Less than 10% of Germany's SIGINT Spying Targets Terrorist
Sorry I've been AWOL. I've been on a trip to DC.
Among the things I did was attend a presentation from Konstantin von Notz, one of the Bundestag members who is investigating Germany's SIGINT spying in the wake of the Snowden leaks.
He…
Thursday Morning: Try
Where there is a flame, someone's bound to get burned
But just because it burns, doesn't mean you're gonna die
You gotta get up and try, and try, and try
-- excerpt, Try by P!nk
Racier than the usual video here, but I'm trying -- hence…
Wednesday Morning: Simple Past, Perfect Future
There are thirteen verb tenses in English. I couldn't recall the thirteenth one to save my life and now after digging through my old composition texts I still can't figure out what the thirteenth is.
If I have to guess, it's probably a special…
Tuesday Morning (Kind of): Assembly-Required Future
Sorry, gang, I've got a lot of balls in the air today and not much time to write. I'll try to come back as time permits to flesh out this post but no promises.
I've been thinking a lot about the future -- apart from the political realm, because…
Mullah Mansour Drone Strike: Important Milestone or Radicalizing Event?
How much more ironic could it be? More than 43 years after the last Americans evacuated Vietnam, ending our disastrous occupation there, the dateline reads Hanoi on President Barack Obama's statement today on the US drone strike that killed…
Monday Morning: Tarantela [UPDATE]
I could listen to this piece on a loop. It's Santiago de Murcia’s “Tarantela," performed by noted lutist Rolf Lislevand. The instrument he is playing is as important as the music and his artistry; it's an extremely rare Stradivarius guitar…
Testing The Limits on Wealth Inequality
In this post, I pointed out that we are going to see an empirical test of Piketty’s theory of rising wealth inequality. The theory itself is not well understood, and Piketty has revisited it since the publication of Capital in the Twenty-First…
Friday Morning: Mi Ritmo
Oye como va
Mi ritmo
Bueno pa gozar
Mulata
-- excerpt, Oye Como Va by Tito Puente
This Latin jazz song was on the very first album I owned -- Santana's Abraxas. I have no idea what possessed my father to select this way back in 1971…
Thursday Morning, Late: Like a Sucker Punch
It's true
That it kicks you in the teeth when you are least expecting
Bad news
Oh it beats you black and blue before you see it coming
-- excerpt, Bad News by Bastille
This little ditty seemed appropos for today. I'm surprised it was…
Imperialist Robert Kagan Disavows the Bureaucracy of Immense American Presidency He Championed
The chattering class is in love with this Robert Kagan op-ed warning of Donald Trump bringing fascism,
not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire,…
The Theory of Business Enterprises Part 3: Capital and Credit
In Chapter 5 Veblen takes up the use of credit. He defines credit as any money obtained from third parties to run a business, including the owner’s capital, but excluding profits. He disregards the form in which the capital is contributed:…
Wednesday Morning: Meet Me on the Floor
I admit it, I've betrayed my kind. I've been remiss in my responsibilities, haven't been equitable.
To fix that, you need a dose of estrogen, stat. This morning's medication is Veruca Salt's Volcano Girls.
Feel better soon, eh?
Wheels
Mitsubishi's…
SEC Says Hackers Like NSA Are Biggest Threat to Global Financial System
Reuters reports that, in the wake of criminals hacking the global financial messaging system SWIFT both via the Bangladesh central and an as-yet unnamed second central bank, SEC Commissioner Mary Jo White identified vulnerability to hackers…
For Second Year in a Row, HPSCI Tries to Gut PCLOB
As I reported, during the passage of Intelligence Authorization last year (which ultimately got put through on the Omnibus bill, making it impossible for people to vote against), Congress implemented Intelligence Community wishes by undercutting…
Tuesday Morning: Speed of Love
This video fascinates me. I've watched it a number of times since Nerdist shared it last month; it's the 24-minute long set by Freddie Mercury and Queen at the 1985 Live Aid concert held in Wembley Stadium.
Nerdist noted the audience's response…
Minh Quang Pham: FBI Continues Creating Terror Stories Assisted by Unrecorded Interviews
Minh Quang Pham, whom I dubbed AQAP's "graphic artist of mass destruction" because he was busted for providing graphic design skills to AQAP, got sentenced today; neither FBI nor SDNY have announced his sentence but it will be between 30 and…
CIA's Idea of Digital Innovation: Attempt (and Fail) to Buy an Existing News Service
A week ago Sunday, the WSJ reported that Twitter had cut off an In-Q-Tel funded company, Dataminr, from sharing data with the intelligence community.
Twitter Inc. cut off U.S. intelligence agencies from access to a service that sifts through…
Monday Morning: Falling
This morning feels like a fall from great height -- disorienting yet certain to end only one way.
Should have rolled over and gone back to sleep instead of mixing it up about politics during the wee hours. ~ yawn ~
The embedded video actually…
CIA Achieves a Whole New Scale of Torture Evidence Destruction
I once made a list of all the evidence of torture the CIA or others in the Executive Branch destroyed.
I thought it time to start cataloging them, to keep them all straight.
Before May 2003: 15 of 92 torture tapes erased or damaged
Early…
You Can Get Clearance If You Always Believed in the Fourth Amendment, But Not if You're a Fourth Amendment Convert
On Thursday night at 11PM, in advance of an Oversight and Government Reform hearing scheduled at 9AM Friday, James Clapper's office rolled out a new policy integrating the use of social media in security clearance reviews. Basically, the government…