Game of Phones

The funniest part of this story is the assertation that this is "...an unusual arrangement undercutting Keith Alexander’s assurances he will not profit from his connections to the secretive, technologically sophisticated agency."

It happens all the time in government, and is the main reason why "government" has no business with your business. Because it's not about national security, it's about people with power exploiting you for more power and money.

Lunatic fringe

hiding out in the open.

No Such Problem

The NSA does not ask Courts about data mining.



If there's a code, and they want it, these people will unscramble it or steal it. They will pretend to be locked out just for appearances. They don't call it the No Such Agency for nothing.

ask a silly question

He would answer these questions, but every time he pauses to reconsider escalation, the Secret Service "accidently" screws up again. It's enough to make you wonder if somebody's moonlighting for Raytheon, Lockheed, or General Dynamics. It's like whenever they need to sell the Pentagon another million dollar cruise missile, somebody stops watching the camera on the White House lawn.

The Prisoner

In order for evil to succeed, it is only needful for the right people to stand aside. For the right plausible deniability at the right time to get the right result for the right people that is.

Hugo Chavez would not be surprised at the priorities of a prisoner trying to appease his jailors.

Strategery

Strategy is figuring out a way for the private contractors that own the Pentagon to make a few billion more before Xmas.

bats in the belfry

"...current developments in biology may soon lead to the replacement of H sapiens by completely different beings, enjoying godlike qualities and abilities"..."

Ah, the old God obsessions and fears. Frankly, I intend to use my powers to create a Federation of Planets and ultimately a Culture to protect the galaxy. Because the old gods are still out there, and as far as I can tell the only thing they've ever been concerned about is lounging on Olympus and treating the world like a brothel.

it ain't over until the last Tartan unravels

So many irons in this fire.

I am sure the Russians are totally disinterested electoral monitors.

I am sure the Queen really loves her some single malt Tartan. And not just for all that oil under their North Sea either. Because, you know, unlike what the Yes rabble believes, the British government line is there isn't any to speak of, which is why they are breathing easier now, since their entire economy is based on that oil which they want the Scots to think is gone already.

Which is why Russia was so interested, why there were North Korean levels of electoral turnout, and why the "No" results are said to be Unequivocal. It's as plain and honest as an election in Ohio.

And as settled as the ghost of William Wallace.

Revisionist CounterIntuitive Climatology

I wonder if said Yale professor has a nice grant from the Koch brothers or a subsidiary?

...Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. The assumption is that planting trees and avoiding further deforestation provides a convenient carbon capture and storage facility on the land.

That is the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is wrong.

In reality, the cycling of carbon, energy and water between the land and the atmosphere is much more complex. Considering all the interactions, large-scale increases in forest cover can actually make global warming worse.

Of course, this is counterintuitive. We all learn in school how trees effortlessly perform the marvel of photosynthesis: They take up carbon dioxide from the air and make oxygen. This process provides us with life, food, water, shelter, fiber and soil. The earth’s forests generously mop up about a quarter of the world’s fossil-fuel carbon emissions every year.

So it’s understandable that we’d expect trees to save us from rising temperatures, but climate science tells a different story. Besides the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, another important switch on the planetary thermostat is how much of the sun’s energy is taken up by the earth’s surface, compared to how much is reflected back to space. The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun’s energy and raise the planet’s surface temperature...

Which climate scientists are we talking about? The ones supported by British Petroleum?

maybe just a little peek now and then

I'm sure.

...you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again...

A decade? More likely the next century will be wasted, and the whole eastern coastal plain will be underwater before you know it. The actual problem is scarcity-based economics. Turning towards sustainable energy would completely disrupt the current austerity-based econmics the wealthy use to game the system and control everyone. A "free market" is the joke of the century, because a market that is not allowed to evolve and manipulated to maintain a class structure is nothing like free.

Better Together

What could go wrong?

And they captured them, I'm sure. It says so, right there on the label.

Confidence Men

Why would they lie to you?

...ahead of an impending clash with the Senate intelligence committee, which is due to release a public version of a report into CIA torture in the coming weeks, Brennan rejected “the narratives I see floating around the media.”

Brennan has been locked in a heated dispute with his Senate overseers that escalated dramatically after agency officials breached a network firewall set up to allow committee investigators access to CIA documents relevant to their inquiry. The committee chairwoman, Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California, said on the Senate floor on 11 March that the CIA “just went and searched the committee’s computers.”

After initially denying the breach during a public appearance that day at the Council on Foreign Relations, Brennan apologized for it in July once the CIA’s inspector general determined CIA officials had improperly accessed Senate staffer emails and conducted keyword searches on some of them...

Why, if the Company does it, it must have been proper, and for a good reason, and not wrong. The CIA, right there with their NSA buddies winning confidence one wiretap at a time, and carefully noting who you are (and who your friends are, and their friends, and their family) if you don't.

What's Oil Got to Do WIth It?

A lot, more or less.

But if it does, don't look for the referendum in Scotland to resolve anything. Because somebody will want what they don't have, and cloak it in British patriotism or Scottish nationalism.

stealin' back to my same old used to be

...The international coalition that Mr. Obama says is crucial to his plan is just being formed. While there have been positive steps toward a new government in Iraq, the positions of defense and interiors ministers remain unfilled as politicians continue to fight for power. Meanwhile, American-led training of forces in Iraq and Syria (the so-called moderate opposition) that are supposed to be central to the military campaign will take months, and congressional approval of the $500 million that Mr. Obama has requested for training and equipping Syrian rebels is far from certain...

I would call it about the only certainty of the entire situation. After all, you can't fight a war if the other side doesn't have the cash to keep their tanks running, can you?

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Strange

Certainly we should all support brave freedom fighters, where ever their funding derives from.

And if there are facts you really want to discredit, why, just make sure they show up at a website devoted to conspiracy theory.

Virtual Priorities

Why will any real progressive movement sputter and fade periodically? Randy Newman said it best in pure poetry:

Of all of the people that I used to know
Most never adjusted to the great big world
I see them lurking in book stores
Working for the Public Radio
Carrying their babies around in a sack on their back
Moving careful and slow

All of these people are much brighter than I
In any fair system they would flourish and thrive
But they barely survive
They eke out a living and they barely survive

When I was a young boy, maybe thirteen
I took a hard look around me and asked what does it mean?
So I talked to my father, and he didn’t know
And I talked to my friend and he didn’t know
And I talked to my brother and he didn’t know
And I talked to everybody that I knew

Then I talked to a man lived up on the county line
I was washing his car with a friend of mine
He was a little fat guy in a red jumpsuit
I said “You look kind of funny”
He said “I know that I do”
“But I got a great big house on the hill here
And a great big blonde wife inside it
And a great big pool in my backyard and another great big pool
beside it
Sonny it’s money that matters, hear what I say
It’s money that matters in the USA
It’s money that matters
Now you know that it’s true
It’s money that matters whatever you do”


Me? I say that money is a fiction. But most of us worship old gods of the night.


Double posted in reply to the existential angst at Ian's place, with thanks to Lady Avedon.

they let it happen on purpose

Every person in Congress who votes for and profits from a default should face criminal prosecution. The RICO Act should be invoked, and this should extend to the people who bankroll the Tea Party, if they profit from the default they precipitate. This isn't just political conspiracy, it's racketeering in the guise of ideology.

it rhymes

"Obama is a nice guy. David Cameron is a nice social Democrat. About three hours from London in Greece there are some very nasty political parties. What there is is the infrastructure for total surveillance. In history, all the precedents are unhappy,"  says the master of the obvious.

Meanwhile, in Greece, the elements of the police state are being investigated. By the police, of course, who will doubtless arrest anyone who is not following orders.

just like a civil war

You have to remember it's supposed to be like this here.


Sergio Leone would understand perfectly.