus, you have to wonder how attacking Syria will not be seen as attacking Russia as well. Especially when you consider how many Chechen Jihadists are currently in Syria with the sole purpose of getting at Russian interests there. And just how bad are the Chechen Jihadist on the baby killing scale of atrocities? UN Ambassador Samantha Powers, please take note!
Russia school standoff ends with 250 dead
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-04 13:17
The three-day hostage siege at a school in southern Russia ended in chaos and bloodshed Friday, after witnesses said Chechen militants set off bombs and Russian commandos stormed the building. Hostages fled in terror, many of them children who were half-naked and covered in blood. Officials said the toll was at least 250.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-09/04/content_371665.htm
Speaking of missiles, with Russian warships in the region we are also facing these:
BrahMos
“It is the world’s fastest cruise missile in operation.[7][8] The missile travels at speeds of Mach 2.8 to 3.0.[9] The land-launched and ship-launched versions are already in service, with the air and submarine-launched versions currently in the testing phase.”
So this is certainly not a riskless operation for our carrier groups. Our Tomahawk flies at 550mph, about 1/4 the speed of a BrahMos. They come in low and fast, making things difficult for shipboard defense radar.
Forgot link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos
Thanks, craazyboy. BrahMos Aerospace (the manufacturer or something of the BrahMos) have a web homepage here (scary missiles, truth be told…) : http://www.brahmos.com/
Are you implying the Russians would target our carriers?
While the Russians may shoot down our Tomahawks, I don’t think they’d dare hit our vessels themselves, absent more substantial direct provocation (i.e. self-defense). Even Putin doesn’t have that much balls, and he’s smart besides. Russia would be summarily destroyed by the military that spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined.
I agree it would be hard to imagine things going that far.
Then sometimes I wonder if Putin may be tempted to call our bluff that we really can squash anyone/everyone we want in the world. Would we really escalate say, a sunk Nimitz, to a nuclear strike, knowing there still will be a nuclear counterstrike coming from Russia and maybe even China at that point. Or would we stay conventional and try invading Russia and Asia???
We project world military power much like the Wizard of Oz, and it would be best for us to stay out of situations where someone pulls the curtain back!
Russia would not be summarily destroyed because it can reduce American cities to radioactive ashes. Have you forgotten how much deterrence North Korea’s puny nuclear force has?
Mr Beard, you can see where nuclear brinksmanship is barely veiled behind the almost dismissive reporting of Putin and Russian interests, if they are mentioned at all. The complex of players, and uncertainty about the repercussions of a US military bombardment in Syria, seems almost beyond the capacity of the media to summarize.
The repeated reports of additional Russian Navy warships, coming from the Baltic Fleet, The Black Sea Fleet into the the ever crowding theater of a US Navy Task Force poised for missile strikes is a clear escalation of the conflict. We have seen this before in the waters approaching Cuba. That does not mean that we are anywhere near a catastrophe of the magnitude that crisis or tensions are as hair trigger as they were during the Cold War.
But the reporting seems to reduce this to some sort of CSI episode where the scientists are in a race against time to prove the presence or not, of chemical weapons. I am not sure if it is clear to the politicians that no matter who used these weapons, Americans still do not want their elected politicians to get involved. As bad as it is in Syria, as cruel as the deaths were, and as truthful and accurate as the secret intel may be this time around, we will not be able to do anything to prevent more deaths. Instead, are escalating a direct military showdown with the Russian Navy, that is going out of its way to sail into the immediate vicinity of the US Navy that has been announced as the group that will launch missiles into Syria. A naval confrontation is just as bad as ground infantry in Syria. Even without firing a shot at one another.
We do not need to be doing any of this. As bad as Assad is, the disrespect we are showing to the Russians is only making matters worse. And that is on top of what Israel, Egypt, Iran etc might do. The president simply needs to walk away. This is not stand your ground. The US just does not get to make up moral lessons for the world without the consensus of the international bodies that we created to make sure that unilateral actions are not initiated by a megalomaniac.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/your-labor-day-syria-reader-part-2-william-polk/279255/
If I am reading James Fallow’s Atlantic Article about former White House adviser Polk’s analysis, this entire civil war was not one of choice for even Assad or the rebels, but blew up as result of an epic drought, forcing over 1 million Syrian farmers into cities already over crowded with hundreds of thousand of refugees from Palestine and Iraq. Coupled with world wide economic collapse and faced with starvation, Syria produced an unmanageable social disaster. This is a human tragedy where the carrying capacity of the land within Syria was overwhelmed by demand for food and water, which promoted social conflict that was made worse by foreign Jihadists as well as armed groups from the entire spectum of Middle East politics. It is not something that anyone wanted by choice. It is not something Obama should want as a war of choice, even if only to respond to international law, broken by someone in Syria.
“The complex of players, and uncertainty about the repercussions of a US military bombardment in Syria, seems almost beyond the capacity of the media to summarize.”
Well, I’d have to say it’s worse than that. The media doesn’t even seem to have the capacity to interview anyone who might have that capacity.
I read about the drought problem too a few days ago. It’s gone on for many years now. Something like 85% of all the farms dried up. Can you imagine what would happen in the US if 85% of our food disappeared? People would be eating each other’s livers!
Is that drought only in Syria and not say, in Lebanon or Iraq as well?
Could that drought have been, um, manufactured deliberately for that country alone?
The article I read just talked about Syria. Also said they drilled wells deeper, but then the water table dropped so low that it was impossible to pump up anymore.
Haven’t been following the Middle East much till the past few days, so I have no idea how large an area the drought may cover. But I’m pretty sure there is no rain forest in the region.
It may be a good idea to check with craazyman to see if he has heard anything about an Israeli Weather Machine. If I saw sat photos with persistent clouds over Israel and nowhere else, I’d get suspicious.
Let’s investigate where the drought is in the ME, MLTPB. Good idea.
Here’s one link about the drought that has gone on since 2007. Lots of mismanagement of water (too much drilling) but also the dams are controlled by Turkey. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Middle_East_faces_alarming_water_loss_999.html
Also too Millenium Challenge. I have a vivid recollection of a post, I think from Ian Welsh, of a Hezbollah commander who:
1. Issued a threat that he would destroy a vessel in the Mediterranean;
2. Went on TV, live, button in hand,
3. Pressed the button,
4. Whereupon, in split screen, the vessel blew up.
* * *
But my recollection could be too vivid, and I can’t find the link. Anybody else remember this? Bottom line is that nobody seems to be taking Hezbollah, the non-state actor (besides the Kurds) into account, and they don’t mess around.
It’s said that the Rwandan genocide was percipitated by similar food resource issues.
Yep… forced ethnic minority in social leadership, by out side actor, to outside actors benefit, acerbated by patriarchal family land allocation system.
skippy… ship in a bunch of machetes and point fingers… “voila” creative destruction!!!
I am worried about so many vessels and aircraft of so many different countries crowding into those waters, especially if the USA decides to start launching missiles.
I count the US, Russian, Turkish, Syrian, Israeli, French and British all having naval combat units near the Syrian coast. Too many different countries, too many different chains of command.
There is a small but steadily growing chance of an “incident” taking place.
During the Cold War efforts were made to avoid these sorts of situations, and when they did occur from time to time, all parties were keenly aware of the implications.
But we’ve gone a long time without major international tensions. The current generation of political and military leaders lack Cold War experience and perspective. They disbelieve in the possibility of something really bad happening.
It’s easy to imagine scenarios.
Those Russian vessels are going to be providing early warning for Syrian air defense that the USA will not be able to eliminate without risking hostilities with Russia. The Russian fleet will also provide communications support, so that the Syrians will retain some command-and-control capability even after US strikes degrade their C3. Finally, Russian aircraft will be performing aerial reconnaissance and relaying information to the Syrians. I don’t know if the Russians will have an AWACS in the area, but it’s certainly something they could do.
If the US forces start using countermeasures to try to jam Russian warning and control systems, then the Russians could also retaliate electronically against those US forces, disrupting US attacks on Syria which will be heavily dependent on remote sensing and communications. No shots fired, but hostilities nevertheless.
Then the usual sort of “war of nerves.” Aircraft of one side “buzzing” ships or aircraft of the other side, while the ships or aircraft of the other side activate their defensive systems and get “lock-on.”
Not hard to get an incident which, if we’re unlucky, becomes later known as “The ____ Incident.”
If we were really interested in alleviating human suffering, we could send aid to the refugees. Or offer them asylum in the US as Sweden is doing.
Obama isn’t even getting any public international support for the intervention in Syria outside France, UK, and Turkey. The intervention will already be illegal per the UN. Will he wait at least for the UN report? No, it won’t say who used chemical weapons but it will at least confirm they were used, and what type. What does Obama have to lose by waiting for their report (seems he would only gain……. unless he’s worried about results…….. or finds UN irrelevant institution)?
In Obama’s presser today, he was asked if he’d act if he didn’t receive Congressional support. Again he refused to answer but did acknowledge the intervention did not meet either of the two criteria of the War Powers Act that allowed him to use military force without gaining approval from Congress. Effectively, he admitted that it would be an illegal act.
Alan Grayson is whipping both parties to vote nay. He says Congress’ private opinions are more negative than what they publicly profess, but the Administration is trying to wall off communication between members. Grayson is publishing personal quotes and handing them out to members. Hopefully he’s right when he says it will never pass Congress. I always liked crazy Grayson (His description of GOP health care plan: “1)Don’t get sick 2)If you do get sick, hurry up and die”).
I have always really liked Grayson too. Wish we had more of his ilk.
The dumbest thing is that he’s now escalating the scale of the strikes to keep John McinSane on side.
So we’re effortlessly segueing into from punishment strikes to changing the strategic situation to regime change. The next stage is obviously boots on the ground, (which are there already in the shape of SF teams, and possibly have been for a long time).
Retired Colonel Pat Lang runs a blog called Sic Semper Tyrannis. It can be googled under either name. For several years Pat Lang was Head of Military Intelligence for the Middle East Region. And he has continued interacting with and learning about the Middle East since that time. He and his commenters have been writing about Syria for some time, especially over the last couple of weeks.
Either both sides will keep fighting till they run out of targets and shooters or one side will defeat the other. If the Regime side wins, they will hopefully pursue and exterminate every last jihadista in detail. Each of them. All of them. Every last one. Hopefully the Regime forces will be nice enough to consider Sunni civilians as different than jihadistas. If the al Quaeda side wins (the way Obama/McCain/Graham/others hope and plan for) then the al Quaeda victors will kill in numbers beyond the wildest dreams of Assad. The Government of the New al Quaedastan will kill at least a million Alawites, at least a million Christians, etc. Then they will give usable amounts of the nerve gas stockpiles to their friends and comrades all over the earth. If we don’t want that to happen, we may at the very least have to stop helping the al Quaeda/Jihadista rebels. We may even have to decide to support the Assad Regime in exterminating the al Quaeda/Salafi/Muslim Brother presence inside of Syria as the only way to prevent the emergence of an al Quaeda government which will genocide the Alawites, Christians, etc.
The first link is wrong but the second link is right. One can find the whole post by search-engining Pat Lang or Sic Semper Tyrannis.
The Al-Qaeda government outcome is the thing that really confuses me. We all have read reports indicating that the Saudis and Qatar are paying them like mercenaries. Also US arms are finding their way into their hands.
So,…when they win does the Saudi/Qatar/US employer of the rebel team tell them thank you, you are retired now and give them all a gold watch and they go back to wherever they came from?
I think Wolf Blitzer needs to ask someone this question!
Pat Lang and his commenters at Sic Semper Tyrannis have addressed that part of the subject as well as many other parts.
I really really recomment Pat Lang’s blog called Sic Semper Tyrannis.
The sunni Jihadists believe in an “end of times”, armageddon, or Al Malhama, and their scholars read imams/”interpreters” that have some sort of prophesies (and e.g. the late al Awlaki the elder really believed this and preached it). They are serious about the Holy war thinking …
Those books charitably delivered from the Neocons is the gift that keeps on giving …eh.
Excellent job of circumscribing public discourse by Chris Hayes and his funny-nose glasses. Lots o’ misery and maniacal butchery. No mention of: the UN Security Council, UN Charter Chapter VII, aggression, or the law. Couldn’t even bring himself to mention the law of chemical or poisoned weapons: those he calls, falsely, a norm. It’s rock-solid bipartisan consensus: there is no law.
Looking at US confrontation, war propaganda and threats of force, Putin and Xi have to conclude that there’s no scope for pacific settlement of this dispute. To stop the US war machine, it’s going to take Yakhonts and Dong Fengs and Iskanders. Good luck to them. I hope they can extirpate the US government, it’s a cancer.
To his defense, he has covered all those topics, in different segments. He had limitations with Kerry imposed by time. Chris Hayes does some of the best reporting on MSM, IMHO, one of only a couple shows worth watching. He was better though before his show was moved to primetime. He has noticeably (and disappointingly) toned down his non-conforming positions but still posts some stories nobody else will. And he HAS presented (primarily) guests who oppose intervention in Syria.
That being said, as I posted a few days ago, there are no probing interviews with politicians on MSM, only softball interviews. It’s all about access. Ask too many or the wrong questions and access will be immediately revoked (google WH’s response to Amy Goodman’s impromptu “hostile and aggressive” interview with Pres. Clinton…… awesome interview btw).
The Kerry interview was a big catch for Hayes and MSNBC. Kerry may well have been Hayes first big fish. I had friends who went into journalism. It was a tough profession to make a living wage back when people made living wages. When one has to support a family, it isn’t hard to see how tempting compromising some values could be.
Garrett Brown, inventor of the Steadicam used to such devastating effect in The Shining, facing 105 years in prison? WTF did he do, screw up a tracking shot?
Oops, the Rolling Stone article is about Barrett Brown, of Anonymous. But the question remains the same: WTF did HE do?
be effective.
Young wildebeest?
Irish wolf hound, tallest of dogs. Look like hell hounds but easygoing and quiet.
According to wiki, they only live on average 7 years. That’s too short for my grief tolerance and at my age time flies. Sounds like nice breed otherwise.
My family has had 3 Irish wolfhounds and it is true that they have short lives. Tears me up to think of them. They were gentle giants.
mike, here’s a link to some beautiful photos of the Irish Wolfhound–in honor of “your three.”
Pictures of Irish Wolfhounds
http://www.irishwolfhounds.org/pictures.htm
Yeah, they’re lovely animals, but they need a lot of exercise and room. Not a city dog.
All sight hounds are relatively adaptable to apartment dwelling.
And with the “right caretakers,” they are very adaptable to city life.
Their temperaments are extremely laid-back, and they are “couch potatoes” by nature (by and large).
They do require or need regular “good walks,” of course. ;-)
10 Best Dog Breeds for Apartments and Small Yards
http://firstnationalnews.com/2013/05/10/10-best-dog-breeds-for-apartments-and-small-yards/
Great Danes are a cross between an Irish Wolfhound and a Mastiff. My daughter’s Great Dane is 38 inches at the shoulder. Very mild mannered dog.
Here’s a link you might enjoy, davidgmills.
Great Dane (Deutsche Dogge) (German Mastiff)
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/greatdane.htm
[Please scroll down to the pictures. Includes a pic of a 200-pound male GD.]
I knew someone who had one. They had to put his doggy dish on a chair so it was high enough for him to eat.
It was a mean dog, honestly. It may have been over breeding.
Must have been “bad genes,” bob.
Sight hounds “as a group” really are very sweet and laid-back pets.
Actually, that’s pretty much true of most of the hound breeds. (Although not all are particularly trainable–it varies.)
I think that’s exactly what it was. It behaved in much the same way that too many “Labradors” do these days, mean, territorial and stupid.
I did recently see a greyhound mix playing in the water around several small children. It was amazing how graceful he was given his size. He was charging right through where the kids were playing chasing a stick. Galloping through the group of kids at 20-30 mph. It was sort of amazing. He knew exactly where his feet would fall and never touched any of them. His normal route was right over the top of them.
The hound of the Baskervilles.
Woo Woo Woo!
Isn’t that great? Now I suddenly realize that Obama’s shitty right-wing polices are EXCELLENT!
~
And so if Iran responds to our “limited intervention” that isn’t war by counter-attacking the US, what are the odds that the US won’t feel compelled to then retaliate in turn, thus turning the limited intervention into full engagement. While I think Obama thinks he can slide his foot in the door by promising a limited strike, then extend the commitment once in with further justification, he’s misjudging the sentiment of the public. The public isn’t buying Obama’s rhetoric of an economic recovery. They still feel the effects of high levels of unemployment, wealth inequality, and failing infrastructure.
The public isn’t willing to pay for wars for the US to be policeman of the world when so much needs to be done here at home. If we go in and get entangled in a regional war, while pushing for “fiscal responsibility” in the upcoming budget debates, Obama and Congress will have the ire of the masses to contend with. Already people are contacting their Congress critters. They report hearing universal opposition from constituents. The one thing that will influence their votes more than money is the threat of losing the next election.
A bit more clarity added by Obama today at his presser in Russia. There are also other relevant developments he didn’t touch on.
1-Obama said explicitly that the US and its allies face no direct threat from the Syrian conflict, which is why he brought the issue of military force to congress. If there was a direct threat he would have already acted.
2-Obama admits the public is overwhelmingly against, militarty action. However, he claims that there are many instances where presidents act against the public will. LOL. He didn’t mention the latest incantation of TARP as a recent example.
3-CNN is reporting up to 300 representatives in the House will vote no. The count could rise from there. Calls and emails are running 100 to 1 against US action, and this is across party lines.
4-Alan Grayson has pointed out that the intelligence is being manipulated, or at least is incompletely being presented to congressional members. He claims that the intelligence cannot be debated point by point–that is frowned on–and that meaningful discussion of said intelligence among memebers is a no no. One of the main sticking points is the composition of the Assad opposition forces. Many members of congress are not persuaded by the intelligence, which claims the majority of the opposition is moderate. That seems to be a profound sticking point.
5- Another rumor reported on CNN is that if the senate votes for military action, Obama will bypass a house vote and immediatly initiate military action ala Kosovo.
So far it looks as if the seante is no slam dunk, however, and that if it looks like the resolution is going to go down there, then a few memebers will be drafting an out for Obama, which allows 45 days for some type of diplomatic solution.
The US Government Stands Revealed to the World as a Collection of War Criminals and Liars
Paul Craig Roberts
Does the American public have the strength of character to face the fact that the US government stands before the entire world revealed as a collection of war criminals who lie every time that they open their mouth? Will Congress and the American public buy the White House lie that they must support war criminals and liars or “America will lose face”?
The obama regime’s lies are so transparent and blatant that the cautious, diplomatic President Putin of Russia lost his patience and stated the fact that we all already know: John Kerry is a liar. Putin said: “This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them [the Americans], and we assume they are decent people, but he [Kerry] is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36117.htm
When Secretary of State Colin Powell was sent by the criminal bush regime to lie to the UN, Powell and his chief of staff claim that Powell did not know he was lying. It did not occur to the Secretary of State that the White House would send him to the UN to start a war that killed, maimed, and dispossessed millions of Iraqis on the basis of total lies.
There is not a shred of integrity in the US government. No respect for truth, justice, morality or human life. Here are two people so evil that they want to repeat in Syria what the bush war criminals did in Iraq.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/09/05/the-us-government-stands-revealed-to-the-world-as-a-collection-of-war-criminals-and-liars/
What’s not to like about Putin. What he said, point blank about Kerry, made me cheer. And Obama has now come to learn how serious diplomacy, international relations and integrity are. Without integrity, Mr. Obama, you are nothing.
Kerry walked straight into that one. Who does he think he’s kidding when he claims that moderates are increasing in strength in the Syrian opposition? Anyone who’s paying attention knows that’s a flat out lie.
I never thought I’d see the day when the bloody Russian president is speaking up for sensible diplomacy, peace and freedom of speech against the united Premiers of America, France and the UK.
Obama’s making Putin look good, and that was a heavy lift.
We need to give up this rhetorical device, ‘Worse than… [gasp] Putin!’ That Obama cannot shine Putin’s shoes is not as bad an insult as you think.
Give Putin a listen. He’s the most articulate advocate of rule of law since Dominique de Villepin – not as eloquent, perhaps, but arguably more influential, because he might help stop this war. He comes off as incomparably more mature than Obama, not at all petty or self-absorbed. When’s the last time you heard any politician argue so consistently from principle, without cheap tricks?
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.de/2013/09/interview-to-channel-one-and-associated_5.html
Naturally we Americans assume it’s all an act because our leadership is uniformly full of shit. Certainly Putin runs a festering state – America helped fck it up. But what would you give to hear someone talk like that in English?
“When Secretary of State Colin Powell was sent by the criminal bush regime to lie to the UN, Powell and his chief of staff claim that Powell did not know he was lying.”
Really?
“Fresh evidence emerged last night that Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, was so disturbed about questionable American intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that he assembled a secret team to review the information he was given before he made a crucial speech to the UN security council on February 5.”
[…]
“Mr Powell’s team removed dozens of pages of alleged evidence about Iraq’s banned weapons and ties to terrorists from a draft of his speech, US News and World Report says today. At one point, he became so angry at the lack of adequate sourcing to intelligence claims that he declared: ‘I’m not reading this. This is bullshit,’ according to the magazine.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/02/usa.iraq
‘This is bullshit,’
that sounds about right to me. Self-serving, ass-protecting, after the fact bullshit from the only black American in history who gets within a bull’s roar of the mendacity, weakness and faux-integrity of Barack Obama.
What about that Pottery Barn rule Koh-lin? Have you made restitution for everything your imprimatur destroyed?
The government is a military sovereign.
The government is a monetary sovereign as well.
Here is a link to a very recent blogpost by Pat Lang at Sic
Semper Tyrannis.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/09/links-9613.html?replytocom=1385759#respond
Here is the Congressional “for and against” chart for the Reps and Senators from that blogpost.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef019aff3a5282970d-popup
The first best place to apply pressure might be against the Senators. If time is limited, first try pushing the “leaning-no” Senators over to “no”. Then try thanking the “no” Senators for being “no” and ask them to stay “no”. If vast reserves of time still exist, one could try moving the “leaning yes” Senators to “leaning no” or even “no”. And then the same thing for the Reps, time permitting.
” … if the senate votes for military action, Obama will bypass a house vote and immediatly initiate military action ala Kosovo.”
Obama the constitutional scholar gets and F in U.S. Gov. 101 — that thing about a bi-cameral government we have (per the Constitution).
Ha ha ha.
You can bet the grunts are thinking about the composition of the armed irregulars in opposition. In July head grunt JCS Chairman Dempsey issued a statement citing ‘association with war crimes’ as one of the risks of military intervention in Syria.
I’d be interested in an IRL meetup in LA.
U2, “Agus Mise”, and Dave makes tree (sorry…the Irish Wolfhound chased me barkin’ mad!)
Yes pleez! IRLNLA
(personalized license plate as we do here in LA… if I could make a heart icon in one character I would add that at the end – yes we have hearts for license plates)
I am currently resident in hell-A and would be up for an irl meet…transport might be an issue (no car…yes I am a furiner…)
I am another Angeleno (and daily NC reader) here interested in meetup.
Send members of Congress to Syria?
Excellent idea. How do I contribute a few of my remaining dollars to a group one-way ticket? If the price is right, I may be able to chip in towards a few AK47s and bullets.
From comments today, it’s apparent we should send only the Senate to Syria and keep the House here so the latter can vote down the impending war.
If McinSane and Lindsey Graham want war so much I am totally willing to give them helmets and airlift them right into Syria. Maybe the rebels will be good sports and give them suicide packs to blow themselves up with like good terrorists.
Risk Ahoy. The new Maersk (Danish) Tripple E. Lots of blablah about the economies of scale for this goliath ship, including fuel. But they won’t be filling it to capacity with cargo this year. Or next. And they have ordered 30 ships. What are they thinking? Maybe they are planning to fill half of it with whole factories of laborers. The new commodity for the 21st century. The crazy thing looks like its gonna tip over, that wide hull. Maybe needs some flying buttresses. But they probably don’t care if laborers drown like third class passengers on the Titanic. Wondering how big a ship can get before it breaks apart from its own weight. I think the last link about Rolls Royce’s new clippers, operating on wind and hybrid propulsion with biomethane sounds far saner.
Those ships are for raised-in-America chicken nuggets.
I’m afraid it is not enough to just order 30 of them.
Dear sto;
I think the article said Maersk only exercised the options for 20 of the floating islands. The part at the end about shippers being resigned to lower tonnage and rates says they are pulling in their horns. Stormy economic seas ahead mateys!
(I wonder what the dreaded baltic shipping volume chart, or whatever it really is, is saying?)
Rhetorical note: I’m pleased with “war party”; it’s very useful. Kudos to whoever invented it, because I’m propagating it.
Used “War Party” today in a letter to Baucus and Tester. My rep will vote “No” probably. Took part in his on line poll. I think the “War Party “was either from a commenter here or Moon of Alabama.
Dear Senators Tester and Baucus,
Syria is in years long drought. Their wheat farms have been devastated and farmers have had to retreat into towns and cities looking for work. Two years ago the people took to the street and demanded that their government spend less money on weapons and more on the people. Syria was a wheat exporter and now a wheat importer. We should be in solidarity with farmers around the world rather than looking at how we can blast them to smithereens and force them to be our servants and buy our food or be given handouts. How would we like that kind of “gift”? What goes around comes around. Give them some dignity.
The American people are much slower on the uptake than the people in the Middle East and Europe to recognize that their regime in Washington like Syria or Egypt or Greece has plenty of money to spend on blowing things up but nothing to spare for education, health or old age pensions.
But Americans are waking up.
Vote NO because the whole lesser of two evils b.s isn’t going to cut it anymore as people look for alternatives to The War Party.
MM
Well said MM.
‘Two years ago the people took to the street and demanded that their government spend less money on weapons and more on the people. Syria was a wheat exporter and now a wheat importer.’
Well, you can sorta understand why the government thought it sensible to beef up their weaponry a short while ago – they could see what was coming.
The real issue is why was it coming. We all know about Wes Clark saying Cheney and the neocons were planning to take down 7 countries in 5 years with Syria in that mix, justified with the usual anti-terrah bullshit. The timing has changed but the effort continues.. but why?
We have the long-standing Israeli strategy (Yinon doctrine) of divide and rule of it’s neighbours, using religious differences and the standard bribery to create relatively harmless and warring cantons rather than permit Islamic consolidation on their doorstep.
But it’s not enough to explain all the other PTB’s (US, Europe, finance, MI complex) being in such lock step. There must therefore be Great Game angles which encourage elite approval, and I found this series of articles by David Malone (Golem XIV) instructive in that regard:
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2013/09/syria-cui-bono/
It is energy (oil and especially gas) of course, pipelines to Europe and the political and economic clout that comes from controlling them. Throw in water for Israel and you have some fairly compelling rationales for what looks like more mindless bombing of brown people.
From comments there I found out about Genie, a new Israeli gas exploration and extraction company with licences to drill in the occupied Golan Heights. The board of directors has Rupert Murdoch and Jacob Rothschild rubbing shoulders with none other than Dick ‘we will have to work the dark side’ Cheney.
I wonder whether some NSA flunky will place this comment on his desk tomorrow along with all the other global mentions of his name, and whether rendition will be considered, or the Hastings solution perhaps. I exaggerate, but by how much?
By the way I followed a link here to your site a while ago and enjoyed the piece on charity and why we shouldn’t need it – loved the Wilde quote but agree, better to beat the board room than join it.
QE and housing policy boosting inequality.
One might follow that up with this question: Does government spending boost inequality?
Do the military-industrial 0.01% benefit more from government military spending?
Do foreign slave-factories owning 0.01% benefit more than the enjoying-our-cheaper-but-not-always-safer-products 99.99% from that military spending to project our military strength?
Do imperialists benefit more and are they more ‘equal’ than non-imperialists, who become less ‘equal,’ from government spending on the NSA?
Does government spending boost inequality?
Should we blindly advocate increasing government spending before addressing how money is spent by the government?
“Should we blindly advocate increasing government spending before addressing how money is spent by the government?”
No !!!
It’s my belief that a lot of good hearted people confuse wanting the government to spend more on Medicare, for example, with the government being able to spend as much as it wants…on anything it wants.
You will get a lot more than you expect.
Just ask, where did all the money go?
To the 0.01%?
To the military?
To the NSA?
You might consider that actually we have enough money. The carrot of more money is designed to make sure you don’t look at where all the money went.
Someone once tried launching the acronym OPOOP. It stood for One Percent Of One Percent. Perhaps the acromeme is worth relaunching to see if it viralises?
I love pupusa, a very affordable meso-American food.
And I think OPOOP is a great acronym. I will use it from now on.
An acronym that awesome deserves sourcing, if you have it or can come up with it….
Seems like QE only led to wealth distribution upwards. Quelle surprise, right? Government spending could decrease inequality if it was wealth distribution downward, but the plutes might not be so fond of that.
You nailed it.
Government spending could increase or decrease inequality, depending on whether you have a free government or seized government.
With the best government money can buy, one should never utter ‘the government can spend as much as it wants.’
You can be specific though and say, we demand we spend more on subsiding childless couples who decide not to exacerbate world overpopulation problem, for example.
“This is not I-wreck!” proclaimed the one.
When I heard that, I-ran.
Now, this time, we are all Syria-s. Yes, it’s serious. And this time, it will be we-wreck, not just I-wreck.
Two quick items:
What’s an IRL? (In sports, it stands for Indy Racing League.) What David means here is beyond my limited knowledge of internet lingo.
Second, isn’t it Barrett Brown, not Garrett?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=IRL
Dan Kervick’s Better MSM Stooges Please! Funny. It was cross posted from Rugged Egalitarianism – what a great name for a blog. Anyway, Summers is such a tool. Now he is the tool of a totally discredited president – only Hollande is managing to still smile. That is how we know he is full of shit. And on the outside chance that Larry Summers gets the Fed Head, I’d like him to explain to me in basic detail, cuz I’m only a woman, why are markets so volatile if they are the wonderfully efficient great equalizers you blabber about? Why has all the oxygen been sucked out of the “economy?” Can we create an anerobic economy?
I can’t wait for the coming dolphin-bat hybrids.
It sounds that it should be a piece of cake, genetically.
Then we can strap nuculear bombs to the backs of these hybrids and launch them from underwater submarines at night.
Research money for this should not be a problem.
David, thanks especially for the “doggie” Antidote du jours.
Can’t tell if this is a Wolfhound or a Deerhound, but it’s a beautiful pic, whichever it is.
It amazes me that sight hounds can attain speeds as fast as 45 mph!
We were involved in Greyhound Rescue for several years, before we switched to English Springer Spaniel rescue work.
“Lovely” creatures–those hounds. ;-)
What Are We Doing in Syria?
Guest host Phil Donahue examines the deadly civil war in Syria and the consequences of another American intervention in the Middle East. Our guests include NPR Middle East correspondent Deborah Amos and historian and analyst Andrew Bacevich.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/what-are-we-doing-in-syria/
Both of those are great interviews.
Thanks for the link.
In “Big Brother” matters: in June, Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds (she’s the blogger at Boiling Frogs Post) spoke to NSA whistleblower Russell Tice: http://www.peterbcollins.com/2013/07/15/nsa-whistleblower-russell-tice-offers-more-details-sen-feinstein-and-others-were-wiretapped-by-nsa/
I know not a few people hate the word progressive, but in today’s progressive world, it should be Big Brother/Big Sister.
Big Sibling Is Watching You.
That sounds as ominous as ‘I am studying you!’
I’m in LA!
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/09/hundreds-pages-nsa-spying-documents-be-released-result-eff-lawsuit
I just received the following email from Alan Grayson:
We are all Syria-s.
Say no to war.
I’m up for an IRL in LA. (Glad someone else asked the “what is IRL” question first.) I’d like to meet other NC readers in LA. I thought there might be only three: me, dday and Harry Shearer.
Dday, you’ve done a great job of filling in here.
“In Real Life”.
“Bacteria from thick humans to fatten lab mice and raised-in-America chickens!”
I think those gut researchers are missing a golden opportunity.
““We are pleased this dangerous strike has been called off before any inmates became seriously ill,” Jeffrey Beard, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in a written statement.”
Other than Billy Sell.
The NSA has turned the fabric of the internet into a vast surveillance platform, but they are not magical. They’re limited by the same economic realities as the rest of us, and our best defense is to make surveillance of us as expensive as possible.
hear! hear!
i say we use “dirty bomb” or better, “قنبلة إشعاعية” as the subject of every email we send.
blow some fuses and stuff..
(hi, guys! ;+)
Great stuff!
Following in the footsteps of Mr. Beard, I call upond the wisdom of the Holy Qu’ran as follows:
“if men and sprites banded together to produce the like of this Qur’an they would never produce its like not though they backed one another”
From: (English version of) http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%B9%D8%AC%D8%B2%D8%A9
This mad rush to an illegal war against Syria makes one thing clear: it’s time to re-instate the draft — with zero waivers for anyone from a household that earns more than $100K.
I’d wager the runaway train would suddenly find its breaks.
I in LA, don’t have a RL but like to schmooze
TPP Negotiations go further underground, may be drawing to a close
“At this point, the timeline for TPP’s conclusion is ambiguous. The U.S. Trade Rep Michael Froman continues to claim that the U.S. will not force countries to rush a deal by any particular deadline, while also stating that the Obama administration has placed top priority on concluding the TPP before the end of the year. No matter what Froman states, the fact that negotiations have moved into these highly secretive inter-sessional meetings indicates how desperate they have become to finalize this trade deal as soon as possible.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/09/international-criticism-escalates-against-tpp-negotiations-go-further-underground
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-encrypts-data-amid-backlash-against-nsa-spying/2013/09/06/9acc3c20-1722-11e3-a2ec-b47e45e6f8ef_story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/us/politics/legislation-seeks-to-bar-nsa-tactic-in-encryption.html
Yes, I was displeased the other day. I made all my Facebook data private, changed the default language to Greek, changed my Facebook password 25 to 30 random characters, logged-out and then swallowed the 1 unique copy of the password. My facebook homepage now looks like this: https://www.facebook.com/david.bernier3
“Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA”
So they say. But it is all irrelevant if NSA has been given, or can easily obtain, the encryption keys.
I don’t know……
The NSA snooping is going to do serious damage to US companies, esp. on a global basis. These big firms must be worried. Encrypting data as it travels between Google’s data centers, rather than sending it clear text, while significantly increasing the complexity on Google’s part, also plugs a major hole where NSA can capture data. It still isn’t clear if NSA has the ability to break encryption or is accessing the data at terminal networks, when data passes through before or after encryption (or has the key, or backdoor access). Even if the NSA can break encryption, it will cost them substantial time and computing power. Mass surveillance of Google’s large volume of traffic wouldn’t be feasible absent possession of necessary keys or built-in software access. Google can control who has possession of keys and use alternative software, e.g. open source whose code has been thoroughly inspected (and of which they have the manpower).
Google issued press releases of their plans for the change before the NSA revelations. I don’t believe most of these high tech firms have willingly cooperated with the NSA, but have been bullied into compliance. The internet industry (ex AT&T, who seems to manage to profit handsomely from its cooperation with the govt) has traditionally fought government intrusion, e.g. helping to bar the introduction of the Clipper chip, which at one point, appeared to be a done deal, coming down on the side of consumer privacy. There is a mentality that prevails in the community similar to here on NC, a core commitment to an open and free society. (That doesn’t rule out data-mining for their own purposes. Google introduced ad-tracking as a means of subsidizing its free search engine when it gained essentially monopolistic use, and it was quite controversial at the time.)
Since we can easily be spied upon, we might as well convey some things in “riddles”, e.g.:
craazyman, lambertstrether and yours truly walk into a bar. Which topics will be topical?
(a) …
(b) …
(c) …
(d) …
(e) None of the above.
—-
It’s just a germ of an idea in passing …