Softpanorama

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Home Switchboard Unix Administration Red Hat TCP/IP Networks Neoliberalism Toxic Managers
(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and  bastardization of classic Unix

National Security State Bulletin, 2014

Home 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013

For the list of top articles see Recommended Links section


Top Visited
Switchboard
Latest
Past week
Past month

NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

[Jul 08, 2014] The Emperor's New Clothes The Naked Truth About the American Police State by John W. Whitehead

July 8, 2014 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself… Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable."
-H.L. Mencken, American journalist
It's vogue, trendy, and appropriate to look to dystopian literature as a harbinger of what we're experiencing at the hands of the government. Certainly, George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm have much to say about government tyranny, corruption, and control, as does Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Philip K. Dick's Minority Report. Yet there are also older, simpler, more timeless stories - folk tales and fairy tales - that speak just as powerfully to the follies and foibles in our nature as citizens and rulers alike that give rise to tyrants and dictatorships.

One such tale, Hans Christian Andersen's fable of the Emperor's New Clothes, is a perfect paradigm of life today in the fiefdom that is the American police state, only instead of an imperial president spending money wantonly on lavish vacations, entertainment, and questionable government programs aimed at amassing greater power, Andersen presents us with a vain and thoughtless emperor, concerned only with satisfying his own needs at the expense of his people, even when it means taxing them unmercifully, bankrupting his kingdom, and harshly punishing his people for daring to challenge his edicts.

For those unfamiliar with the tale, the Emperor, a vain peacock of a man, is conned into buying a prohibitively expensive suit of clothes that is supposedly visible only to those who are smart, competent and well-suited to their positions. Surrounded by yes men, professional flatterers and career politicians who fawn, simper and genuflect, the Emperor - arrogant, pompous and oblivious to his nudity - prances through the town in his new suit of clothes until a child dares to voice what everyone else has been thinking but too afraid to say lest they be thought stupid or incompetent: "He isn't wearing anything at all!"

Much like the people of the Emperor's kingdom, we, too, have been conned into believing that if we say what we fear, if we dare to suggest that something is indeed "rotten in the state of Denmark," we will be branded idiots and fools by the bureaucrats, corporate heads, governmental elites and media hotshots who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo-or who at least are determined to maintain the faηade that is the status quo. Yet the truth is staring us in the face just as surely as the fact that the Emperor was wearing no clothes.

So there you have it: facts rather than fiction, so naked that a child could call it for what it is, and yet so politically inconvenient, incorrect and uncomfortable that few dare to speak of them.

Even so, despite the fact that no one wants to be labeled dimwitted, or conspiratorial, or a right wing nut job, most Americans, if they were truly paying attention to what's been going on in this country over the past few decades and willing to be truthful, at least to themselves, would have to admit that the outlook is decidedly grim. Indeed, unless something changes drastically for the good in the near future, it looks like this fairytale will not have a happy ending.

Reprinted with permission from the Rutherford Institute.

[May 24, 2014] No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald – review

The Guardian

At the outset of Glenn Greenwald's communications with the "anonymous leaker" later identified as 29-year-old former NSA employee Edward Snowden, Greenwald – a journalist, blogger and former lawyer – and the film-maker Laura Poitras, with whom he is collaborating, are told to use a PGP ("pretty good privacy") encryption package. Only then will materials be sent to him since, as Snowden puts it, encryption is "not just for spies and philanderers". Eventually Greenwald receives word that a Federal Express package has been sent and will arrive in a couple of days. He doesn't know what it will contain – a computer program or the secret and incriminating US government documents themselves – but nothing comes on the scheduled day of delivery. FedEx says that the package is being held in customs for "reasons unknown". Ten days later it is finally delivered. "I tore open the envelope and found two USB thumb drives" and instructions for using the programs, Greenwald writes.

His account reminded me of the time, nearly a decade ago, when I was researching Britain's road to war in Iraq, and went through a similar experience. I was waiting for an overnight FedEx envelope to reach me in New York, sent from my London chambers; it contained materials that might relate to deliberations between George Bush and Tony Blair (materials of the kind that seem to be holding up the Chilcot inquiry). A day passed, then another, then two more. Eventually, I was told I could pick up the envelope at a FedEx office, but warned that it had been tampered with, which turned out to something of an understatement: there was no envelope for me to tear open, as the tearing had already occurred and all the contents had been removed. FedEx offered no explanation.

As Greenwald notes, experiences such as this, which signal that you may be being watched, can have a chilling effect, but you just find other ways to carry on. FedEx (and its like) are avoided, and steps are taken to make sure that anything significant or sensitive is communicated by other means. In any event, and no doubt like many others, I proceed on the basis that all my communications – personal and professional – are capable of being monitored by numerous governments, including my own. Whether they are is another matter, as is the question of what happens with material obtained by such surveillance – a point that this book touches on but never really addresses. Greenwald's argument is that it's not so much what happens with the material that matters, but the mere fact of its being gathered. Even so, his point is a powerful one.

This is the great importance of the astonishing revelations made by Snowden, as facilitated by Greenwald and Poitras, with help from various news media, including the Guardian. Not only does it confirm what many have suspected – that surveillance is happening – but it also makes clear that it's happening on an almost unimaginably vast scale. One might have expected a certain targeting of individuals and groups, but we now know that data is hovered up indiscriminately. We have learned that over the last decade the NSA has collected records on every phone call made by every American (it gathers the who, what and when of the calls, known as metadata, but not the content), as well as email data. We have learned that this happens with the cooperation of the private sector, with all that implies for their future as consorts in global surveillance. We have learned, too, that the NSA reviews the contents of the emails and internet communications of people outside the US, and has tapped the phones of foreign leaders (such as German chancellor Angel Merkel), and that it works with foreign intelligence services (including Britain's GCHQ), so as to be able to get around domestic legal difficulties. Our suspicions have been confirmed that the use of global surveillance is not limited to the "war on terror", but is marshalled towards the diplomatic and even economic advantage of the US, a point Greenwald teases out using the PowerPoint materials relied on by the agencies themselves. Such actions have been made possible thanks to creative and dodgy interpretations of legislation (not least the Patriot Act implemented just after 9/11). These activities began under President Bush, and they have been taken forward by President Obama. It would be a generous understatement to refer to British "cooperation" in these matters, although Greenwald's intended audience seems to be mostly in the US, and he goes light on the British until it comes to the treatment of his partner, David Miranda, who was detained in the UK under anti-terror legislation.

When the revelations first came out, in the summer of 2013, Snowden explained that he "had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications". That meant "anyone's communications at any time", he added, justifying the public disclosure on the grounds that this "power to change people's fates" was "a serious violation of the law". Snowden's actions, and the claims he has made, have catalysed an important debate in the US, within Congress (where views have not necessarily followed party lines) and among academics and commentators. Views are polarised among reasonable individuals, such as New Yorker legal writer Jeff Toobin ("no proof of any systematic, deliberate violations of law"), and the New York Review of Books's David Cole ("secret and legally dubious activities at home and abroad"), and in the US federal courts. In Britain, by contrast, the debate has been more limited, with most newspapers avoiding serious engagement and leaving the Guardian to address the detail, scale and significance of the revelations. Media enterprises that one might have expected to rail at the powers of Big Government have remained conspicuously restrained – behaviour that is likely, over the long term, to increase the power of the surveillance state over that of the individual. With the arrival of secret courts in Britain, drawing on the experience of the US, it feels as if we may be at a tipping point. Such reluctance on the part of our fourth estate has given the UK parliament a relatively free rein, leaving the Intelligence and Security Committee to plod along, a somewhat pitiful contrast to its US counterparts.

The big issue at stake here is privacy, and the relationship between the individual and the state, and it goes far beyond issues of legality (although Snowden's fear of arrest, and perhaps also Greenwald's, seems rather real). It is in the nature of government that information will be collected, and that some of it should remain confidential. "Privacy is a core condition of being a free person," Greenwald rightly proclaims, allowing us a realm "where we can act, think, speak, write, experiment and choose how to be away from the judgmental eyes of others".

Snowden's revelations challenge us to reflect on the ideal balance between the power of the state to know and the right of the individual to go about her or his business unencumbered, and this in turn raises fundamental questions about the power of the media, on which Greenwald has strong views, usually (but not always) fairly articulated. He makes the case for Snowden, and it's a compelling one. One concern with WikiLeaks acting independently was the apparently random nature of its disclosures, without any obvious filtering on the basis of public interest or the possible exposure to risk of certain individuals. What is striking about this story, and the complex interplay between Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras and the Guardian, is that the approach was different, as the justification for the leaks seems to have been at the forefront of all their minds. In his recent book Secrets and Leaks Rahul Sagar identified a set of necessary conditions for leaks. Is there clear evidence of abuse of authority? Will the release threaten public safety? Is the scale of the release limited? Many people, though not all, see these as having been met in the Snowden case.

Britain needs a proper debate about the power of the state to collect information of the kind that Snowden has told us about, including its purpose and limits. The technological revolution of the past two decades has left UK law stranded, with parliament seemingly unable (and perhaps unwilling) to get a proper grip on the legal framework that is needed to restrain our political governors and the intelligence services, not least in their dance with the US. "The greatest threat is that we shall become like those who seek to destroy us", the legendary US diplomat George Kennan warned in 1947. In response, revelations can be made, Greenwald's book published, and a Pulitzer prize awarded. Long may it go on.

• Philippe Sands QC is professor of law at University College London. To order No Place to Hide for £15 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State

by Glenn Greenwald

Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

Imlessbiasedthanyou2, 23 May 2014 8:41am

Recommend: 81

Ed Snowden needs to be pardoned.

Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian have been the only source for this information in the UK, which is a disgusting state is affairs. The timidity of our media is striking, embarrassing and scary.

Information needs to be collected by security agencies within reason. Indiscriminate harvesting is information corrupts democracy indescribably.

Incumbent powers can, and will, use private information to quell legitimate protest and debate, and protect their own interests at the expense of justice for their own citizens, and the innocent citizens of foreign countries. They will use it to bribe public servants and corrupt democracy.

Innocent information can still be used against you. It is a failure of intellect and imagination to doubt this, and proclaim the old, untrue mantra, "nothing to hide, nothing to fear".

This cannot be disputed, and so those who continue to defend the actions of our governments are either blind, ignorant or working in tandem.

Thank you Ed Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian.

Keep this story alive. It's almost the only one that matters.

mirageseekr, 23 May 2014 11:45am

While I agree that personal privacy is important and needed I think the bigger concern is what happens to democracy when people in authority can be blackmailed. The important thing about Snowden was that he confirmed what Tice and Binney have been saying all along and just lacked the actual evidence.

What I see with some of the rulings from the courts and laws from congress is puppets on a string. They know their argument fails to hold water and yet the feverishly stand by and defend it. The only reasonable answer for that is someone has the goods on them and is using it, just as Russ Tice has been saying for years. So the major question and one I hope Snowden and Greenwald have the answer to is, who is the puppet master?

Our societies have only the charade of democracy. Now the proverbial curtain has been pulled back and we must look to see the truth. Tice has said he saw the orders for surveillance of Obama and Supreme court justices as well as top brass. So who is it exactly that this very expensive system paid for by our tax dollars is used for. We know the "terrorism" is a lie or possibly a distraction for workers they may worry about having a conscious. They claim it is not for industrial espionage, but I am willing to bet some people have made lots of money from having access to information that was stolen. To me the tin foil hat club had it right all along. The people calling the shots are the Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, and Bilderbergs. And if that is true then we have a few global elite of un-elected people determining economies, wars, policy for us all and doing it in violation of sovereignty laws. I wish The Guardian would report more on the military state the USA has become, daily the police beat and kill people here. The DHS has been loading up on ammunition that is not used for target ranges and is against the Geneva convention, the TSA, just ordered weapons and ammunition. The State Department just got a few tons of explosives even the post office has a SWAT team. We have allowed them to build a standing army within our country in direct violation of our constitution. The FEMA camps are up and running and NDAA ensures you can be quietly taken away in the night with absolutely no rights and no charges and even gives them the right to kill Americans. This is not a partisan issue, the bill passed 84-15. So how much more will it take for Americans to realize that the only difference between the US right now and Nazi Germany is that they haven't started loading the trains yet. The US also learned from the Germans mistakes, they will most likely not go house to house with weapons at first. It will be some false flag to make the population willingly go. Maybe it will be like the drills they have had (one in Denver) where they took the schoolchildren to the football arena for a FEMA/DHS "drill" except they forgot to make any mention to the parents about it. The puppet masters need to be exposed now, there is not much more time to wait to see how this is going to work out.

MiltonWiltmellow, 23 May 2014 11:48am

Recommend: 52

Snowden's revelations challenge us to reflect on the ideal balance between the power of the state to know and the right of the individual to go about her or his business unencumbered, and this in turn raises fundamental questions about the power of the media, on which Greenwald has strong views, usually (but not always) fairly articulated.

These sorts of understatements represent a sort of passive acceptance. (e.g., "Let's debate about the tigers dragging our children to the jungle where it devours them. Tiger's have legitimate needs too. Maybe if we stake goats, the tigers will devour the goats instead of our children ... " )

The entire relationship between State and individual changes when the State takes it upon itself to monitor the everyday activities of its citizens.

This isn't an academic question which august authorities like yourself can debate among themselves for the next ten or twenty years.

This is a fucking tiger in the nursery.

Either the citizen has basic human rights (the right to freely interact with others) or the citizen turns into a subject -- a potential threat to State security and thus a suspect.

The question isn't "how much secret surveillance should be allowed" but rather "how can this secret surveillance be stopped?

AhBrightWings -> MiltonWiltmellow, 23 May 2014 12:41pm

Brilliant Milton. Couldn't agree more, and love your metaphor. Just because it's crouched under the dust-ruffle doesn't mean it isn't there. If you've watched footage of tigers hunting, they often freeze for long periods of time to lull their prey into a fall sense of well-being.

As you said so well: This is a fucking tiger in the nursery.

LostintheUSMiltonWiltmellow, 23 May 2014 1:26pm

Recommend: 16

And it is not just about reading our emails, etc. Or listening into phone calls. I mentioned an obscure book to my husband (in the same room) that has been out of print for 34 years one day while working on my computer and a short while later there was an ad for that book that popped up on gmail.

Think about that.

And NONE of this is about "protecting" us. The Boston Marathon bombers were all over the radar for their previous activities and the NSA was paying them no mind. This web is to protect the oligarchy from us peasants. We are living in 17th century France...the aristocracy pay no taxes and we are being taxed and worked to death.

Levi Genes -> LostintheUS, 24 May 2014 11:44am

The Boston Marathon bombers were all over the radar for their previous activities and the NSA was paying them no mind. This web is to protect the oligarchy from us peasants.

It's much more violently proactive than simple 'protections' from potential opposition. The reason they appear now on the 'radar' is because the so-called Boston 'bombers' were deeply run by the FBI for the same nefarious reasons as are all other patsies in the parade of US false flag operations: deflection from public investigation identifying the actual terrorist perpetrators / plausible deniability for the public to bite on to facilitate the desired effect of implemented programs of public terror. The evidence of state sponsored terror is there if one chooses to look.

The recent, violent murder in Florida of an associate / witness to that FBI operation by an FBI agent / interrogator, tasked with insuring that associate / witness's compliance to the prescriptive, government narrative of the Boston event as force fed to the public by compliant / co-opted mass media, is but yet another thinly but effectively veiled, social conditioning manipulation of public consciousness reinforcing the enabling myth of just who is the actual threat to public peace and safety.

Boston was an exercise in social conditioning to martial law where no civil rights exist. They shut the city down in contrived pretext and stormed through whatever private domain they chose as a show of force in exercise of police state power over all constitutionally based constraints. All on a desperate, audacious and unthinkable lie.

You will do exactly what you're told to do, when you're told to do it, by heavily armed masked men in black, storming through your house without your invitation, ostensibly in pursuit of and protecting you from the terrible phantoms created by their masters.

Bagdad, Boston, London, Kiev, no matter. Same game of violent control from the same power cabal while draining the hard earned wealth and civil power of the masses by the same boom/ bust / state terrorist means. All of it, an horrific extension of covert enablement by forced public pacification to Operation Gladio and its drive to global dominion.

NATO / NWO intent is defined by its break-away elitist culture of absolute authoritarianism by absolute systemic corruption in absolute secrecy. Snowden and his journalist associates are providing a glimpse of its all encompassing scope. Our individual response, or lack thereof, will determine our fate as either citizens with rights based in moral principles and economic equity, or as mere commodities for use as needed by hidden powers.

A stark choice, as the presumptive enemies of the state that we in fact are.

guest88888epinoa, 24 May 2014 3:29am

Baubles handed out - nothing changed.

Agreed. Ultimately, despite their good intentions, I feel as though both Greenwald and Snowden aren't pushing the case against dragnet surveillance hard enough. We don't need a debate. This is fascism pure and simple, and they are spying on us because they fear the day that we revolt against their putrid austerity and the general failure of capitalism.

The Grauniad of course possesses no perspective whatsoever. Seriously Mr. Sands, we need a debate? You find out the majority of the world is being spied on and violated, and you are actually think that a few cosmetic changes will make a difference?

There will be no debate, and you know it. But I suppose that while you are wealthy and safe from economic deprivation, who cares if the NSA tramples on the freedoms of common people, all in defense of the ultra-rich, right?

KilgoreTrout2012, 23 May 2014 12:14pm

"NSA has collected records on every phone call made by every American (it gathers the who, what and when of the calls, known as metadata, but not the content), as well as email data."

I don't buy it's just metadata, since the US and are allies have the technology to do so, the content is also being "saved". Most likely US "content" is collected in Great Britain to give the NSA plausible deniability that they are not collecting content. And the US probably has Great Britain's "content".

The NSA may not have the technology to truly read all that data today but someday it will all be collated, analyzed, and used to put each citizen into national security classifications. Your travel, jobs prospects, etc. will be limited based on where you fall in their assessments.

guest88888 -> KilgoreTrout2012, 24 May 2014 3:34am

I don't buy it's just metadata,

Of course I agree with you sentiment that the US and its cronies are lying through their teeth about everything, but I want to point out that metadata collection is far more intrusive than just regular wiretapping.

Greenwald gave a great example. To paraphrase:

If I call an AIDS clinic, and you monitor the content of my call, I may never bring up the actual disease in most of my conversations. I might say, let's meet at this time, or book an appointment, or make small talk etc.

But, if you have the metadata, you can know that I've been calling an AIDS clinic repeatedly. You can know where I'm calling from. You can find out where I've been getting meds (from the pharmacy).

In short, you can rapidly figure out if I have AIDS, what I'm doing about it, even how I may have got it. Much easier with metadata than simple wire-tappping.

Not that much analysis needed, since you need much less data.

AhBrightWings, 23 May 2014 12:35pm

Recommend: 16

Not sure I agree that the debate has been "more limited" in Great Britain. The Guardian is, after all, a British publication and it has had ten times (conservatively) more coverage than any other journal I know of, and continued congratulations for doing so.

The problem in the US is that we can't get any traction on the revelations that kicks over into judicial action to end this crime spree. Congress is ossified, the populace is mummified, and so we march on, becoming the United States of Zombieland, where the only signs of sentient life are in the MIC and its many tentacles and claws.

Snowden's sacrifice and Greenwald's work only have value if people wake up and use what we've learned. The mystery is what we are all waiting for. The trajectory from UPS hold-ups to being held-up in a cell is shorter--when things truly take a dire turn (and we may get lucky and they may not, I fully concede that)--than many want to concede. The rise of every despot and tyrant has illustrated that arc well. Why do we think we'll be the exception to that pattern?

Our exceptionalism appears to have blinded us in more ways than one.

Theodore McIntire, 23 May 2014 12:54pm

In addition to revealing how invasive and law/truth twisting big governments / organizations (of any orientation and denomination) are likely to behave, the Snowden revelations also showed how much the media and public are/were disengaged from reality and blindly trusting of big governments / organizations.

Except for those poor souls who live in fear or live off the fear of others... They are very afraid and angry about the Snowden revelations and any other disruptions to their fear based animal herd behavior.

CraigSummers, 23 May 2014 1:32pm

Mr. Sands

I find it interesting that you don't mention even once in your review the potential ramifications of compromising US intelligence. This is an extremely important consideration in the debate (at least to some concerned citizens). In addition, the released information goes far beyond civil liberties in many instances. One can certainly question the motives of Greenwald. Greenwald has a body of written work from Salon, the Guardian and others which indicate he was not motivated entirely by a debate about "privacy" and civil liberties.

The release of information that the NSA spied on universities in Hong Kong coincided with Snowden's arrival in the special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. This was hardly a coincidence - and shows the level of planning used by Snowden before illegally stealing tens of thousands of top secret documents.

".......The big issue at stake here is privacy, and the relationship between the individual and the state, and it goes far beyond issues of legality (although Snowden's fear of arrest.......seems rather real)...."

Jesus, ya think?

Leondeinos -> CraigSummers, 23 May 2014 4:26pm

The ramifications are simply that the NSA has been caught in its full incompetence and arrogance. Snowden did the world a great favor. Greenwald's book is a good read that does expose and explore those ramifications for the world.

The version of the Defense Intelligence Agency's assessment of damage done by Edward Snowden's leaks released by the US (here on the Guardian website) contains no information about the potential ramifications of compromising US intelligence. This "redacted" version consists 12 pages of blanks out of a total of 39 pages in the original. What you see is what you get. A year after Snowden's revelations, it is a pathetic, contemptible defence of a vast waste of money, people, and diplomatic reputation by the US government.

[Jan 14, 2014] From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War

When three-letter agencies became king-makers that means that transition to the National Security State is completed...
Mark H. Gaffney (Chiloquin, OR USA),February 28, 2012 - See all my reviews

Gates incriminates himself -- out of his own vanity, February 28, 2012

In his memoir Bob Gates inadvertently corroborates explosive assertions made in 1992 by Israeli whistleblower Ari Ben Menashe in his amazing book, Profits of War, arguably the most important political expose of our time. This continues to be the case even today, twenty years after it was published.

In 1981 Gates served as CIA director Casey's chief of staff. This was the time of the first secret Israeli arms shipments to Iran -- the result of the October Surprise, the treasonous secret arrangement with the Iranians worked out by Casey and HW Bush that denied Jimmy Carter a second term and put Ronald Reagan in the White House. Casey and Bush did what Carter had refused to do: they traded arms for hostages. With an important proviso: Casey insisted that the US embassy hostages must remain in captivity until AFTER Reagan's presidential inauguration.

In his memoirs Gates brags (p 199) that he was "closer to him [Casey] professionally and knew him better than anyone else at CIA or in government.." He also writes (p 222) that he "was in on virtually all of his [Casey's] meetings.." This means that Gates was in the loop on all sensitive issues.

So who else would Casey have turned to -- other than his go-to guy, Gates -- to coordinate the most sensitive issue of them all, the clandestine arms pipeline to Iran that was being managed by Israel?

Gates also corroborates Ben Menashe on another point. Gates confirms (p 395-396) the key role of the Israeli Mossad agent, David Kimche, during the 1984-86 arms deliveries. This was Oliver North's secondary arms channel -- the part of the story that became public and embarrassed Reagan. The rest remained in the shadows for years -- until the release of Ben Menashe's book in 1992. Menashe writes in Profits of War that, starting in 1981, there was a continuous arms pipeline to Iran, too many deals to enumerate. Indeed, the shipments even continued during the later phony investigations into Iran-Contragate.

How ironic that Gates titles his own memoir From the Shadows! It is likely that Gates did not know about Ben Menashe's memoir when he wrote his own. Had he known that Ben Menashe had fingered him -- he might have had second thoughts about boasting of his close relationship with Casey. Gates snares himself, no doubt, because of his sense of his own self-importance: vanity by any other name.

Due to his central role at CIA in 1981, Gates must have known about the treasonous nature of Casey & HW Bush's secret dealings with Iran during the 1980 campaign -- and the arms channel that started soon after Reagan's inauguration. None of this is in Gates' book, of course. For the rest of the story we must turn to Ari Ben Menashe's memoir, Profits of War.

Gates is a classic example of the amoral apparatchik. The man who follows orders no matter how odious the assignment. Doing so took Gates all the way to the top, but at what cost: he damned his soul in the process.

Bottom line: Gates was an accessory to treason. Last time I checked, there was no statute of limitations for this highest of capital crimes.

[Jan 12, 2014] Real News: Binney and Hedges On Obama's NSA Guidelines

I know this type of criticism about the current administration upsets a lot of disillusioned (and desperate) liberals who cling to Brand Obama, but at the end of the day, he is no progressive reformer. He seems more like a moderate Republican, Herbert Hoover, with splash of Nixon.

Yes, he is 'better than' those Luddites and corporate crypto-fascists that scare you, but isn't that really the point? Negotiating away your freedom, bit by bit, out of fear?


[Jan 12, 2014] Chris Hedges: The False Left-Right Paradigm and the Fatal Intransigence of Oligarchies

It's possible like Chris Hedges suggest to view creation of a National security state as a reaction of elite to the fact that the current generation in Western countries will be unable to achieve similar level of prosperity as their parents. That's why the elite feels an urgent need to create military and total surveillance-based mechanisms of suppressing latent protest which materialized in Occupy Movement. Putting them on the same page as Soviet rulers who also responded to the inability to fitful promises of "scientific socialism" (and the major one was to exceed productivity and well-being of capitalist nations) with the creation of brutal totalitarian state and KGB.
January 11, 2014
"In the same way, those who possess wealth and power in poor nations must accept their own responsibilities. They must lead the fight for those basic reforms which alone can preserve the fabric of their societies. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

John F. Kennedy, First Anniversary of the Alliance For Progress



[Jan 10, 2014] EU report reveals massive scope of secret NSA surveillance Europe DW.DE 09.01.2014

It was Thursday afternoon and the first week after the winter break – and it was hardly a surprise that only few seats were filled in room JAN 2Q2 at the European Parliament (EP) in Brussels. But Claude Moraes, British MEP from the group of Socialists and Social Democrats (S&D), woke the European Union from its winter slumber with a bang.

The rapporteur of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) had come to present the 52-page draft report on the committee's inquiry into the NSA spying scandal and its implications on European citizens. The draft report is hard on all sides - including governments and companies in the EU.

"Collect, store, analyze"

The report summarizes the findings from the past six months. On page 16, the text says that the recent revelations in the press by whistleblowers and journalists, together with the expert evidence given during the inquiry, have resulted in "compelling evidence of the existence of far-reaching, complex and highly technologically advanced systems designed by US and some Member States' intelligence services to collect, store and analyze communication and location data and metadata of all citizens around the world on an unprecedented scale and in an indiscriminate and non-suspicion-based manner."

Claude Moraes' draft report is a sweeping blow targeting both US and EU authorities

The authors explicitly point at Britain's signals intelligence agency GCHQ and its upstream surveillance activity (Tempora program) as well as decryption program (Edgehill), and add that it's quite likely that programs of a similar nature as the NSA's and GCHQ's exist - "even if on a more limited scale" - in countries like France, Germany and Sweden.

Claude Moraes and his fellow committee members drew their conclusions from hearing a variety of experts during the second half of 2013 - among them technology insiders, civil rights activists, legal experts, US politicians, former secret service employees and spokespeople of companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo. Journalist Glenn Greenwald also testified. He was the first to publish former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's revelations.

Fight against terrorism = a fig leaf

The fight against terrorism, according to the committee's draft report, can "never in itself be a justification for untargeted, secret and sometimes even illegal mass surveillance programs." Moraes and his fellow rapporteurs showed themselves unconvinced that the NSA's only goal is the fight against terrorism, as the US government has claimed. In their draft report, European politicians suspect that there are instead "other power motives," such as "political and economic espionage."

EU buildings' IT infrastructure must be better protected against political espionage, demand MEPs

Moraes wrote that "privacy is not a luxury right, but the ... foundation stone of a free and democratic society." Above all, the draft report condemns the "vast, systemic, blanket collection of the personal data of innocent people."

The authors add that mass surveillance has potentially severe effects on the freedoms of the press, thought and speech, as well as a significant potential for abuse of the information gathered against political adversaries. In a nutshell, Moraes said, surveillance programs are "yet another step towards the establishment of a fully fledged preventive state."

During Thursday's session, MEPs repeated the call to halt negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the United States. But Kilian Froitzhuber from German-language blog netzpolitik.org said he doesn't believe that talks will be suspended. He told DW he was glad, however, to see that "in the draft report, the committee announces that the European Parliament won't sign any agreement that doesn't explicitly protect the civil liberties of European citizens."

[Jan 01, 2014] The Metadata Program in Eleven Documents

September 14, 2009: Obama fully embraces the use of the Patriot Act to seize phone records in bulk.

Despite massive compliance problems that continue to be uncovered throughout 2009, the Obama Justice Department fights to keep the metadata program running. In September, Obama requests that the Patriot Act be reauthorized without the changes he sought when he was a senator. The Justice Department sends Congress a letter insisting that

the business records provision addresses a gap in intelligence collection authorities and has proven valuable in a number of contexts … [including] important and highly sensitive intelligence collection operations.

Section 215, the letter says, "is being used as intended."

Recommended Links

Google matched content

Softpanorama Recommended

Top articles

Oldies But Goodies

[Oct 12, 2016] NSA whistleblower says DNC hack was not done by Russia, but by US intelligence

[Jan 09, 2016] Allen Dulles and modern neocons

[Dec 28, 2017] How CrowdStrike placed malware in DNC hacked servers by Alex Christoforou

[Dec 28, 2017] From Snowden To Russia-gate - The CIA And The Media

[Dec 22, 2017] When Sanity Fails - The Mindset of the Ideological Drone by The Saker

[Dec 22, 2017] When Sanity Fails - The Mindset of the Ideological Drone by The Saker

[Dec 19, 2017] Do not Underestimate the Power of Microfoundations

[Dec 11, 2017] How Russia-gate Met the Magnitsky Myth by Robert Parry

[Dec 10, 2017] blamePutin continues to be the media s dominant hashtag. Vladimir Putin finally confesses his entire responsibility for everything bad that has ever happened since the beginning of time

[Dec 10, 2017] When Washington Cheered the Jihadists Consortiumnews

[Dec 10, 2017] Russia-gate s Reach into Journalism by Dennis J Bernstein

[Dec 01, 2017] NSA hacks system administrators, new leak reveals

[Dec 01, 2017] Neocon Chaos Promotion in the Mideast

[Dec 01, 2017] JFK The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by L. Fletcher Prouty, Oliver Stone, Jesse Ventura

[Nov 30, 2017] Heritage Foundation + the War Industry What a Pair by Paul Gottfried

[Nov 08, 2017] Learning to Love McCarthyism by Robert Parry

[Nov 04, 2017] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Leads US President Trump to War with Iran by Prof. James Petras

[Oct 31, 2017] Above All - The Junta Expands Its Claim To Power

[Oct 29, 2017] Whose Bright Idea Was RussiaGate by Paul Craig Roberts

[Oct 25, 2017] Tomorrow Belongs to the Corporatocracy by C.J. Hopkins

[Oct 17, 2017] The Victory of Perception Management by Robert Parry

[Oct 09, 2017] Dennis Kucinich We Must Challenge the Two-Party Duopoly Committed to War by Adam Dick

[Oct 09, 2017] Autopilot Wars by Andrew J. Bacevich

[Oct 03, 2017] The Vietnam Nightmare -- Again by Eric Margolis

[Sep 30, 2017] Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet by Glenn Greenwald

[Sep 27, 2017] Come You Masters of War by Matthew Harwood

[Sep 25, 2017] I am presently reading the book JFK and the Unspeakable by James W.Douglass and it is exactly why Kennedy was assassinated by the very same group that desperately wants to see Trump gone and the rapprochement with Russia squashed

[Sep 23, 2017] Welcome to 1984 Big Brother Google Now Watching Your Every Political Move

[Sep 20, 2017] The Politics of Military Ascendancy by James Petras

[Sep 19, 2017] The Glaring Omissions in Trumps U.N. Speech by Daniel Larison

[Sep 18, 2017] Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish partnerships with military contractors like SAIC, Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.

[Sep 17, 2017] The So-called Russian Hack of the DNC Does Not Make Sense by Publius Tacitus

[Sep 17, 2017] Fear of deviation from political correctness is a powerful thing and such zeitgeist pervades America to an extent that people fear independent thought for concern that they will be deterred from upward employment mobility

[Sep 17, 2017] Empire Idiots by Linh Dinh

[Aug 30, 2017] The President of Belgian Magistrates - Neoliberalism is a form of Fascism by Manuela Cadelli

[Jul 30, 2017] Fascism Is Possible Not in Spite of [neo]Liberal Capitalism, but Because of It by Earchiel Johnson

[Jul 29, 2017] Ray McGovern The Deep State Assault on Elected Government Must Be Stopped

[Jul 25, 2017] The Coup against Trump and His Military – Wall Street Defense by James Petras

[Jun 24, 2017] The Criminal Laws of Counterinsurgency by Todd E. Pierce

[Jun 24, 2017] The United States and Iran Two Tracks to Establish Hegemony by James Petras

[Jun 24, 2017] The Criminal Laws of Counterinsurgency by Todd E. Pierce

[May 21, 2017] What Obsessing About Trump Causes Us To Miss by Andrew Bacevich

[Dec 22, 2018] We can be actually confident not just that the journalists in the MSM are on the payroll but that the invoices and accounts for their bribes are carefully preserved.

[Dec 22, 2018] British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft by Craig Murray

[Dec 22, 2018] If Truth Cannot Prevail Over Material Agendas We Are Doomed by Paul Craig Roberts

[Dec 14, 2018] Vetting NYT materials by CIA reflects full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the neoliberal MSM

[Dec 14, 2018] The dirty propaganda games NYT play

[Dec 14, 2018] Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom by Deborah Orr

[Dec 08, 2018] Internet as a perfect tool of inverted totalitarism: it stimulates atomizatin of individuals, creates authomatic 24x7 surveillance over population, suppresses solidarity by exceggerating non-essential differences and allow more insidious brainwashing of the population

[Dec 03, 2018] Neoliberalism is a modern curse. Everything about it is bad and until we're free of it, it will only ever keep trying to turn us into indentured labourers. It's acolytes are required to blind themselves to logic and reason to such a degree they resemble Scientologists or Jehovah's Witnesses more than people with any sort of coherent political ideology, because that's what neoliberalism actually is... a cult of the rich, for the rich, by the rich... and it's followers in the general population are nothing but moron familiars hoping one day to be made a fully fledged bastard.

[Dec 02, 2018] Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Wins 2018 Sam Adams Award by Ray McGovern

[Dec 01, 2018] Whataboutism charge is a change of a thought crime, a dirty US propaganda trick. In reality truth can be understood only in the historica context

[Dec 01, 2018] Congress' Screwed-Up Foreign Policy Priorities by Daniel Larison

[Nov 30, 2018] US Warlords now and at the tome Miill's Poer Elite was published

[Nov 27, 2018] US Foreign Policy Has No Policy by Philip Giraldi

[Nov 24, 2018] Anonymous Exposes UK-Led Psyop To Battle Russian Propaganda

[Nov 24, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

[Nov 24, 2018] When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots psyops, you tend to come up with plots for psyops . The word entrapment comes to mind. Probably self-serving also.

[Nov 14, 2018] Is Orwell overrated and Huxley undertated?

[Nov 12, 2018] The Democratic Party long ago earned the designation graveyard of social protest movements, and for good reason

[Nov 12, 2018] The Best Way To Honor War Veterans Is To Stop Creating Them by Caitlin Johnstone

[Nov 12, 2018] Obama s CIA Secretly Intercepted Congressional Communications About Whistleblowers

[Nov 12, 2018] Protecting Americans from foreign influence, smells with COINTELPRO. Structural witch-hunt effect like during the McCarthy era is designed to supress decent to neoliberal oligarcy by Andre Damon and Joseph Kishore

[Nov 10, 2018] US Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan Killed 500,000 by Jason Ditz

[Nov 09, 2018] Khashoggi Was No Critic of Saudi Regime

[Nov 05, 2018] Bertram Gross (1912-1997) in "Friendly Fascism: The New Face of American Power" warned us that fascism always has two looks. One is paternal, benevolent, entertaining and kind. The other is embodied in the executioner's sadistic leer

[Oct 23, 2018] Leaving aside what President Obama knew about Russiagate allegations against Donald Trump and when he knew it, the question arises as to whether these operations were ordered by President Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) or were rogue operations unknown in advance by the leaders and perhaps even directed against them

[Oct 22, 2018] Cherchez la femme

[Oct 20, 2018] Cloak and Dagger by Israel Shamir

[Oct 10, 2018] A Decalogue of American Empire-Building A Dialogue by James Petras

[Sep 27, 2018] Hiding in Plain Sight Why We Cannot See the System Destroying Us

[Sep 21, 2018] One party state: Trump's 'Opposition' Supports All His Evil Agendas While Attacking Fake Nonsence by Caitlin Johnstone

[Sep 16, 2018] Perils of Ineptitude by Andrew Levin

[Sep 15, 2018] BBC is skanky state propaganda

[Sep 14, 2018] European media writing pro-US stories under CIA pressure - German journo

[Sep 14, 2018] English Translation of Udo Ulfkotte s Bought Journalists Suppressed

[Sep 14, 2018] The book Journalists for Hire How the CIA Buys the News Dr. Udo Ulfkotte was "privished"

[Sep 03, 2018] www.informationclearinghouse.info/50168.htm In Memoriam by Paul Edwards

[Sep 02, 2018] Open letter to President Trump concerning the consequences of 11 September 2001 by Thierry Meyssan

[Aug 28, 2018] A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes

[Aug 22, 2018] The CIA Owns the US and European Media by Paul Craig Roberts

[Aug 22, 2018] Facebook Kills "Inauthentic" Foreign News Accounts - US Propaganda Stays Alive

[Aug 18, 2018] Corporate Media the Enemy of the People by Paul Street

[Aug 17, 2018] What if Russiagate is the New WMDs

[Aug 14, 2018] US Intelligence Community is Tearing the Country Apart from the Inside by Dmitry Orlov

[Aug 08, 2018] Ten Bombshell Revelations From Seymour Hersh's New Autobiography

[Jul 28, 2018] American Society Would Collapse If It Were not For These 8 Myths by Lee Camp

[Jul 23, 2018] The Prophecy of Orwell's 1984. Totalitarian Control and the Entertainment Culture that Takes Over by Edward Curtin

[Jul 23, 2018] Chickens with Their Heads Cut Off, Coming Home to Roost. The "Treason Narrative" by Helen Buyniski

[Jul 20, 2018] Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community by Ilana Mercer

[Jul 20, 2018] Is President Trump A Traitor Because He Wants Peace With Russia by Paul Craig Roberts

[Jul 15, 2018] What Mueller won t find by Bob In Portland

[Jul 03, 2018] Musings II The "Intelligence Community," "Russian Interference," and Due Diligence

[Jun 21, 2018] The neoliberal agenda is agreed and enacted by BOTH parties:

[Jun 18, 2018] American Pravda The JFK Assassination, Part I - What Happened, by Ron Unz - The Unz Review

[Jun 17, 2018] the dominant political forces in EU are anti-Russia

[Jun 13, 2018] How False Flag Operations Are Carried Out Today by Philip M. GIRALDI

[Jun 10, 2018] Trump and National Neoliberalism by Sasha Breger Bush

[Jun 09, 2018] Still Waiting for Evidence of a Russian Hack by Ray McGovern

[Jun 06, 2018] Neoliberal language allows to cut wages by packaging neoliberal oligarchy preferences as national interests

[Jun 06, 2018] Why Foreign Policy Realism Isn't Enough by William S. Smith

[May 22, 2018] Cat fight within the US elite getting more intense

[May 22, 2018] Can the majority of the USA be made to see that neocons will ruin the USA, and that their power must be liquidated ?

[May 04, 2018] Media Use Disinformation To Accuse Russia Of Spreading Such by b

[Apr 27, 2018] A Most Sordid Profession by Fred Reed

[Apr 24, 2018] The Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice

[Apr 22, 2018] The American ruling class loves Identity Politics, because Identity Politics divides the people into hostile groups and prevents any resistance to the ruling elite

[Apr 21, 2018] On the Criminal Referral of Comey, Clinton et al by Ray McGovern

[Apr 19, 2018] The Neocons Are Selling Koolaid Again! by W. Patrick Lang

[Apr 16, 2018] British Propaganda and Disinformation An Imperial and Colonial Tradition by Wayne MADSEN

[Apr 15, 2018] The Trump Regime Is Insane by Paul Craig Roberts

[Apr 11, 2018] Female neocon warmongers from Fox look like plastered brick walls – heartless and brainless.

[Apr 09, 2018] Ghouta is Arabic for Reichstag Fire by Publius Tacitus

[Apr 09, 2018] When Military Leaders Have Reckless Disregard for the Truth by Bruce Fein

[Mar 31, 2018] RFK and Nixon immediately understood the assassination was a CIA-led wet-works operation since they chaired the assassination committees themselves in the past

[Mar 28, 2018] Deep State and False Flag Attacks

[Mar 27, 2018] Let's Investigate John Brennan, by Philip Giraldi

[Mar 25, 2018] A truly historical month for the future of our planet by The Saker

[Mar 25, 2018] Cambridge Analytica Scandal Rockets to Watergate Proportions and Beyond by Adam Garrie

[Mar 22, 2018] If it's correct, the Brits made a very nasty error that shows the true nature of their establishment.

[Mar 22, 2018] Military at CNN

[Mar 21, 2018] Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared by Ray McGovern

[Mar 21, 2018] Washington's Invasion of Iraq at Fifteen

[Mar 21, 2018] Whataboutism Is A Nonsensical Propaganda Term Used To Defend The Failed Status Quo by Mike Krieger

[Mar 21, 2018] How They Sold the Iraq War by Jeffrey St. Clair

[Mar 18, 2018] Powerful intelligence agencies are incompatible with any forms of democracy including the democracy for top one precent. The only possible form of government in this situation is inverted totalitarism

[Mar 16, 2018] NATO to display common front in Skripal case

[Mar 16, 2018] The French philosopher Alain Soral is quite right when he says that modern "journalists are either unemployed or prostitutes"

[Mar 13, 2018] The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party by Patrick Martin

[Mar 11, 2018] I often think that, a the machinery of surveillance and repression becomes so well oiled and refined, the ruling oligarchs will soon stop even paying lip service to 'American workers', or the "American middle class" and go full authoritarian

[Mar 10, 2018] Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko s death.

[Mar 10, 2018] There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this

[Mar 08, 2018] Cue bono question in Scripal case?

[Mar 08, 2018] A key piece of evidence pointing to 'Guccifer 2.0' being a fake personality created by the conspirators in their attempt to disguise the fact that the materials from the DNC published by 'WikiLeaks' were obtained by a leak rather than a hack had to do with the involvement of the former GCHQ person Matt Tait.

[Mar 06, 2018] The U.S. Returns to 'Great Power Competition,' With a Dangerous New Edge

[Mar 04, 2018] Generals who now are running the USA foreign policy represents a great danger. These men seem incapable of rising above the Russophobia that grew in the atmosphere of the Cold War. They yearn for world hegemony for the US and to see Russia and to a lesser extent China and Iran as obstacles to that dominion for the "city on a hill

[Mar 03, 2018] Top NYT Editor 'We NYT supports and follows the "national security" line (whatever that means)

[Feb 28, 2018] Perjury traps to manufacture indictments to pressure people to testify against others is a new tool of justice in a surveillance state

[Feb 26, 2018] Why one war when we can heve two! by Eric Margolis

[Feb 23, 2018] NSA Genius Debunks Russiagate Once For All

[Feb 22, 2018] Bill Binney explodes the rile of 17 agances security assessment memo in launching the Russia witch-hunt

[Feb 20, 2018] Russophobia is a futile bid to conceal US, European demise by Finian Cunningham

[Feb 14, 2018] The FBI and the President – Mutual Manipulation by James Petras

[Feb 12, 2018] The Age of Lunacy: The Doomsday Machine

[Feb 12, 2018] Ike's Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex Is Alive and Very Well by William J. Astore

[Feb 10, 2018] The generals are not Borgists. They are something worse ...

[Jan 30, 2018] The Unseen Wars of America the Empire The American Conservative

[Jan 24, 2018] The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate by Ray McGovern

[Jan 22, 2018] Pentagon Unveils Strategy for Military Confrontation With Russia and China by Bill Van Auken

[Jan 22, 2018] If Trump is an authoritarian, why don t Democrats treat him like one? by Corey Robin

[Jan 17, 2018] Neoconning the Trump White House by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

[Jan 16, 2018] The Russia Explainer

[Jan 15, 2018] CIA had an agent at a newspaper in every world capital at least since 1977

[Jan 02, 2018] The Still-Missing Evidence of Russia-gate by Dennis J. Bernstein

[Jan 02, 2018] Neocon warmongers should be treated as rapists by Andrew J. Bacevich

[Jan 02, 2018] Jill Stein in the Cross-hairs by Mike Whitney

[Dec 31, 2017] How America Spreads Global Chaos by Nicolas J.S. Davies

[Dec 31, 2017] How America Spreads Global Chaos by Nicolas J.S. Davies

[Feb 10, 2019] Pussy John Bolton and His Codpiece Mustache by Fred Reed

[Feb 08, 2019] To understand Steele and the five eyes involvement in the Russia hoax you need to go to the library

[Jan 29, 2019] Guardian became Deep State Guardian

[Jan 26, 2019] Can the current US neoliberal/neoconservative elite be considered suicidal?

[Jan 19, 2019] According to Wolin, domestic and foreign affairs goals are each important and on parallel tracks

[Jan 11, 2019] How Shocking Was Shock Therapy

[Jan 08, 2019] The smaller the financial sector is the more real wealth there is for the rest of society to enjoy. The bigger the financial sector becomes the more money it siphons off from the productive sectors

[Jan 08, 2019] Rewriting Economic Thought - Michael Hudson

[Jan 08, 2019] The Financial Sector Is the Greatest Parasite in Human History by Ben Strubel

[Jan 08, 2019] No, wealth isn t created at the top. It is merely devoured there by Rutger Bregman

[Jan 04, 2019] Veteran NBC-MSNBC Journalist Blasts Network in Resignation

[Jan 02, 2019] The Only Meddling "Russian Bots" Were Actually Democrat-Led "Experts" by Mac Slavo

Sites



Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.

FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.

This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...

You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site

Disclaimer:

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: March, 29, 2020