Welcome To The Sorwellance State

August 8, 2013

A U.S. citizen living in the U.S. is not supposed to have her emails fleeced by the National Security Agency. Even when communication crosses the borders the NSA is only supposed to read the emails when one side of the communication is a foreign "target". But then someone at the NSA read George Orwell's 1984 and confused it with a manual.

Thus we learn that the NSA collects and searches through everything that crosses the borders. The helpdesk and accounting of your phone provider has been outsourced to India? Well, there you are. The NSA will sniff through all your communication with them. The remote radiological diagnosis of your computer tomography is done in Great Britain? Write an email to that radiologist and your mail will be read by not only him:

The N.S.A. is not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas, a practice that government officials have openly acknowledged. It is also casting a far wider net for people who cite information linked to those foreigners, like a little used e-mail address, according to a senior intelligence official.

The NSA and the secret FISA court, in a secret opinion, have redefined the word "target". For them it now means "possible information about a possible target". As "possible information about a possible target" might be in any email or web-dialog crossing the border all of those are searched. The NSA will search for email-addresses, telephone numbers, certain keywords or “selectors” that are somehow "related" to possible "targets". Should by chance some accounting number in your email be similar to a "suspect" telephone number in maybe Timbuktu your email will be stored and forwarded to a human analyst. If that analysts somehow finds any information in your email that is "of interest" she may store it and/or forward it to other agencies. Next a police SWAT team raids your home in 3, 2, 1 …

So while the NSA is supposed to target only foreigners by this new definition anything that might give somehow some information about a "target", even when completely unrelated, can and will be searched.

The NSA collects the data it wants to look through by copying and collecting all data streams on international fiber cables and probably also national ones. But it does not call this "collecting". Because the data (allegedly) is deleted if it was unsuccessfully searched for certain "selectors", the NSA argues, there is no "collecting" happening at all:

The senior intelligence official argued, however, that it would be inaccurate to portray the N.S.A. as engaging in “bulk collection” of the contents of communications. “ ‘Bulk collection’ is when we collect and retain for some period of time that lets us do retrospective analysis,” the official said. “In this case, we do not do that, so we do not consider this ‘bulk collection.’ ”

That senior intelligence official is doubleplusgood versed in newspeak. "Bulk collection" is only when the NSA stores it for retroactive search. But in previous cases the NSA argued that not even storing for retroactive search is a "collection". That "collection" only happens when the stored data is sniffed through. So which is it?

On Tuesday Obama claimed:

“We don’t have a domestic spying program”

As in NSA newspeak "relevant" does not mean relevant, "target" does not mean target and "collecting" does not mean collecting we will also have to pass Obama's sentence through the de-Orwellifier:

"We don't have" means: "Others have"? "It's outsourced"? "We don't have yet but will have tomorrow"?

Not "domestic" means: "It is a universal program and it does not make that distinction"?

Not "spying" means: "Read your mail only to prevent terrorists killing you?" ".. only to prevent crime"? ".. only to prevent tax evasion?"

Not "a program" means: "There are several active projects"? "There are machines"?

Looked at this way Obama's claim "We don’t have a domestic spying program" is NSA newspeak consistent with the sentence "We pay Booz Allen Hamilton to run several projects that search through all global communication, including yours, to prevent all people who communicate from whatever bad be might think of."

Welcome to the sorwellance state.

Posted by b on August 8, 2013 at 13:39 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Palm to forehead: Finally saw the “Orwell” as the pun. Took me awhile, and I’d even had my morning coffee….sORWELLance state. Heh.

Posted by: jawbone | Aug 8 2013 14:09 utc | 1

Let’s not get hung up on the details: they collect everything and they store as much as they can. The only barriers are technological.
Do they have the capacity to store everything?
Do they have the ability to collect everything?
And the answers are that if they do not, they are soon going to. Their aim is a total surveillance society: the panopticon.
And they are very close to achieving it.
Where they are lagging behind is in the analysis and processing of the data. And one reason is that they lack the intellectual self awareness and critical faculties required to analyse masses of data in a productive manner.
That is really the catch 22 of this ruling class: greedy, treacherous, shortsighted, dishonest people are not very good at understanding anything that doesn’t communicate directly and immediately with the taste buds or the genitals. These criminals need brains: you can’t torture the truth out of billions of bits of information.
It is the historic duty of the hip to insist that these pigs puzzle it out on their own.
As the old miner’s song goes,
“There’s not a woman in this town row
Who will look at the blackleg miner.”

Posted by: bevin | Aug 8 2013 14:23 utc | 2

And what the NSA doesn’t collect on their own, other countries send them. Lookout b.
http://rt.com/news/germany-nsa-sharing-surveillance-179/

Posted by: ben | Aug 8 2013 15:08 utc | 3

Re: Lake’s “clarification” of his conference call metaphor.
So, now reporters use metaphors not to enhance the readers’ understanding of issues, but state them as hard facts in order to bamboozle them.
Do they teach that in journamalism schools or is it training by the Surveillance State (aka sORWELLance state)…for journos who want to keep their jobs?

Posted by: jawbone | Aug 8 2013 15:19 utc | 4

Obama is such a gigantic cry-baby.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/president-obama-cancels-moscow-trip-tensions-signaling-cold-19901723
Obama, its not Russia but YOU that are using the spy tactics of the cold war.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 8 2013 15:51 utc | 5

The Nazis, those that preceded and followed for some time, were reduced to singling out ppl / groups according to the the very slim information available, religious / ethnic / national belonging. (See the US camps for Japanese, or just recently Sarkozy crusade against the Roms), mental status (severely handicapped etc. see also the USSR and schizophrenia.)
Moral degenerates have always been a favorite, but this category is based on behavior, secret signs (like for witches), and self-proclamation, or occupation – prostitution, thievery, etc. (See resurgence of State homophobia in Russia.)
A last category has been a target: the Poor, for their squalor, poor parenting, ugly speech, lack of hygiene, etc., as a danger to ‘society’ more than the ‘State’, and yet.. Keeping them under the thumb of Mister Man was a priority.
The serious Enemies of the State were defined as belonging to political groups, associations, rings, such as Communists, the Resistance, etc.
Now sure the Stasi and the like – that is why it is always mentioned – went further in collecting info about contacts, about social circles, about pol opinions, etc., but they did it with informants and feet on the ground. Countries like Switz. built up considerable dossiers on their residents, post 1950, thorough and collated… All kinds of info. in those.
What happened when much more info was available, and ppl became not just someone in the present, but responsible for all of their past and affiliations?
For a long time, not much, though the Anglo world pursued scoring and marks in a big way – SAT scores, credit scores, traffic violations, etc. – past records, criminal, employment, etc. – but not much more as classifying ppl by nationality, religion, ethnicity, pol. opinion became infra dig thanks to the Jewish lobby and Civil rights movements. Not that others don’t do this, but the Anglo type has a special flavor.
With the intertubes it becomes possible to collect much more data. So all the categories become combined, ex. USA:
– Political dissidents, activists in one area or another (animal rights ppl are a target), refusniks and trouble makers, demonstrators, protestors, fringe politics, Unionists and Communists again, ppl who resist arrest, Occupy, etc.
– Muslims, foreignors, illegals, Mexicans, Minorities, the Chinese (somewhat), overstays, Muslims bis
– Moral degenerates: Pedophiles (even if only a few pix of naked daughter and son on the hard drive)
– Registered convicted – offenders – drug involvement, other offenses, petty crime, to favor the prison industry
– Anyone, under the label of suspected terrorism.
– Anyone, under the suspicion of association with any of the above
Next – hackers, leakers, whistleblowers, etc. This a sore point: the PTB cannot countenance that others might have access (or better access) to what they consider their info. Playing a catch-up game.
Last, the poor are not a threat. They are managed by Social Services and the Authorities or aren’t visible at all, and aren’t active on the internet, they have no voice.
It looks like the enemy within in the USA is reaching like 60% or more of the population!
Not flash news.

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 8 2013 16:24 utc | 6

Something that has always intrigued me, Noirette, is psychometric testing. There was a fad for it in interwar Germany; it was there that it was invented and given its name. And the german Jews took it with them to the zionist entity, where it is still omnipresent: all school-leavers have to do an elaborate psychometric test, and it determines their career opportunities. It becomes part of their lifelong official profile, their bureaucratic ID, so to speak. The psychometric test is basically a personality inventory. The idea of measuring the dimensions of someone’s personality, ‘objectively’, with a pen & paper test, seems to me to be completely screwy, and bound to lead to cultism, irrationality and bureaucratic corruption. And to build it right into the educational system seems to me to be an appalling invasion of privacy, apart from its nonsensicality as an idea. But as far as I know, no-one in Israel has ever tried to mount a campaign against this thing; they just accept it, passively. Imagine the effects if that was introduced in the US.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 8 2013 16:38 utc | 7

Pogo was dead on right. “We have met the enemy and he is us”.
This pathetic state of affairs of the “sorwellian” state is because of every citizen in the west who have abdicated their sovereignty.

Posted by: ab initio | Aug 8 2013 16:43 utc | 8

ab initio@8
*Pogo was dead on right. “We have met the enemy and he is us”*
2nd time I have heard this quoted recently. As I read it quoted it was immediately followed by this
“Humanity is the worst obstacle to it’s own higher learning. More then anything else that might be cited (such as language skills or imaginative facilities) this is what makes our species unique. We are encouraged by society to serve and perpetuate the given order, not the higher order of evolutional striving”
quoting ab initio again
*This pathetic state of affairs of the “sorwellian” state is because of every citizen in the west who have abdicated their sovereignty.*
It’s easier that way

Posted by: Penny | Aug 8 2013 17:24 utc | 9

Excellent post , b –Just a typo to mention: your very last sentence: it should read
“..to prevent all people from any bad [they] might think of”.

Posted by: Copeland | Aug 8 2013 17:44 utc | 10

“to prevent all people who communicate from whatever bad [they] might think of.”

Posted by: Copeland | Aug 8 2013 18:06 utc | 11

At risk of being hobby-horsical:
Noirette’s post regarding the use of information to monitor, for example, parenting, reminded me that just as Bentham was trying to sell his panopticon project to the state, his contemporaries, the Protestant Evangelicals, were involved in massive projects to monitor the lives of the poor in order to regulate “charity” and stamp out “vice” while doing so. They and Bentham’s followers were allied in this and in the development of mass education (indoctrination) as means of producing a docile biddable population.
This was in the first third of the nineteenth century, the years in which Victorian attitudes were founded.
At the same time police forces were being introduced in Britain and the use of spies and agents provocateurs to control and destroy radical and trade union movements was widespread.
One of the consequences of Bentham’s failure to persuade the state to adopt the panopticon was his conversion to the idea of Universal Suffrage, not because he believed in democracy but because he and his disciples saw representative institutions as the means to enable them to win the mandate to rule according to utilitarian principles and liberal economics. Liberalism is rooted in an elitist distrust of popular rule together with a sense that democratic institutions are easily manipulated, and constitute the most robust form of dictatorship.
As Jay Rosen at http://pressthink.org/ points out one of the core questions that Snowden has raised is that the government (and this applies generally) has concluded that it is now necessary, for its own preservation, to exclude the public and its elected representatives from public debates. They have no right to participate in them or even to learn what they involved. “Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die…and pay taxes.”
One of the more curious initiatives of Tony Blair had to do with his plan to nip crime in the bud by identifying criminals in the womb. This would require, of course, not only a weird theory but vast amounts of data about the parents etc.
The movie Minority Report, may just make more sense viewed now.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 8 2013 18:53 utc | 12

Plutocracy has gotten lucky twice. Its first great enemy in the world was Communism, and its second (and current) great enemy is Islamic fundamentalism. In both cases, the inimical ideology is even more repugnantly authoritarian than plutocracy. Also, in both cases, the inimical ideology serves mainly as a framework for ideas. The emotional energy driving the resistance is nationalism–the passion not to be ruled by foreigners, or the bought native agents of foreigners.
Terrorism might be defined as “violent resistance to the imperialism of plutocracy.” We as Americans will never be free of terrorism as long as plutocracy owns the US government, and uses that government as its primary instrument of spreading and enforcing plutocratic imperialism.

Posted by: Cynthia | Aug 8 2013 20:14 utc | 13

As far as psychometric testing goes I’m pretty sure it had completely fallen out of favour in most western countries by the late 1980’s. It had enjoyed a brief resurgencce in the early stages of globalisation when politicians desperate to find any ‘cure’ for the rising unemployment they had created with their free trade bullshit, mass hired psychologists to cure the unemployed.
That didn’t work surprise, surprise, consequently psychometric testing fell by the wayside and social ‘scientists’ of many ilks joined the queues of unemployed.
However right from early on in the GWOT, the forces of darkness have been bulk hiring anthropologists and psychologists (what was that story about the armed anthropologist in Iraq killing some innocent in Afghanistan? That’s right the anthro got sorted – he copped probation for killing an unarmed unwhite) to give their rape, torture & plundering a patina of academic legitimacy.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see a mob of psych profs who have lost tenure due to the current downturn in enrolments for their hoodoo voodoo, developing a Meyers-Briggs algorithm for id’ing ‘terrorists’ (in conjunction with a mob of former wall st maths whizzes, laid off after those simple algorithms caused the GFB – everybody to their own ~~lurk~~ sorry discipline) to run across everyone’s email, phone calls and social network postings.
It would be amusing if it weren’t for 21st century reality.
Thirty years ago when the psychs didn’t deliver they were just quietly ‘let go’. That can’t happen in today’s world, there will have to be some results whether or not they are correct.
An unrandomly selected mob of net users are bound to be rounded up and tossed in the slammer forever, on the basis of some fucked up algorithm written by drunks, dipshits & desperates.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 8 2013 22:22 utc | 14

damn sub editing is a bitch – no the anthro didn’t shoot from thousands of clicks away-both were in Afghanistan.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 8 2013 22:24 utc | 15

Yes, psychology has a major role in that whole issue; in fact, it probably is at at its very core.
The more I think about it, the more I see how far and in diverse directions we’ve been led. The truth is actually strikingly simple I think.
When analysing something one major criterion is whether a hypothesis does match, and match all known givens.
What are the givens?
– zusa is lying. Stating a truth is exceptional for them and confessing an error, a crime, or a weakness is simply outside of the imaginable for them.
– zusa isn’t about quality, it’s about image; their highest leaders in gov., business, and even military aren’t the most professional but the mst talented bullsh*tters, PR bots and liars.
– zusa isn’t about quality but about quantity. For the smallest burglary they send half a dozen patrol cars, when a dozen of their “elite forces” attack a small village in the mountains they bring in air support, and for questioning some mom and dadabout googleing “pressurecooker” they send a full swat team in full gear.
The solution is strikingly simple. That whole nsa (and whatnot) thingy is – b wrote about that very smartly a while ago – a panopticon. But the striking point is the reason.
During the last years they found out that “their” darpa toy, the internet, which they shared with universities and later meant to employ as another mighty weapon in being “leaders” and controlling the world, behaved like a teenager, it went out of control.
Killing it off, except for military use, wasn’t an option anymore. Commercial interests would have went to war against that; after all there are hundreds of billions, possibly trillions to be earned.
Now, what does usa do, when they can’t control their baby anymore nor kill it off?
First: Lie. Act as if you could control it. And be sure to do it big way, aggressive and bragging.
Second: Whatever you do, do it massively.
And that’s what they did. *Not* because they can collect and analyse everything – but because they can *not*.
Think militarily! It’s not important whether you have a batallion at some point. It’s important that your opponent *thinks* you have it there. This is even (way more) true with citizens. It’s not important whether you can control them, it’s important that they think you can control their every step and are afraid.
German a. merkel “confessed” the real point by saying something like “the internet is a new territory”. *THAT* is their real problem and it shows again and again and again in pretty everything governments try to undertake in that new territory.
They have millions of policemen, secret service agent, gestapo, they can block roads, raid houses, and observe or submit people – in the real world.
And that’s the reason for the panopticon, which actually is a special panopticon, one with an exit door for the citizens, an exit door to the old world, the world governments are comfortable with.
This whole issue isn’t about orwell and perfect control – it’s about desperate, helpless and completely overwhelmed governments trying anything and everything to herd us back to the playground they can master and control.

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Aug 9 2013 0:20 utc | 16

Terrorism might be defined as “violent resistance to the imperialism of plutocracy.” We as Americans will never be free of terrorism as long as plutocracy owns the US government, and uses that government as its primary instrument of spreading and enforcing plutocratic imperialism.

I love it Cynthia. Those two sentences sum up my thoughts and my attempts to pithily express them. My best clumsy attempt so far has been to claim the problem is not primarily the government but the power elite who buy and control it.
Thanks.

Posted by: juannie | Aug 9 2013 1:24 utc | 17

Maximilian Forte ‏@1D4TW 7m
Another U.S. cable lists #Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network (ZESN) as a USAID partner ( http://bit.ly/17B0RI7 ) #ZimElections
Maximilian Forte ‏@1D4TW 8m
#Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network (ZESN) coordinates election monitoring with U.S. Embassy ( http://bit.ly/134CsyL )
Maximilian Forte ‏@1D4TW 8m
U.S. lists #Zimbabwe’s ZESN as a partner of USAID’s Democracy & Governance program ( http://bit.ly/134Cg2k ) #ZimElections
Maximilian Forte ‏@1D4TW 11m
#Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network (ZESN) received funding via U.S. Economic Support Fund ( http://bit.ly/17B0q0l ) #ZimElections

Posted by: brian | Aug 9 2013 2:33 utc | 18

what is the best way for a needle to hide in a haystack? throw in a bunch of needles.

Posted by: too many wtf | Aug 9 2013 7:11 utc | 19

With the fall of the USSR, Western Plutocrats were freed from the possibility of a workers revolt. They seized control of government. Unregulated greed was unleashed. A never ending war against Islam commenced. After the 2008 Crash instead of being written off, private investments that had gone bad were converted into government debt. Austerity was imposed; cutting spending for jobs and entitlements.
How could the new Robber Barons continue to rip everyone else off when in the past the bourgeoisie revolted after losing privileges to the aristocracy? Enter propaganda, big data and technology.
Civilization requires taxes, government, and the rule of law. Most of all, it depends on the consent of the people. The new plutocrats are so isolated from reality that they believe they can rule the world by force, salesmanship and cash donations with no concern for climate change, peak energy, over population, unemployment or indentured servitude.
In truth, the consent of the people can and will disappear. The Mandate of Heaven is just as applicable to the West as China.

Posted by: VietnamVet | Aug 9 2013 7:27 utc | 20

#20. Succinct, well written. Like.

Posted by: DM | Aug 9 2013 7:45 utc | 21

Edward Snwowden’s email provider shuts down:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130808/13092724113/ed-snowdens-email-provider-lavabit-shuts-down-to-fight-us-govt-intrusion.shtml
Silent Circle follows by shutting down its email service:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/08/silent-circle-follows-lavabits-example-shuts-down-its-secure-e/

Posted by: Jeff65 | Aug 9 2013 8:51 utc | 22

Plutocracy has gotten lucky twice. Its first great enemy in the world was Communism, and its second (and current) great enemy is Islamic fundamentalism. In both cases, the inimical ideology is even more repugnantly authoritarian than plutocracy. Also, in both cases, the inimical ideology serves mainly as a framework for ideas. The emotional energy driving the resistance is nationalism–the passion not to be ruled by foreigners, or the bought native agents of foreigners.
– Posted by: Cynthia | Aug 8, 2013 4:14:05 PM | 13

In my opinion, Islamic fundamentalism is not the great enemy of plutocracy at all, but its largest and most useful fifth column, throughout the currently contested area, the so-called MENA, North Africa and the Middle East, aka ‘the Muslim world’. Nationalism is a secular ideology, and as such an enemy of the Islamic fundamentalists. The Muslim Brotherhood, which at the time was a tool of the British Secret Service, having not yet passed into the hands of the CIA, tried to kill Nasser scores of times. I consider all Islamic fundamentalist organisations to be covert assets of the West, and in fact they seldom attack Western targets. Generally, they attack targets belonging to secular nationalist or Shi’ite, ‘apostate’ rivals in local power politics, which is what the British set them up for. But only their leaders are conscious double agents; the rank and file ‘militants’ or ‘terrorists’ are useful idiots, who may sometimes slip out of control and start attacking western targets more than the CIA would wish. Merely attacking the US Army, as in Iraq or Afghanistan is not something the CIA will lose much sleep over, unless it becomes really massive in scale. It makes them consummately credible, since few people can imagine how unconcerned the CIA is at US Army fatalities (“The US military are dumb, stupid animals, to be used as pawns in foreign policy” – Henry Kissinger). The CIA prefers to run them via a Gulf state secret service, such as the Saudi Mukhabarat, which gives deniability. This makes it possible to tell the western public that they are financed by rogue millionaires in the Gulf over whom the Gulf governments concerned have no control. In Saudi, these rogue millionaires are described sometimes as ‘princes’, even. But the idea that the Saudi government (or equally, the UAE or Qatari govt) is incapable of identifying and stopping these mysterious rogue millionaires from funding supposedly empire-menacing guerrilla armies all over MENA is thoroughly implausible, when you actually stop and think about it, which is something you are not supposed to do, and something the mainstream media certainly never dream of doing.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 9 2013 9:47 utc | 23

Noirette @ 6 — Re: going after “activists”
In Pennsylvania, the state “Homeland Security” type investigative group, part of the state police, iirc, were infiltrating anti-fracking groups. Environmentalists are listed by the Feds as possible terrorist groups.
It looks like the Corporatists have the power of the state, and now its surveillance tools, to help them overcome any resistance, be it political, organization, scientific, informational, etc., to their objectives of making as much money as they possibly can. Completely unfettered by concerns about future impacts on the planet and its populations, devoid of a sense of community and fairness.
In Obama’s health insurance profit protection legislation, lumbering awkwardly toward implementation, Big Health Industry players get the power of the IRS to ensure people must buy health insurance, the poorer forced most likely into the crap insurance as the only one they can afford (unless they’re among the poorest, which means they can get some help toward paying or get on Medicaid). OR they will be fined by the IRS. All statements concerning income carry perjury penalties if the applicants make mistakes which misstate their income.
The government data collection agencies, most premised on “security” needs of the state, but others as well, want to track every financial transaction made by everyone. The better to…? Have information which can be used against them? Find tax scofflaws among the lower economic quintiles? The wealthiest have plenty of advisers, accountants, and lawyers who create plausible deniability for them or out and out tax havens.
The end goal is control and the ability to threaten anyone who steps out of line and challenges the Powers That Be.
Economic policies which decimate the middle class has the added benefit of making it financially and time-wise extremely difficult for people to gather together to make united stands against the unfairness of the massive upward redistribution of wealth to the Tippy Top One Percenters, mostly.
All part of controlling the masses.

Posted by: jawbone | Aug 9 2013 13:38 utc | 24

@23, yep, the Reds have alway been Enemigo Numero Uno to the Plutos. Islamic fundamentalism will never bring down Capitalism. The haves and have-nots is the main division in society, not the believers and the atheists.

Posted by: ruralito | Aug 9 2013 13:57 utc | 25

“This whole issue isn’t about orwell and perfect control – it’s about desperate, helpless and completely overwhelmed governments trying anything and everything to herd us back to the playground they can master and control.”
It’s a cup half full or empty thing. Which means that, yes, you are correct. But the context, burgeoning ecological disaster coinciding with a global roll back of workers living standards and a massive seizure of peasant owned and common properties, is what is important.
The empire/state, (and zusa does not hack it as a description of it), realises that it is caught up in an existential crisis. Capitalism has imploded, is imploding in slow motion, and the pieces have to be strapped back together.
The forces tending against the empire are vast: the ‘middle class’ in north America is eroding rapidly, leaving depression, bitterness and anger where Norman Rockwell used to lurk with his pencil. The Socia

Posted by: bevin | Aug 9 2013 14:12 utc | 26

Sorry, I hit the wrong key. Then lost the re-write. Must return to work.. the line of argument is clear enough.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 9 2013 14:30 utc | 27

re #24 In the zusa state of wisconsin,you must PAY for medicaid…

Posted by: bfrakes | Aug 9 2013 15:00 utc | 28

@23
Islamic fundamentalism is one of those odd ‘end of politics’ sort of movements that lacks any soul or real course. The only purpose it seems to serve is as a pressure relief valve for authoritarian country’s locals angry about their miserable elite. And it works, it works really fucking well! Bin Laden was upset at the King letting Americans set up a base in Saudi, and instead of having his boys fly a plane into the royal palace, they fly it into some random office tower full of british expats in new york. What the hell.

Posted by: Crest | Aug 9 2013 15:36 utc | 29

bevin (26)
You explain what for they do it, why they need the herd controllable. I looked at the question, why they can’t endure an uncontrollable herd.
But I agree with you. And I add (to and along your line):
a) a handfull of media is controllable – the internet isn’t which extremely threatens and weakens their hold as well as major means of brainwashing and psyops.
b) they need a quite exact level of knowledge in the herd. Enough to be useable as workers but little enough to stay victims without an escape option. This is also threatened by the internet.

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Aug 9 2013 15:50 utc | 30

Bin Laden was upset at the King letting Americans set up a base in Saudi, and instead of having his boys fly a plane into the royal palace, they fly it into some random office tower full of british expats in new york. What the hell. Posted by: Crest | Aug 9, 2013 11:36:11 AM | 29

I’m sorry, and I know this is a subject everyone is sick of, but it remains relevant: I am convinced that 9/11 was a completely fake event. It would be tedious indeed to list all the multifarious evidence for this, which falls into a large number of different compartments, but I sincerely hope every one has already cast their eyes across most of it.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 9 2013 16:00 utc | 31

@31
Amen Rowan… Amen.

Posted by: Crone | Aug 9 2013 16:51 utc | 32

NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens’ emails and phone calls

The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens’ email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.
The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans’ communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian the NSA’s authorities provide loopholes that allow “warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans”.
The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA’s dragnet surveillance programs.

Not yet the big one. The above is only for the stuff they suck up at the borders. My hunch is that they also suck up stuff within the U.S. that is pure U.S.-U.S. communication. When that is revealed things should get interesting.

Posted by: b | Aug 9 2013 16:52 utc | 33

b (33)

My hunch is that they also suck up stuff within the U.S. that is pure U.S.-U.S. communication. When that is revealed things should get interesting.

Theoretically.
Realistically though, there would simply be yet another “terror attack”, quite probably somehow linked or linkable to electronic communication. This would distract (or overload) the attention of most americans. The rest could be taken care of thanks to “temporarily necessary” EOs or other provisons.

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Aug 9 2013 17:11 utc | 34

Austin, Texas, is under a terror alert today. Infowars is the place to keep up with this: http://www.infowars.com/austin-texas-braces-for-al-qaeda-terrorist-attack/

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 9 2013 17:21 utc | 35

terror alerts.
yep, yep, yep.

Posted by: cosmo | Aug 9 2013 17:27 utc | 36

#Yemen official: US #drones kill 12 in three airstrikes http://buff.ly/15UnOb6 via @ndtv pic.twitter.com/LOLkeZ0wvy
and still no jihad on US

Posted by: brian | Aug 9 2013 18:08 utc | 37

@31
I don’t think it matters wether it was an inside job or whatever. There’s no real difference between incredibly overzealous extremists and talented false flaggers, see Algeria. The Bush administration reacted like they’d been praying for something like it to happen. If 9/11 hadn’t happened, they would have found some other justification for the patriot act and attacking Iraq.

Posted by: Crest | Aug 9 2013 18:18 utc | 38

Rowan #35

Austin, Texas, is under a terror alert today. Infowars is the place to keep up with this: “>http://www.infowars.com/austin-texas-braces-for-al-qaeda-terrorist-attack/

I wouldn’t for a second suggest that Gary Trudeau divined this for his strip this morning (although he has over many years seemed quite prescient about unfolding events) but I find the coincidence uncanny.

Posted by: juannie | Aug 9 2013 19:53 utc | 39

> Rowan at 7.
Psychometric testing, from IQ to ink blots to ‘modern’ snazzy tests of creativity / smartness and the like, were, and still in a way are, hugely popular, as hopefully serving to dope out ‘real personality’ to complement a simple life history, degrees, skills, etc. Looking, peering deeper, that kind of stuff.
Results of these tests compared to other factors only show that more education, more knowledge about the tests, more conformity, and yes more vocabulary knowledge led to ‘higher scores.’
Practically all research has shown that in the job arena such tests are beyond useless. (The results of the test don’t predict anything about the working life / performance of the person.) Interviews and a few months trial are far better predictors, if one is interested in comparing, which in itself is a strange way think about things.
For success in school/college the picture is more set in stone, as expectations tend to create outcomes, those in charge have more power.
The testing is all BS though it serves to enforce conformity across the board.
These kinds of tests today are very varied and may masquerade in many guises, new names, new forms.. yet have somewhat gone out of favor as ‘indicators’. What replaces them would be another post.
Testing for excellence (Isr.) or to exclude…? See a literacy test for Black voters, designed for all to fail, 1960.
http://tinyurl.com/owhfjt8

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 9 2013 22:08 utc | 40

@31 – I’d love to talk about this actually. I’ll hit you in the next open thread. I won’t dare do it here as I know it’s the comment thread equivalent of throwing a hand grenade into a crowded room.

Posted by: guest77 | Aug 10 2013 0:56 utc | 41

Oh fuck, if u two are gonna re-hash 9-11, could you both F off and do it somewhere else?
Seriously, the level of conversation here has vastly improved lately, and i doubt anyone wants to hear either of you trotting out your pet theories regarding this.
Pretty much everyone here knows 911was fake.
Can you not just leave it that?

Posted by: OhLordy | Aug 10 2013 8:54 utc | 42

Mr Berekley has his own website, i hear.
You can both duke it out there if you like.
DO feel free to post frequent updates to let us know who’s winning, m’kay?
That’d be truely awesome of you both.

Posted by: OhLordy | Aug 10 2013 9:02 utc | 43

I often wonder why no-one can be bothered to spell my name right. It seems deliberate.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 10 2013 10:19 utc | 44

Actually, more to the point, you’ve imported a level of sarcasm, ill-humour and inattention that wasn’t present in the thread up to this point, even to your sarcastic nickname, which you seem to have invented specifically for these comments. There is no indication in his or her comment that guest77 is disagreeing with me, let alone that either of us has any need to ‘duke it out’, or duke anything out, here or anywhere else. Perhaps you have never posted on here before, but have a particular axe to grind regarding 9/11 which has nothing to do with the thread, the discussion, or the website. Perhaps your sarcastic cliches (particularly your second comment) are SOP for a particular sort of professional paid troll, whose job (puerile though it seems) is to deter people from ever discussing 9/11. Perhaps some pathetic army unit pays you to do this. It wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing surprises me any more when it comes to the stupidity of the Pentagon.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 10 2013 10:48 utc | 45

Yeah . . . “perhaps”
OR
Perhaps, like most people, i’m just not in the least interested in reading your pet theories bout 911 on MOA
You’re more than welcome to blog about it and post a link here though
That way i can simply coose to not click on it, like most others here will probably choose to do.
Is there really anything either you two could possibly say on the subject that has not been said a million times already, by someone else, somewhere else?

Posted by: OhLordy | Aug 10 2013 11:42 utc | 46

@46 Maybe you’re right, I doubt there is harm to be done though – aside from your apparent possible heart attack.
I respect the people here and wouldn’t like to be a bore, but you’re being pretty presumptuous to tell other people what they can and cannot discuss, especially considering no one has said any thing yet.
The proper response to a bitchy, presumptuous wanna-be internet moderator is something like “go fuck yourself” I think.

Posted by: guest77 | Aug 10 2013 14:36 utc | 47

And the same to you sir

Posted by: OhLordy | Aug 10 2013 14:41 utc | 48

The hottest response I’ve had recently was on an Israeli site. After a certain amount of disagreement between me and all present regarding the fundamental aspects of Israeli religious sociology, someone said to me: “Stfu and go your way, clown.” That’s one to treasure, I think.
🙂

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 10 2013 15:02 utc | 49

Not to rile up ppl about 9/11 a topic I sort of steer away from for obvious reasons. The Snowden affair alerts to other mostly neglected whistle-blowers who have left the US and are facing extradition procedures.
One of these is Kurt Sonnenfeld, at present in Argentina.
He was a FEMA employee and has (reportedly) 22 hours of film from the 9/11 site. Wiki and news etc. don’t seem very informative, this vid. tells his story – yes from his end but it lays out the events so… – and shows a little ‘unknown’ 9/11 footage.
http://vimeo.com/49181206

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 10 2013 18:42 utc | 50

…
For tonight’s entertainment: (as we watch the sun go down on America)

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 11 2013 1:07 utc | 51

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