Assange is Thrown to the Wolves

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Ultimately they could not protect their agent, Assange, from the forces of counter intelligence.  Everyone who matters has known that he is a spy for Russia, but if Russia exfiltrated him, it would blow his cover with the many people who still believe that he was a selfless fighter for freedom.  So they could not bring him to Russia, the way they did Snowden.  And ultimately he had to go to protect their more important agent in place, Donald Trump.  They can be confident that Assange will not confess his role with Russian intelligence, he will go to his death protecting his place in history even though it is a lie. 

Counterintelligence is Slow

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Counterintelligence is slow.  There is no law or rule that says that those who do counterintelligence have to tell you everything or, for that matter, anything.  Their job is to defeat certain kinds of attacks on this country and they take that job seriously.  Trump and his gang sincerely think they are the smartest guys in the room and that they can get away with it.  And probably did not understand the significance of what will be known as their treason.  We are in the middle of one of the most amazing stories in American history, but the candidate was not brainwashed.  He was just a fuck-job bully rich kid racist who did not realize that there are lines you can not cross, and boy did he/they cross those lines.

Far worse than Trump was the betrayal of this country by the Republican party.  They knew, yes, I am pretty sure they did.

Snowden Attempt to Get Pardon From Obama

The Guardian has an article on Snowden which you can read here.

The point of the article is that his lawyer is mounting a full-court press to get a pardon before the end of the Obama administration, possibly in the very short interval between the election of the new president and her [sic] inauguration.  Some questions were asked in the Comments section which I attempt to answer below. ¹

1. Could Obama pardon Snowden even though he has not been convicted?

Yes. Ford pardoned Nixon who was also not convicted, nor formally charged so far as I know.

2. Does the fact that Bush and Cheney have not been formally accused of crimes by the DOJ mean that they did not commit any crimes?

No, not at all. It just means that the US Government in the person of President Obama has been covering up for them. So far as I know, there is no statute of limitations on murder and torture.

3. Would Obama plausibly pardon Snowden?

Not in a billion years. Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls. Its time to wake up to the fact that absolutely no one who is cleared to know what happened (to the best of their knowledge) has anything good to say about Snowden beyond one comment by a senior military leader that it may be that Snowden was not consciously a tool of foreign intelligence to begin with. ²

No one, repeat no one, who knows anything about the case thinks that his motivations and actions have anything to do with NSA illegal spying on US citizens.

Neither Obama, Clinton or even Trump is likely to pardon Snowden. I also think it is interesting that the Obama administration does not seem to even be willing to discuss a plea bargain with him (e.g. you come home, plead guilty to one thing, serve some time, then be released). In other words, they think his crimes are completely egregious and the case against him airtight.

Anyone who is a Snowden partisan at this point is unlikely to find this blog post of much interest. You know, you just know, that Snowden is a hero and a patriot. Well, if so, why did you vote for Obama? Or did you? Do you think McCain would have been any more sympathetic? Or Hilary Clinton? A little naive, are we, perhaps?

The famous Mad Magazine "Spy vs Spy"

Notes:

1. I have too much time on my hands, clearly.

2. Do not remember who said this.  I believe it was a senior military official who served in a role in Intelligence and whose comments were recorded in the period immediately following the first Snowden releases.

The Influence of James Bond on the Fashion of the Cinematic Evil Genius

When Ian Fleming, formerly of British Naval Intelligence and a dropout of Sandhurst, wrote the James Bond novels, he thought he was making a living as a writer. He had no idea that his work was, eventually, to define the style and appearance of the world criminal and evil genius in the cinema of the West.

Although it is not clear exactly why it is that the idiosyncratic but elegant mad geniuses of the Bond movies prefer the Eastern style of men's suits, prefer it they do. From Dr. No to Elliot Carver to Ernst Stavro Blofeld, they all prefer their jackets to have a Nehru collar and their suits to be the one preferred by Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party of China.

But which one is it? The Mao suit or the Nehru jacket? And what are the implications of this choice? Lets examine the evidence and define our terms.

A truly elegant and imposing evil genius

A brief search on the Internet, that bold new paradigm, reveals an essay on this very topic by Sonya Glyn Nicholson entitled “The Mao Suit and the Nehru Jacket” which you can read here on the parisiangentleman.co.uk website.

https://parisiangentleman.co.uk/2014/05/30/the-mao-suit-and-the-nehru-jacket/

Why it should be that the fashion website “Parisian Gentleman” is located in the United Kingdom is a mystery but it probably is a result of Globalization which combines the strength and elegance of the British tailoring industry with the importance of Paris as a capital of culture and style.

What Ms. Nicholson explains is that the defining characteristic of the Nehru jacket, so named because Jawaharal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India after its independence from England, famously used to wear this style of jacket when being photographed with other world leaders, is its Mandarin Collar. It is this collar, up to two inches high of unfolded material, combined with the lack of lapels, that makes the Nehru jacket distinctive. The jacket is also generally tailored to fit the form of the wearer. It is a jacket very suited to wear at an elegant dinner party.

Missiles are only the first step to show our power

Prime Minister Nehru and his Western sycophants

Ms. Nicholson goes on to explain that the Mao suit, so named for its use by the great revolutionary leader of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong, is a complete suit, not merely a jacket. It has a boxy cut, four pockets with a practical button, no lapels, and most of all

The strongest characteristic of the Mao is the short and rigid fold-over collar, with rounded points extended no further than the base of the band.

I hope three examples will suffice. In the first, Dr. No explains to his dinner guest, James Bond, his plans for world domination. In the second Elliot Carver, as played by Jonathan Pryce announces his new global satellite network in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). In our third example, none other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld introduces himself to James Bond in You Only Live Twice (1967).

Dr. No at Dinner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdiq_YcIzg0

Elliot Carver Announcing Satellite Network

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PqjhsPYyy4

Ernst Stavro Blofeld of SPECTRE Introduces Himself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ay2sO6tWbE

But the most interesting question still remains. Yes, I think we have shown the obvious, never doubted fact that men's fashion has been affected by the design choices of the 007 films.  But what does it all mean? We still want to know why they feel compelled to wear this style of suits. What is going on in their master criminal minds?

I have the following theories. The first is that it is nothing more than these outsider geniuses, forced by society to prove their genius, have spent significant time in the mysterious and exotic East where this style of fashion is anything but exotic. Thus, they merely see themselves as well-dressed and they are, and would be quite conventional in Mumbai or Beijing.  The second theory is that this fashion style is a choice designed to appeal to the fears of the Westerner to the dangers and mystery of the East. In a sense it is a form of backhanded stereotyping, but not negative stereotyping. The East is dangerous and thus somewhat appealing and these geniuses of crime are therefore styled to evoke that Eastern feeling.

Even comic evil geniuses have affected this style

_________________________________________________________

Notes

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120347/

Thunderball (1965) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059800/

Dr. No (1962) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055928/

Jawaharlal Nehru

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru

The Flawed Approach to Man From UNCLE (2015) or Will They Ever Learn?

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About half way through the Warner Bros film “Man from UNCLE”, Illya Kuryakin tries to make the case for a Russian architect having designed and built the Spanish Steps in Rome. It seemed out of place somehow in the movie I was watching, but when the movie was over I realized where this anomaly had come from.

It would seem that the one character trait unique to any of the characters in this film that actually had its origins in the original TV series was this particular running gag. Whenever some invention, or creative work, was part of the story, Illya would always explain how it had actually been composed, or invented, in Russia. This running gag, used once, the names of some of the characters and the title of the movie itself were the only references to the original show to be found in the movie.

You might think that if you were going to bother to do a reboot of a 1960s TV series, that you would want to carefully review and select elements from the original and use them in a reboot, doing a best of, as it were, and make a contemporary entertainment product that properly also captured and moved forward what it was that made the original show notable.

Furthermore, you might choose to do this and do it well not for the sake of creative integrity but for hard core business reasons. The success of your roughly 100M $US investment depends on creating a powerful version of this property, to both get the original viewers, the teenage viewers, and as many of the inbetween that you can. There are models for this sort of thing, where it has been done successfully, and where it has not. And what we learn is that where it has not been done well, the movie has flopped. But when it has been done well, the marketing has been straightforward and the movie has been successful.

The lesson is, do it well or not at all.

The good news is that a certain amount of this can be checked before production begins. You can make use of a time honored but now sadly neglected feature of the traditional cinema which is called “the script”. Yes, you can write a script and have it reviewed by people who know the original, as well as by people who know modern action movies.

Having done this, it is also useful to cast actors who bring the script to life, and for that matter, a director who has a feel for the property. This is your job, I emphasize, your means of making a livelihood, and it is always good to remind the studio executive of their supposed expertise.

So what do we get instead? What we get is a script that ignores UNCLE, has the conceit of being a backstory to the TV show which if that is the plan, they badly fucked it up. It uses none of the anticipation and recognition, setup and payoff, available to them. The actors cast are boring, unlikeable, uninteresting. It is in places beautiful, yes it looks like a yacht advertisement from 1960s Italy, but who the fuck cares? Thats nice and all, and it would be a wonderful touch if they had a script and some actors with passion, but without them it is just a bunch of pretty pictures.

But if every silver lining has a cloud, the reverse is also true, and there is some silver lining here. Because the lead actors are so fucking boring, the women of this piece completely capture the movie. We have exactly two of them, one is a 20 year old who is completely hilarious in a scene where she tries to get Illya drunk, to dance, and to sleep with her. The other is 40 something Italian billionaire and femme fatale who jumps Napoleon Solo and then drugs and tortures him.

Yes, the parody of effete Italian manhood is entertaining, but whats the point?

Almost none of the elements that were notable about UNCLE were in this movie. No NYC tailor shop with a secret door, no THRUSH bad guys, nothing.

Its not enough to say that you are going to reboot a property, you have to actually do it well or you should save your money and make another Die Hard movie or something. As it is, it is all a giant waste of effort, of money and of an opportunity.

________________________________________________

1. You may wonder, as I have wondered, what the word THRUSH stands for. If UNCLE stands for United Network Command Law Enforcement, then surely THRUSH stands for something as well. At a Westercon years ago I came across a “bible” for the original UNCLE. A bible is the guide issued to all the writers of a TV series to give them enough background to write, or propose, a story for the series. In it we learn that THRUSH stands for Technical Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjection of Humanity. Well it sounds a little forced to me, but its ok.

FOIA FBI Background Check on Anna Rosenberg

In recent years there has been a variety of issues that involve security background checks and the questions people have about what information is kept on them. But the examples used of government files are not representative because they are usually of people who are very involved in a variety of non-trivial, non-subtle and controversial areas.

A classic example of that in today's news is the FOIA request by Laura Poitras who has been detained by Homeland Security whenever she has entered or left the country and received various “no fly” judgments on attempting to board an aircraft. I am sure that her file is quite interesting and I am also sure that when we see it, it will be the kind of unusual or controversial file that I am referring to above. Why? Because, as Ms. Poitras knows very well, she is under suspicion for and is certainly a collaborator in what is probably the single most damaging and extraordinary intelligence disaster in the history of this country, possibly any country. So of course she is being investigated, and of course the file will contain intelligence information as well as information that is part of various criminal investigations that have not yet completed (and for which charges have not (yet) been filed).

But what does a normal file look like, one that is of a serious and senior professional who has worked for the government, worked for private industry and knows many people, some of whom are or were presidents of the United States, and some of whom were certainly controversial in one way or another, in this case because they were heavily involved in the labor movement of the 1930s.

I happened to come across an online version of the FBI background check file on Anna Rosenberg who was a labor relations consultant before and after WW 2.  She was attacked by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee during the McCarthy period when she was nominated for a government post. She served on a variety of government committees that involved labor relations particularly as it involved the war effort. She worked directly for Pres. Roosevelt at various times.

I think that her FBI file is well worth glancing act to see what is involved, the kinds of questions they asked, the things they noted that caused them concern, etc.

True, this is about a person from another era, a post WW 2 era, but I suspect it has things in common with similar activities today (e.g. extended background checks on people nominated for government service or who require a security clearance). The Internet makes this process easier, but by no means does it do all the work that needs to be done.

So if you are interested in such things, take a fast look at this. It can be found at

https://archive.org/details/foia_Rosenberg_Anna_M.-HQ-1

Snowden and Ellsberg Compared

The following essay may have to be read with a “sarcasm alert”.

I am sorry, I just could not resist.  Back when Ed Snowden was newsworthy and before he disappeared off the media radar, I was hearing him compared to Dr. Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers' fame.  Now Danny Ellsberg used to smoke dope on the beach with a good friend of mine who was at RAND at the same time, so I feel a certain, close, personal relationship.   And even though Danny has publicly congratulated Snowden, as all truly committed lefties are required to do, I just had to write this post comparing the two people and events because ... well you will see.

None of this particularly addresses the issue of whether the various materials should have been leaked.  That is a topic for another day.

So I am now going to compare the two men in the areas of education, experience, knowledge in the domain, and so forth.   Lets see where it goes.  

1. Education.

Dr. Ellsberg was scholarship to Harvard in Economics where he was summa cum laude, went to Cambridge University on a Woodrow Wilson scholarship and completed his PhD in Economics at Harvard. Ed Snowden dropped out of Arundel High School in Maryland.

2. Prior Experience.

In 1959, Dr. Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. In 1961 he drafted the guidance from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the operational plans for general nuclear war. He was a member of two of the three working groups reporting to the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOM) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Ellsberg joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on the escalation of the war in Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. Ed Snowden dropped out of high school to be a sysadmin for the CIA and later for the NSA through a contracting agency. The CIA identified Snowden as a security risk and terminated his involvement but failed to communicate that information to the NSA.

3. Depth of Knowledge in the Area

Dr. Ellsberg was a recognized member of the national security apparatus and co-author of the report in question. Ed Snowden simply vacuumed up everything he could get his hands on, including stealing security keys from other people, and dumped the material in the public domain. He has no credentials in any of the areas where he released material.

4. Role That They Played in Creating the Material

Dr. Ellsberg was one of the authors of the report that became known as the Pentagon Papers. Ed Snowden had no role whatsoever in the materials he copied without permission and released.

5. The Process By Which the Material Was Released

Ellsberg approach various members of congress to try and get them to both read and release in the Congressional Record the report (thus making it difficult to prosecute anyone). Whoever Ellsberg approached would not do it. Eventually he gave a copy to a NY Times reporter with the (supposed) intent that it not be published, more as background, I suppose. Well the NY Times decided to publish it. I dont know the truth of the matter, but I suspect hairs are / were being split on who could legally be prosecuted. Snowden fled the country before releasing anything and found someone who in my opinion is highly motivated to release material no matter how much it hurts this country, Greenwald. That Greenwald received the Pulitzer prize for this is a disgrace and lowers the credibility of the Pulitzer, IMHO. In any case, Snowden was no where near as clever or responsible as Ellsberg. He leaked everything and then fled to the most oppressive surveillance state on the planet. Many knowledgable people believe that he was working for Russian intelligence more or less all along. Dismiss that as paranoia if you will, that is what they believe, and the people who believe it have access to much more information than you or I do.

6. The Nature of the Material Released

Dr. Ellsberg released a report that was primarily about the history of the Vietnam war and the decision making that led to our involvement. Because the report had information from very secret sources it did compromise sources that were directly involved with this area and (supposedly) led to the death of many people (possibly a few hundred) of people who risked their lives to help us. Ed Snowden released information on a vast number of current operations and activities, activities for which he should not have had access, and released them indiscriminately. The full impact will not be known for years, but it is likely that the death toll will be huge. The impact on foreign policy and international relationships is far afield from what Snowden claimed he was interested in, which is to say domestic surveillance, will also be huge. In fact, very little of the Snowden material released pertains to domestic surveillance and no one could seriously take that as a motivation for his activities. In other words, Ellsberg's leaked information about the past in order to demonstrate that the POTUS was not completely honest with the American people. Snowden released information about the present, in a vast number of areas, completely unrelated to his announced motivation for the release.

7. Actions after the Release of the Material

Dr. Ellsberg stayed in the United States and said he would take responsibility for his actions. His trial was thrown out of court by the judge due to the famous misdeeds of the Nixon Administration and his Plumbers. Arguably this was one aspect of the Watergate scandal that led ultimately to Nixon's resignation. Snowden fled the country and, demonstrating his unique hypocrisy, took asylum in a country with the most oppressive internal surveillance in the world. He regularly states that he can not get a fair trial in the USA but I think his real concern is that he is likely to get a fair trial in the USA.

8. Other Service

Ellsberg had been ROTC to Harvard and spent two years in the USMC as an officer. Snowden has no service to his country other than as a consultant where he violated his oath.

So as you can see and, in summary, the two cases are very, very similar.

Actually, that was a lie.  The two cases are about as dissimilar as they could be.   So you can conclude at least that anyone who claims to you that they are similar is just an idiot.  From top to bottom, soup to nuts, materials released, credibility of the person who released them, impact on our country, and so forth and so on, they are completely and utterly different.   About the only thing you can say that they had in common is that they both involved the unauthorized release of highly classified material.

Of course, this discussion does not go into the more interesting question, about whether they were right to release the material they did.  My short answer to that question, which is of course of very little interest to the world, will be the subject of another post.

Can Glenn Greenwald be Tried for a Crime in the Snowden/NSA Affair?

I realize that not many of my readers may be very interested in the NSA/Snowden affair, or at least not very interested in what I have to say about it.

But since this blog is in part for my own education and improvement of *my* moral character, not to mention *your* moral character, I think it is my duty to soldier on and educate myself and my fellow Americans about some of the background and law involved.

The question of the day is whether or not on paper Glenn Greenwald has violated American law. Which is different from whether or not he will be tried for this alleged crimes or, if convicted, those convictions will stand.

To recap, when Ed Snowden violated his oath and released information with the clear result of damaging the United States national security, he did so with the help of various accomplices around the world. A few of those accomplices are publicly so, and most of them are not public.(1)  

Foremost among the public conspirators is Glenn Greenwald, an independent journalist, and author of several best-selling books. He has been instrumental in transmitting and publishing this information and very public about it.

So here are the questions we want to answer. 1. Is there a law prohibiting what Greenwald did? 2. Is there a special exemption in this law for 1st amendment purposes? and 3. If there is a law and no special exemption, why has the government not issued warrants of arrest for Greenwald?

The answer to question 1 is simple: yes. It is Title 18, part I, Chapter 37.798, Disclosure of Classified Information, and I have quoted the relevant text below.

The answer to question 2 is not at all clear. The only way to find out if a law is constitutional is for someone to be judged, found guilty, and to appeal. If the law is struck down by an appeals court, it may still not be clear. The ultimate judgment comes from the Supreme Court, as imperfect as it may be. Thus all those people who go around saying "this is unconstitutional" quite probably do not have a clue what they are talking about. Yes, the 1st Amendment is pretty clear about "free speech". But it does not say you can sell stolen goods, nor does it say anywhere that you can conspire to kill Americans (in an indirect or a direct fashion, with the differences between those two being very germane to this and other cases).

Therefore if there is a law, and there is, and if that law stands and has not been found unconstitutional, why has the Obama Administration not filed charged against Glenn Greenwald? Perhaps they feel that it would stir up more opposition to America in the world. Perhaps they are afraid of testing the law in the case of a journalist.  Perhaps they are taking a wait and see attitude to see how things develop.  I have no doubt the Greenwald must be under intense surveillance.

Is there a statute of limitations on these alleged crimes? Maybe, but its also a loose thing and not as black and white as some people think particularly because of the issue of continuing activities of a conspiracy, which is certainly the case here. In other words, is Greenwald still conspiring with Snowden to publish classified material? Yes? Then the statute of limitation clock has not started running yet.

So the answers to our questions are 1. Yes, 2. Unknown you just have to try it, and 3. Unknown but they still have time should they decide later to do so.

The relevant federal statute: 

TITLE 18 - CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

PART I - CRIMES   CHAPTER 37 - ESPIONAGE AND CENSORSHIP

§ 798. Disclosure of classified information

(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes

available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or

interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United

States any classified information—

(1) concerning the nature, preparation, or use of any code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the

United States or any foreign government; or

(2) concerning the design, construction, use, maintenance, or repair of any device, apparatus, or

appliance used or prepared or planned for use by the United States or any foreign government for

cryptographic or communication intelligence purposes; or

(3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign

government; or

(4) obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any

foreign government, knowing the same to have been obtained by such processes—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

(b) As used in subsection (a) of this section—

The term “classified information” means information which, at the time of a violation of this section,

is, for reasons of national security, specifically designated by a United States Government Agency for

limited or restricted dissemination or distribution; ....

You may find the complete statute here:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798

A discussion on statute of limitations can be found here:

https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL31253.pdf

Glenn Greenwald on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald

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1. Russian intelligence services aided and abetted Snowden is apparently the belief of many in the intelligence community. I have heard various explanations for why they believe this but I suspect that the real reasons also lie in the areas of secret intelligence so we are not likely to know the details for some while.

Russians Discover Chinese Home Appliances Designed for Crime

We are told to accept Globalization as inevitable and beneficial. Just trust us, says Congress, as they pass free trade act after free trade act, and pass exemptions to polluting transport companies to lower costs for container ships. It may be that most Americans are impoverished in the short run, says Congress, perhaps for the first 50 or 100 years, and are thrown out in the street giving up all hope of having a home or family, but ultimately no doubt Globalization will benefit all Americans and not just the rich, they promise. Really.  One day.

But what if all those cheap devices that flood our shores contain Trojan Horses that are secretly working for our destruction? Sound far fetched? Maybe not.

We believe that Americans are in denial about the extent of cybercrime and cyber-espionage that is going on in the world. Russia in particular seems to be the home of cybercrime whereas China seems to be home of cyber-espionage, although all countries dabble in all the black arts, perhaps.

Many Americans have come to rely upon their home appliances.  What could be more trustworthy than a coffee maker that helps us wake up in the morning?  Or a blow dryer that dries our hair?  What about a blender or food processor?   We rely on these instruments of modern convenience and it is inconceivable that these items could be turned against us.   They are as American as Apple Pie even if they are no longer made in America in order to increase the profits of the wealthy.

Now something has happened that may yet wake Americans out of their complacency, and it comes, ironically from the Russians. They have been discovering for some time covert cyber penetration devices in home appliances manufactured by that supposedly "friend of cheap manufacturing", the People's Republic of China, and they have gone public with this shocking news just recently.

Home appliances of all types including irons, blenders and even the beloved toaster oven have been found kitted out with the most devious of devices, including and especially WIFI hardware designed to penetrate any unsecured WIFI within 600 feet or so of the appliance. Once such a WIFI is found, the innocent-looking home appliance transforms itself into a network-based spy (or "Snowden" as they are known these days) and tries to penetrate any computer it can find on the local network in order to insert viruses (virii?) into the defenseless computers. Of course these home appliances phone home to their masters in Beijing as well.

Are these innocent looking home appliances in fact criminal devices from the East?

The Russians believe that the primary purpose of these devices is to find and make robot slaves for Spam delivery, but we don't buy that. The Chinese are guilty of the largest espionage program in history in their attacks against the United States and have totally raped this country of both military and industrial intellectual property. The theft is vast, persistent and hostile and we are just now starting to calculate the costs, billions of dollars, of changing various military-related apparatus (e.g. electronic warfare) based on the knowledge of this theft. I propose that countries only do this level of espionage if they believe that they are going to war.

Now on top of the previous attacks, we learn of the Russians under attack by home electric appliances. Are Americans also under attack in the same manner? How can we tell? I call on the President and Congress to pass a Homeland Appliance Defense Act and investigate this potential threat to our freedom at once.

For one article on this emerging crisis, see here.

Computer Human Interface in Cinema: An Example from Patriot Games (1992)

In general if we ask the question "Is it too much to ask that Hollywood represent the use of computers with some authenticity or correctness?" the answer would clearly be "Yes, it is too much to ask".

Authenticity is a dirty word in Hollywood and computers fit the rule, not the exception. A computer in a movie serves some generally shallow plot points: the computer acts as an oracle, or a dictator, or whimsical child, or God knows what. These shallow ideas generally mirror the genuinely sincere shallow level of understanding of the filmmakers. Water seeks its own level, and in this area its a pretty low level.

But I came across a scene in a stupid movie called Patriot Games (1992) starring Harrison Ford and the sequence has an excellent representation of a classic late 60s, early 70s computer user interface, complete with user.

The sequence watches a preemptive strike on an IRA training camp in the desert somewhere (maybe Libya?) through a classic spy satellite, probably a KH-11 or 12. In the Intel vault we watch a perfect example, an authentic recreation, of a female computer programmer from the late 1960s or thereabouts controlling the imaging from the satellite in real time. She types commands one line at a time.

Serious of purpose, her fingers fly over the keyboard

Notice the innovative command structure.   One command per line.  A concise 2 or 3 letter command abbreviation.  Commands such as zoom (zm), rotate (rot), and name (nm).   Intuitive and facile, our user is a power user, confident and on post.

Its feels completely authentic to me.

A modern user of computing must only shake their head in confusion at the above display.  Where are the helpful advertisements for irrelevant products?  Where is the cheap violation of privacy, the contempt for the user's time?   All we see is a few lines of serious endeavor, clearly represented.   Its failure to demonstrate cheap consumerism and sellout marks this ancient computer interface for what it is: an artifact from a time which had more integrity than our own.

_________________________________________

You can see the sequence here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoVWedQOQl4

NB: The BG voices have good information in this sequence.

Patriot Games on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105112/

KH Satellites on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennan

Archaeology of the Cold War: Espionage and Other Compromises of National Security (1975-2008)

Espionage and spying was one of the defining characteristics of the Cold War. It is easy to be nostalgic about the Cold War, of course. It was a time when America had a functioning economy, when the political system had not been destroyed, when we could still believe in the American Dream in one form or another.

It was a time of the Berlin Tunnel, of the silent war between nuclear submarines, of Mutual Assured Destruction, defections and moles, of spy satellites and science education, of sensor nets under the ocean built at vast expense but capable of hearing a whale at 2000 kilometers, or a door opening on a submarine while submerged.

Espionage and the secret service, some think, are the purest expression of the war between civilizations, fought by a nation's elite secret service that manifest the moral codes that define the opposing civilizations. This makes the secret service the first line of defense, the avant garde of the revolution, the keepers of the faith. They are the mujadeen, the soldiers of God who are willing to die for God.

The Defense Personnel Security Research Center in Monterey, CA, set out to write a report that summarized espionage and other breaches of national security in this nation in the last 30 years. It's goal was to provide a series of case studies for educators of security personnel. It provides good summaries of the different types of espionage cases that have been found and prosecuted in the modern period. It has been regularly updated, the latest version adds 20 more recent case studies up to 2008.

If, as mentioned above, the secret service represents people who are Defenders of the Faith and of the Faithful, then many of the people whose cases are summarized in this report are the Fallen, those who by their actions have fallen from Grace with God and are damned forever.

I have selected a few pages at random for your review and the URL for the full report is listed below. You could read it in its entirety, if you were of a mind to do so, in a few hours at most.

"Espionage and Other Compromises of National Security"

http://cryptome.org/2013/02/spy-cases-1975-2008.pdf

The Fall of Man
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_fall_from_grace

Relationship Between Grad School Acceptance and 6th Grade Clique Selection

[2.12.2013 complete rewrite]

As many of you know, I am applying to Graduate School in a futile effort to be accepted as an adult by society and in order to set the stage for a second act to my so-called career.   I have found the process to be very confusing, arbitrary and limiting thus far.

The impression I get is one of rigid rules and preconditions designed to winnow the applicants down to a small set of people who will act and obey as a ruling elite demand. And who have done nothing whatsoever but exactly those things they are looking for in the most conventional and unimaginative way.  "Those who are like us may apply but those who are not like us should not even attempt it.", they seem to be saying. (1)

It is not a new insight that situations in elementary and jr. high school prepare us for life as an adult by putting us through apparently incomprehensible and damaging social circumstances.   "Life is high school with money" goes the joke.  One example of such a situation is the "prom" nightmare many of us have had to go through.   Another is the weirdness of those who are accepted by a clique and those who are not.

Its been a long time since High School, however, and I was never very good at being accepted by cliques.    But I have come across a 6th grader on the Internet, by name of Hayley, who has two very interesting blogs that may enlighten me on this topic.  Her first blog is called "The Thoughts of an Almost Teenage Girl" and the second, "The Popularity Papers of 6th Grade", about her efforts to be accepted by an elite clique in her Elementary School in Minnesota.  (The URLs for both blogs are below).

So the plan is to monitor Hayley's blog and then report back how the process of getting accepted to graduate school is like or unlike the process of being accepted by a clique in 6th Grade.

Think of it as a research paper in Cultural Anthropology.

A spy vs spy comic I got from Hayley's general blog, demonstrating great taste in one so young.

The Thoughts of An Almost Teenage Girl

http://theteenagegirlthoughts.blogspot.com/

The Popularity Papers of 6th Grade

http://sixthgradepopularitypaper.blogspot.com/

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1. In particular, I have been advised not to apply to any top school because there is virtually no chance in hell that I will be accepted.  Thanks a lot, people, I appreciate your words of support!  But seriously, these people who give such advice are trying to help: by being realistic about the odds, one is more likely to be accepted to a school with good people that does not get the same deluge of applications that the so-called top schools get.

Which school is a top school is different in each field, but it should not surprise you to hear that, depending on the field, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, Oxbridge are on the list.  The point of the advice is that there are many other excellent schools in any field you care to name that are not one of the short list mentioned above.  And that is true.  The counterargument, however, is that America has always been elitist and it may only be those who attended the elite schools who will be offered a chance to participate later.