*Another* Day that will Live in Infamy

Historians have long wondered, how, as late as December 1941, with a world war raging, and a litany of Japanese grievances against the U.S., the officers and sailors at our principal Pacific naval base  were all sitting around with their thumbs up their butts, the ships berthed cheek-by-jowl, an impossibly alluring target.

A secondary puzzle was, did FDR have any advance intel that such an attack was likely, but ignored it?   (Let us set aside the conspiracy-theory that he knew but let it happen.) If so, he would take a seat beside Stalin, who likewise had been remarkably lackadaisical with respect to Nazi Germany, which had been waging blitzkrieg, but from whom he felt safe, owing to the piece of paper known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.  Stalin actually did have warning, from Japan-based master-spy Richard Sorge, and quite precise warning at that:    “Der Krieg wird am 22. Juni beginnen, ” a message sent on 15 June.   This was ignored.

Toleja so ...

A lesser-known possibility is that Washington did receive warning of an impending sneak-attack, and indeed from Sorge’s circle.   A Comintern memoirist who had repeated contact with Sorge  writes:

Kurz vor ihrem Hochgehen in Tokio   gab die Gruppe “Ramsay” [i.e., Sorge] noch eine hochbedeutsame Meldung  an zwei Adressaten durch:  Moskau und Washingtron.  Gewiß gelangte sie auf auf den Schreibtisch Stalins, vermutlich nicht auf den Schreibtisch Präsident Roosevelts:  die Meldung, daß die Japaner  ohne Kriegserklärung  auf den wichtigsten Flottenstützpunkt der USA im Pazifik, Pearl Harbor, für Anfang Dezember  unter strengster Geheimhaltung  vorbereiterten.
-- Ruth von Mayenburg, Hotel Lux (1978), p. 144

She goes on to state that Sorge’s Yugoslav coworker Branko Vukelić tipped off an American friend as to the impending attack, to no avail.

In any event, the lesson of 7 December was not promptly learned, for on 8 December, in the Philippines, another branch of the service was likewise caught with its breeches down.   Let Professor Wiki tell it:

Even though tracked by radar and with three U.S. pursuit squadrons in the air, when Japanese bombers of the 11th Kōkūkantai attacked Clark Field at 12:40 pm, they achieved tactical surprise. Two squadrons of B-17s were dispersed on the ground. Most of the P-40s of the 20th PS were preparing to taxi and were struck by the first wave of 27 Japanese twin-engine Mitsubishi G3M "Nell" bombers; only four of the 20th PS P-40Bs managed to take off as the bombs were falling.

A second bomber attack (26 Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bombers) followed closely, then escorting Zero fighters strafed the field for 30 minutes, destroying 12 of the 17 American heavy bombers present and seriously damaging three others. Two damaged B-17s were made flyable and taken to Mindanao, where one was destroyed in a ground collision.

A near-simultaneous attack on the auxiliary field at Iba to the northwest by 54 "Betty" bombers was also successful: all but four of the 3rd Pursuit Squadron's P-40s, short on fuel and caught in their landing pattern, were destroyed No formal investigation took place regarding this failure as occurred in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. The Far East Air Force lost fully half its planes in the 45-minute attack, and was all but destroyed over the next few days, including a number of the surviving B-17s lost to takeoff crashes of other planes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines_Campaign_(1941%E2%80%9342)

Thus, not only December seventh, but December eighth,  is draped in crape.

Ungainly Acronyms

The thing we’re trying to do, to prevent another 9/11, keeps getting rebranded.

Stylistically, the low point came with the designation “GWOT”, which stands for “Global War on Terror”.

Those who prosecute this mission, normally pronounce it “GEE-watt” (though the acronym has largely fallen out of use);  but I persist in pronouncing it as a monosyllable,  the gwot -- rhyming with blot, not, sot, rot, snot, and other words less respectable still.   “How goes the gwot?” I greet those thus engaged.

An even uglier acronym (if such be possible), likewise self-important in origin, was used, satirically, against Hitler:

Before it was over, his commanding generals  were referring to him bitterly as Gröfaz:  a name ugly enough to have served some monster of mythology, some twisted kobold or goblin  embodying and spreading evil.  In actuality, it was a contraction of the title that General Keitel bestowed upon the Führer  in June 1940:  Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten.

-- Gordon Craig, Germany 1866-1945 (1978), p. 714

As to the pronunciation of this ungainly confection:  it is best described as something between a grunt and a groan, followed by an escape of acrid gas.
(For a similar exercise in non-IPA transcription, cf. the case of "oahspe".)
[More empirically:  GRU-fahts, with "U" as in "put".]

For a nice rhyming poem about this unusual creature, click here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/08/gare-le-grofaz.html

*

Für psychologisch tiefgreifende Krimis,

in pikanter amerikanischer Mundart,

und christlich gesinnt,

klicken Sie bitte hier:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

*

The US military-diplomatic world  abounds in acronyms pronounced phonetically as words.   Another ungainly one, designating (so to speak) the “Gröfaz” of the United States, is POTUS;  he rules over CONUS.   -- In the opening episode of “West Wing”, a young fellow gets an emergency call on his cell, explaining to his girlfriend that it is from “Potus”.  She said the fellow should learn not to call at ungodly hours, and moreover “Potus” is a strange name.  “It means ‘President Of The United States’”, he explains.

Note:  The pronunciations of such things is normally alphabetic-phonetic, rather than etymological.  Thus CONUS (meaning, ‘the Lower 48’) is pronounced CONE-uss, with long “o”, even though it is from  CONtinental United States, with short.

~

Und nun:  HoGeSa.

Further, re Cambodia in May 1970:

Formation d'un gouvernement en exil, le GRUNK (gouvernement  royal d'union nationale du Kampuchéa).

-- Mémoires du XXe Siècle , vol. 8, 1970-1979 (Bordas, 1989), p. 56

.

Code Red !

This morning,  the deck-chairs  look like snow-thrones  for polar bears.

            Code -- Red!

            Rest in bed.

            Time to soothe

            your sleepy head.

{ for more about the lovely snow,

   gently press …    here …. }

Why not spend this morning  learning everything there is to know
about our invisible snow-chums, the snowbunnies ?? 

https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/snow%20bunnies

“A Delicate Truth”

It is not axiomatic, that the ideal Vorleser of a work  should be its author.  (One would not wish to sit through a performance of Heart of Darkness, or A Brief History of Time, under those terms.)   But  David Cornwall turns out to be a perfect interpreter of John Le Carré, in a recent audiobook recording.

Three of the secondary characters have a distinct local accent:  Glaswegian, Welsh, and Irish.  His rendition of these  fixes in pleasure and memory, what are in any event well-sculpted personalities.  The Welshman, who shows up one day in a remote village, rickety caravan in tow, and with a mysterious past (and demons lying inside), is a reprise of the Jim Prideaux character, who so memorably opens Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Two of the central characters -- professional diplomats -- have professionally and personally  rather flat affect.  (Again, cf. TTSS's Smiley.)The author is sufficiently confident about his own work, to let that happen, without worrying that we’ll be bored.

The story-arc hangs together nicely, moreso than in most of the thrillers we have waded through.
The novel (published 2013) is quite in tune with the times, in selecting, as theme, the beating-up on contractors in the defense/intel field.

Footnote:  The title of the book is as smarmy as that of  An Inconvenient Truth.   But it is a sight better title than Our Kind of Traitor , which we critiqued here.   One wishes to believe that neither stemmed from the author, but were foisted upon the novels by some publisher's underling (chained  drooling  in the basement, and let loose only for such functions) who normally has the last word in such marketing-related decisions.

Bait and Switch

John le Carré’s  Our Kind of Traitor (2010)  begins as auspiciously as any mystery-thriller in memory.

Among the chief pleasures of the mystery genre, is that the reader walks through its world with heightened senses:   Every oddity, each detail, may be a clue;  and the mind gathers them up  like a squirrel stashing-away nuts.    Ultimately, these clues need to cohere in some plausible way, or the reader feels cheated -- we have wasted our time.  But getting there is half the fun.

The old Cold War master’s recent novel  deftly adds another layer to that.

First, we meet an English academic couple, vacationing on a Caribbean island.   They meet a seemingly rich but rather louche Russian -- or rather, he scrapes acquaintance, via a dubiously ingratiating resort manager.   They agree to a game of tennis.  From there, things get a little strange, but not in a way that you can quite put your finger on.

So far so good -- the set-up is reminiscent of those superb opening scenes in David Mamet’s movie thriller-cum-puzzlebox “The Spanish Prisoner”.

But now comes the next narrative layer.

In the second chapter, the story suddenly breaks off, and we unexpectedly find ourselves amid the brick walls of a basement room, where our vacation-pair is being patiently, expertly interrogated;  it is unclear by whom.   This interlude lasts but a paragraph, as though a mental fugue, then we are back on the island, to resume the game.

Then again, we are back in that blank basement room.  Narratively, it is a flash-forward. The two interrogators have acquired names;  the interrogees  are wary but cooperative.   Are they themselves suspected of wrongdoing?  -- At this point, the rather dreamlike switching between the original “real-time” tennis-story, and this eerie alternate venue, is atmospherically quite effective, and reminiscent of William Kotzwinkle’s elegantly structured  The Exile.

Evidently the interrogators already somehow know a vast though lacunary amount  about some equally vast but perplexing conspiracy  that centers on, or at least involves, the Russian.   As in a police procedural, they proceed through the recounting of a seemingly innocent random tennis-match,  whose (bored) spectators consisted of the Russian’s friends and relations.  The female interrogator asks the wife:

“So where were the wee girls located at this point?  Below you?  Along the row from you?  Where, please.”  (Urgent italics in original.)

Somehow, such details are ineffably important.  The reader grows increasingly intrigued.

~

Only, it turns out the whole thing is an authorial scam.  None of those details come to really matter, most are unexplained;  and the only reason the interrogators even have a clue about the island events  is that the vacationers brought them a tape made by the Russian.   In other words, there was not some intricate pre-existing intelligence project, with Analyst-Notebook-style webs of interconnections  lining the walls;  so all that guff about where the wee girls sat  and the like, was just flimflam.

At that point, the only twist that might have saved the plot  would be if the interrogators turned out not to be MI5  (as we, and the vacationers, had assumed), but rather (in a false-flag situation) some sinister group connected to the Russian.   But no such luck.

In the end, the book does not deserve the category of mystery-thriller, but merely thriller (generally a lesser genre, except in cinema),  and not a very thrilling one at that.

Post-scriptum:
Given that le Carré spent decades writing about British counterintelligence, and given the history of Kim Philby and his fellow-moles, the title Our Kind of Traitor quite definitely should point to a Cambridge Five kind of scenario, in which an English agent covertly working for the nation’s enemies  is tolerated far too long, since he is “our kind”, one of the Old Boys, the Right Sort.   But nothing of it.  There are no traitors here, Cantabridgian or otherwise;  the title seems to have been imposed by the publisher, on a whim or by mistake.

~     ~     ~

By way of somewhat compensating  for even having taken up your time with all this,  here are a couple of snatches of “found poetry”  quarried from the course of three hundred pages of prose.

In the road above the basement,    an ambulance tears past,

and the howl of its siren

is like a scream for the whole world’s pain.

~

The rain was rattling like hailstones   on the car’s roof.

The windscreen wipers   groaned and sobbed

as they tried to keep up.

~

Holidaymakers   with sticks and sunhats

peered into windows   of souvenir  shops.

Tableau!

[For additional reviews, see  The Thriller Literature.]

[Update] In 2019,  le Carré published a better novel, though again with a bad and ambiguous title:  Agent Running in the Field. That could be read with run as either transitive or intransitive: "Agent-running in the field"; "Agent, running in the field".  And neither fits the plot.
Once again we begin with a court game, in this case badminton; and once again, the Russkies figure prominently.   Only, this time he got it right.

Do those who prepare the PDBs, labor in vain, to penetrate the Presidential bubble?

Some Presidents (like Obama) have been very open to detailed factual analysis from the diplomatic corps and the  IC, whereas others (like Clinton) pretty much blew them off.

As to the current situation -- I have nothing to say.  But again, a niblet of history.  The time is October, 1961:

[The US ambassador to Vietnam] concluded that Kennedy relied much more on news reports  and the impressions of intimates, than he did on the yards of cables he sent from the embassy  each day.

-- Richard Reeves, President Kennedy:  Profile of Power (1993), p. 240

The I’s have it (or, ISIS it is)

A couple of years back, when the media was confused about the labels ISIL versus ISIS, I posted a politico-linguistic explanation:

   http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/isil-vs-isis.html

Summary:

(1)  The expert bodies that had been following the group from the start (State Department, IC) used ISIL, where the “L” stands for “Levant”, which is the closest equivalent to the term in the Arabic name for the group,  al-Shâm, which includes Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine.

(2)  Since that is what he’d been hearing from his briefers, that is what President Obama said.

(3)  Possibly by confusion with the name of the goddess Isis, along with the unfamiliarity of the term Levant among the laity, the popular media took to using ISIS, despite the fact that this term singles out only Syria.   (As a sideshow to this, certain conspiracy-minded lo-info voters tried to read some nefarious significance into President Obama’s continued use of the term ISIL, that he and his discussion-mates had been using all along.)

But now we have a new POTUS -- one who, for most (or actually, still all) of his life, has paid more attention to the pop media, than to academia or the State Department.  And he says “ISIS” -- just like they do on TV.

Accordingly -- and gracefully -- government entities have bowed and followed suit:  where previously their briefing-papers used ISIL, now they use ISIS.

The IC thus arrives, by a circuitous route, at exactly the position advocated by The New Yorker a year ago:  to speak “ISIS” with the vulgar, but to maintain an academical-casuistical mental reservation, to the effect that the final “S” stands not for “Syria”, but for… al-Shâm.

 And thus does language evolve.

“Wes Brot ich ess’,  des Lied ich sing’.”

Given recognition at last

[Footnote:  An alternate explanation, that you’ll hear around town,

is that the use of ISIL was nixed because people couldn’t figure out how to pronounce it.  Some IC miscreants were even pronouncing the word to rhyme with pizzle.  (Look it up.)  And this, despite our wise guidance here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/09/isilisis-update-to-pronunciation-wars.html

Wa-Llahu-a`lamu.]

~

Actually -- there's a bright side to the switchover to “ISIS”:

(1)  That “Levant” business was always a stretch on ISIL’s part.  They never did get a real foothold outside Syria.

(2)  As for any association with the goddess Isis, that’s great:  any depiction of that goddess, ISIL would destroy on principle, so quasi-“naming them” after her  can only annoy them.   (For similar reasons, some people say Da’esh, since ISIL doesn’t like it.)

A propos of nothing at all;  added merely to annoy ISIS

. 

Non-Acronym of the day: “Jason”

The saga of Jason and the Argonauts  has spun off some delightful dubbings.  One, the “Argo” escapade, we discussed here.   Another was the secret elite group of physicists called Jason.  

An intrepid historian of science  ran down the true etymology, after an initial (indeed, “initials”) red-herring:

I asked my husband’s physicist-colleagues  “What’s Jason?” and collected the following:  Jason is an acronym fof July-August-September-October-November, the months this group of academic physicists   met secretly to solve the problems  the Defense Department couldn’t.

-- Ann Finkbeiner, The Jasons (2006), p.  xii

That suggestion quickly dissolves  in the universal solvent of Common Sense:

These stories I didn’t believe.  An acronym for months sounded silly.  [But more tellingly:] Academics couldn’t meet that long during the school year because they had institutional responsibilities.

-- id.

Another false-lead was the assertion that Jason was named after one of the members’ family dog.   Not.  The true story she tells on pages 39-40:  the wife of one of the members chose it, after the Greek myth -- most appropriate for a group that was going after the scientific equivalent of Golden Fleece.

The author adds some linguistic details:

“Jason is both a collective and a proper noun:  if you belong to Jason, you are a Jason.” (p. xiv)

Jason is usually capitalized [completely],  JASON, as though it were an acronym.  I have no idea why -- maybe because, written like a name [with only the first letter a capital], it might be taken to be a personal name.  I shall not capitalize it.

(p. xxviii)

Another reason it was initially written all-caps is that DoD and the IC often so style cover-terms.

~

The choice of Jason as a group name  is typical of the playfulness of physicists.  When DoD does the dubbing, the result is likely to be humdrum. As,

The task force was called the Defense Communications Planning Group, or DCPG, a name chosen for its meaninglessness.  (p. 77)

When a secret project does get a lexical designation, this may be chosen precisely to throw off anyone to whom the term might get leaked.  Thus, the Manhattan Project:  so named because it had nothing to do with Manhatten, and indeed was centered at locations far from any city.  One of the things they worked on (my Dad did, for one) was called “Tube-alloy”, a nicely misleading alias for uranium (which is an element, not an alloy).

Lawrence Livermore monostich

a glowing yellow tent   against a black sky

and a laser shining   straight up to God

[Source: Ann Finkbeiner, The Jasons (2006), p. 166]

“Red Mercury”

Re the age of alchemy:

Many authors chide the reader, telling him that, if he uses common mercury, he will be wasting his time;  instead he should use ‘the mercury of the philosophers’, our ‘our mercury’.

-- M. P. Crosland, Historical Studies in the Language of Chemistry (1962; ²1978), p. 26

There is a curious contemporary parallel to this, in the terrorists’ will-o’-the-wisp “red mercury”, a mythical WMD.

More on Renaissance cover-terms -- alchemical COMSEC:

There were many cases where the name of a substance … was definitely misleading, by falsely suggesting its composition.  For example, the term cinnabar of antimony suggests a compound of antimony, whereas the name was applied to red mercuric sulphide, prepared from antimony sulphide and mercuric chloride.

-- M. P. Crosland, Historical Studies in the Language of Chemistry (1962; ²1978), p. 88

Otnemem

[Note:  “Otnemem” is Western Bulgarian dialect for “Who am I?”]

[Meta-note:  That's a joke.  If you came here to read about the fine film "Memento",
here is where you want to be:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/01/redismembering-memento.html  ]

This morning, under circumstances exactly the same as for “Die Vermessung der Welt”, I saw what turned out to be a quite good and little-known movie, this time not about math, but about … Hackers (German for ‘hackers’, and pronounced  “Häckers”).   To add spice to it all, the movie was both (mostly) set, and seen, in a “skiff”.

The title of the movie is “Who Am I – Kein System ist sicher” (…. ‘no system is safe’).  Now, that’s the German title.   As an English movie-title, “Who Am I” would mean something quite different, and uninteresting.   But:  German.   What to conclude?

In German, the title is clever.   At the simplest level, it has its English meaning:  for the hackers are all, like Anonymous, anonymous, daring you to divine their identity.   But additionally:  in German and any other language, computer commands for sophisticated programming languages written in English, retain their shape in other languages;  so, the Unix command   whoami, which gives back your username, is the same in German (and not “Wer bin ich”, unless you go to the trouble of writing a whole extra interface).   -- For a really good movie-title, the producers would simply have left it at that;  but for practical reasons, for a German audience, they felt they needed to show that it was indeed a German-language movie.

"Wer bist du?"   "Wer bist *du*?"

The film turns out to be much more trickily plotted, and carefully interwoven, than one expects.   After having gradually grown disgusted by the red-herring plotlets that lead nowhere, in “24” and others, I really appreciated this. 

Example:  The protagonist, a sort of Peter Parker character (and later seemingly not one, and later maybe sort of after all), is first seen in the company of a lone IC interrogator.   He has confessions to make (he says), but first he wants to do a David Copperfield, and tell us all about his tragic life.  (That ploy strikes one as either merely human, or -- taking matters one step meta -- a scheme to curry sympathy from his captors;  but actually, it turns out to be much more meta than that.  And I can tell you this much, without it being a spoiler, because you’ll never guess.  Though at the end, it all does make sense.)  He trots out a forgettable little metaphor about hacking/online-masquerading being like magic-tricks;  and performs a humble one, involving four cubes of sugar that become one cube, and then four again.   And that easily-dismissible interlude turns out to be a schema for the plot-surprise of the whole movie.  (Again, no spoiler:  I dare you to guess.)

His interrogator, and the audience’s principal representative of the IC,  is a woman (no longer quite young, though celibate and, in this case,  barren), like Carrie in “Homeland”, or the heroine of “Zero Dark Thirty” (and the threatened senior in the upcoming Bauerless “24”), along with many a more forgettable recent offering.   Now, I’m no particular fan of affirmativeAction-Movies, especially when they go so far as to distort old classics (recasting Dr Watson as a woman, or Sherlock as gay);  but in this case, not only is she entirely plausible in the role, but her gender ultimately plays a (quite unexpected) role  (and no, it isn’t some tired trumped-up love-interest)  in the tricky ending to the plot.

~

This just in!

Reaktionen nach Cyberangriff auf Bundestag, IT-Experten kritisieren mangelnden Schutz vor Hacker-Angriffen, NSA-Untersuchungsausschuss vernimmt Kanzleramt-Mitarbeiter, Juristen kritisieren Vorratsdatenspeicherung

http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/sendung/ts-8645.html

The movie could not be more timely.

~

Before even delving into the structure and execution of the film, certain basic ‘vital statistics’  tell in its favor.

* I’ve often knocked the prevalence of the “serial killer” as a central figure in movies.  Serial killers -- apart from being vanishingly rare in the actual landscape of crime, let alone of history and society as a whole -- are inherently uninteresting, since, being psychopaths, they fall outside the Christian calculation of morality:  a serial killer is not so much a real villain like Donald Trump or Richard the Third, as a mere Godzilla.

By contrast, hackers are increasingly prevalent, almost ubiquitous -- in post-industrial societies, almost everyone’s life has been effected, directly or indirectly, in multiple ways.  (My own, for example, by Chinese hackers, in the headlines just this morning.)   Most of them are reasonably complex people, with a sense of right and wrong -- though the sinful Superbia that can easily infect them as they exult in their expertise, can pervert them ever further from their initial path.  This movie follows a group of hackers  from the inside, neither romanticizing nor demonizing.

*  Unlike “24”, which grossly abused the trope, season after season, “Who Am I” features no moles, no Mr Big (the one character who seems as though he might fit that latter bill, is poignantly, almost comically deflated at the end).   People’s motivations for their sketchy actions are quite comprehensible, a mere tweak to the everyday;  no unmotivated treacheries serving as a diabolus ex machina to keep a wheezing plot going.

* While definitely a thriller, the movie does not rely on violence to supply the thrills.   The closest we get is a brief glimpse of three still images that show only edge of what seems a murder scene (but which turns out to be something else).   It would not need a rating more restrictive than PG-13 -- and indeed, in Germany, it was explicitly recommended for schoolchildren. (“Der Film wurde über die SchulKinoWochen für die Unterrichtsfächer Deutsch, Politik, Sozialkunde, Ethik, Informatik, Philosophie, und Psychologie ab der 8. Schulklasse als Unterricht im Kino vorgeschlagen.” -- Wikipedia.)

~

As in “War Games”, the jeune premier and his love interest Meet Cute;  a nerd, he tries to woo her with what mite he has to offer, hacking her school’s computer to improve her grade.   Later, another motif from that movie is borrowed -- using Visitor’s Pass status to penetrate a highly sensitive secure (not) facility.

The nod to the “Spiderman” movies is even more explicit:  the marginalized young man dreams of being a Superhero.   The actor actually looks like Peter Parker, and plays the part throughout -- never turning (implausibly) into someone like Spiderman;  which is why this movie, though fiction, is woven strictly from patches of reality, whereas “Spiderman” is mere fantasy, barely above the level of onanism.

[Fortzusetzen …]

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

[In observance of this Memorial Day, we repost an appreciation from  Veteran's Day 2012.]

~

In the atria of some of our clandestine services, stands a wall with the names of those who died in harness, while serving their countries:  but who cannot be publically acknowledged, out of concern for the larger covert mission. (For a similar instance, see here: http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/11/discretion.html)  The epitaph reads:  “They Served in Silence”.

Today, Veteran’s Day, marks remembrance of those who served in uniform.  Their masses are too vast to comprehend:  and so instead we adress a numinous symbol of this very vastness, and of the unriddlable mystery of history:  the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.   He stands as a mute metonymy  for all who have served or will serve.

There is, in addition, a depth-psychological dimension to this which, for that very reason, is difficult to put into words.  (Lacan may be pleased to pretend that “the unconscious is structured like a language”, but it certaintly does not speak English or French).   This numen poked his head up in antiquity, in the Temple to the Unknown God.

Footnote:

As it happens, France today is likewise commemorating fallen warriors, on the anniversary of the armistice of the Great War:

http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2012/11/11/11-novembre-hollande-rend-hommage-a-tous-les-morts-pour-la-france_1788945_823448.html

Apple is Evil

Don’t get me wrong -- Apple isn’t particularly more evil than a lot of other tyrannical behemoths;  it has a lot of competition in that department.   But with the news of the iPhone6 with i0S8 offering semi-unbreakable encryption with no law-enforcement back door, it has brazenly allied itself with criminals.

Already the new phone has led to an eruption from the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey. At a news conference on Thursday devoted largely to combating terror threats from the Islamic State, Mr. Comey said, “What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to hold themselves beyond the law.”

He cited kidnapping cases, in which exploiting the contents of a seized phone could lead to finding a victim, and predicted there would be moments when parents would come to him “with tears in their eyes, look at me and say, ‘What do you mean you can’t’ ” decode the contents of a phone.

“The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened — even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order — to me does not make any sense.”

Apple declined to comment. But officials inside the intelligence agencies, while letting the F.B.I. make the public protests, say they fear the company’s move is the first of several new technologies that are clearly designed to defeat not only the N.S.A., but also any court orders to turn over information to intelligence agencies. They liken Apple’s move to the early days of Swiss banking, when secret accounts were set up precisely to allow national laws to be evaded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/27/technology/iphone-locks-out-the-nsa-signaling-a-post-snowden-era-.html?_r=0

If that kidnapping scenario should come to pass (and that is not in the least far-fetched;  we’re in the middle of one right now in Charlottesville), and someone dies because of Apple’s giving the finger to law enforcement, they will be in the position of Dr Strangelove, whose very clever Doomsday Machine  had unanticipated consequences.   Only, these are easy to anticipate.   Felony accomplice before the fact?  Apple execs in handcuffs, or assaulted by an enraged mob?

(Justy to clarify, in case it isn’t obvious:  It’s fine that everything on the phone is encrypted, bravo; fine that a court order should be required to obtain the keys to unlock the encryption.  What is not fine, is that the keys should nowhere exist.)

~

To get hold of a perp’s cell, you usually have to catch the perp;  and that cuts down on the number of times a “ticking bomb” scenario could arise.  But there are plenty of possible scenarios in which law enforcement would have a legitimate reason to access the contents of a cellphone, even one that did not belong to the criminals or their accomplices.

Thus, to stray no farther than the University of Virginia case already mentioned. …

[To be continued]

 

For some schadenfreude:

http://www.euronews.com/2014/09/26/launch-of-iphone6-staggers-from-disaster-to-derision/

For Cato the Elder’s take on other evil Apple antics:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/08/flash-apple-declares-bankruptcy.html

[Disclosure:  Writing this on a Mac … ]

Idea for a Screenplay

Appointment in Tirana

(1)   The supreme head of the [named apostolic entity redacted] no doubt receives hundreds, if not thousands, of utterly bogus threats per year.  Some are pranks, others are from disturbed persons with no genuine capacity for effective action.

Then one comes in, and then another, purportedly (though who can verify a case like this -- it’s not as though there’s a press-office; and anyone can sign a name) from an unlikely source.  But:  said source having been enjoying a certain notoriety in the news of late (which indeed it craves, and seems to live for), a brief back-page notice is issued in the press, and is largely forgotten.  For their part, the entourage of [redacted] dismiss concerns, and announce that they will proceed with the voyage as planned.

(2)  Meanwhile, in a semi-darkened tower, in the corner of a cubicle in what looks like a kind of half-abandoned warehouse, a young man in uniform (for purposes of the screenplay, we may call him “Bob”) stares at the river of pixels as it races past his eyes.   He is tired;  he has put in a long day, he yearns for the embrace of his sweetheart at home.   Yet something tells him to push it just one pace farther.  Then something catches his attention.  It seems a little odd.

Certainly, by itself it means nothing;  but then, you never know.  He shrugs, and sends it on.

Mostly, it is ignored.

(3) Shortly thereafter, an aging and rather eccentric individual (whom the screenplay can feature as “Doctor Jay”), having meant to retire before now  but put that day off  for one reason or another, notices both items, and realizes that they make more sense together than apart.  He studies the matter, without reaching any definite conclusion.  But he continues to turn the matter over in his mind, with growing alarm.

A few days later, something happens on a faraway island continent, and suddenly all the pieces seem to fall into place.

Exceeding his brief, and risking rebuke, he frantically tries to bring the matter to the attention of [deleted], [minimized], and [redacted].   No-one responds.

(4)  Meanwhile, on another continent, in a mountain redoubt, a sinister figure, clad all in black apart from a glinting golden timepiece encircling his hairy wrist, stares at the latest handwritten courier communication  with narrowed eyes.  He gives only the most imperceptible of nods;  but his minions pick up the signal.  The op is a go.

Synchronize your watches ...

(5) Simultaneously, on the top floor of the palace, an elderly figure in a white skullcap practices his big speech before an antique gilded mirror.  What an occasion this will be!   He hopes the weather will be fine.

(6)  Halfway around the globe, in a little town in Iowa (sun shining brightly above, with radiant unconcern), a tiny child drops its lollipop on the sidewalk, stares at it with round eyes, first of incomprehension, then of of dismay;  and bursts into tears.  Little does he realize that he will ere long have greater cause for weeping, which shall mark the fate of his entire generation.

(7)  [Need to somehow work in the love-interest or it’ll never get airplay.  Our screenwriters are working on that angle.]

Phrase of the Day: “Immaculate Collection”

With near unanimity, the public has voted in favor of the following program:

(1)  Have our cake.

(2)  Eat it, too.

Today, the DNI made an uncharacteristically snarky comment;  as connoisseurs of snarky comments, we offer it to the discerning palate:

Clapper concluded with a sardonic account of his job as captain of a leaky intelligence vessel, buffeted by what he called a “perfect storm.” He said the agencies under his command, including the National Security Agency, had to “throttle back” on some intelligence collection “because we need to recover foreign intelligence partnerships and commercial partnerships.”

“We are accepting more risk in this country because of that,” Clapper warned. He offered a caustic mission statement, which he repeated publicly Thursday: “We are supposed to keep the country safe, predict anticipatory intelligence, with no risk, and no embarrassment if revealed, and without a scintilla of jeopardy to privacy of any domestic person or foreign person. We call that ‘immaculate collection.’ ”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-we-underestimated-the-islamic-state-james-clapper-says/2014/09/18/f0f17072-3f6f-11e4-9587-5dafd96295f0_story.html

Officiant:  All in favor of “Immaculate Collection”, say “Aye”:

℟ :  AYE !!!!!!!!!!!!

Officiant:   All who actually understand the issues at stake, say “Yea".

℟:  [silence in the room].

The Ayes have it.

.

Spionageaffäre

"The cabinet noir  introduced, in a curious way, the Open Diplomacy  advocated by the enthusiasts of the League of Nations."

Whenever a storyline crops up  such as the recent [redacted], sparsely reported, I always check the Readers’ Comments at e.g. the WaPo, since a number of local readers will have information beyond what the hapless reporters are aware of or are willing to reveal.  But such is the squawking of the public square, in our day and place, that any intelligent or revelatory commentary  is likely to be swamped by knee-jerk Obama-bashing.   Today is no different; no comment is required.

But it is interesting to see how our Deutsche Freunde are taking all this;  remarkably, with considerable skepticism and good-humor, for the most part.  I have frequently had occasion to quote the Comments of the alert and witty Figaronauts;  here, the readers of the Frankfurter Allgemeine  likewise do not disappoint.

 

~

[Sponsored content]

The Foreign Excellent Trenchcoat Company:

Clothiers to gentlemen since 1917

~

Herewith a sampling, chosen  as ever  with a view to spicy umgangsprachlich expression, here highlighted for the benefit of Deutschlernende:

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/nach-neuem-spionagefall-berlin-fordert-cia-repraesentanten-zur-ausreise-auf-13038277.html

Puuuh... [NDLR: apparently a German equivalent of Gallic “Booooof ….”] … jetzt geht es aber wirklich zu weit!! Erst diese völlig überzogene Aufforderung an den amerikanischen Nachrichtendienstrepräsentanten Deutschland zu verlassen und dann verschiebt der Steinmeier auch noch seinen Besuch in Washington... wir wollen mal die Kirche im Dorf lassen! Echt jetzt! Ist ja nicht so als hätten uns die Amerikaner jahrelang nach Strich und Faden verarscht...

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Ich vermeide eigentlich Mensch-Tier-Vergleiche,weil sie an eine unselige deutsche Epoche erinnern.  Dennoch kann man im Fall "Ausgespähtwerden durch Freunde" von einer Made-im-Speck-Situation sprechen.Die Freunde schalten (im Wortsinne) und walten hierzulande an mehreren Horchposten nach Gutsherrenart und spähen Bürger und Wirtschaft dreist aus.Werden sie dabei erwischt,"möchten" sie sich "dazu nicht äußern" oder nennen die Losung

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( ich gehe davon aus, dass unser Geheimdienst auch nicht so unbescholten ist - innerhalb der USA). Das ist ein Geplänkel einer Reaktion - es löst nicht das Hauptproblem dieser Schnüffelei.

---

Nimmt diese Erbärmlichkeit denn kein Ende.

"Die Bundesregierung schämt sich, die Hoheitsrechte unseres Landes verteidigen zu müssen. Wir bitten daher alle Staatsfeinde, endlich das Land zu verlassen. Ihre Anwesenheit hier ist unerträglich für unsere PR."

Landesverteidigung Marke Schwarz-Rot.

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Nee, Leute, wir treffen uns an der Glienicker Brücke

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Von wegen "das Land verlassen". Nein, da sind jetzt harte Bandagen gefragt. Wen wollen wir denn austauschen? 5 von unseren gegen wieviele von denen?

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Sicherlich haben die "Erstklassigen" vor der Entscheidung über die Ausladung in Washington angefragt, wie man reagieren könne. Ausschlag gebend war dann daß der Mann sowieso nach Hawaii wollte weil er die Golfplätze um Berlin nun zur Genüge kannte

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Eigentlich egal, ob nun die NSA, CIA oder ein anderer der vielen Geheimdienste der USA die Finger im Spiel hatte.
Da die USA Deutschland als Bundesstaat der USA zu betrachten scheinen, warum leitet die Regierung nicht gleich alles weiter? Treten wir doch den USA bei. Hieße aber bezüglich der EU vom Regen in die Traufe zu kommen. Diverse User bescheinigen den USA Beschützermentalität und das Deitschland unter den Atomwaffenschirm schlüpfen darf. Der Besitz jener ist Deutschland verboten. Also Ansage an die USA, wir bauen auch welche zur Abschreckung. Fast jeder Dritte Weltstaat hat sie, warum wir nicht auch? Deutschland soll ja angeblich mündiger werden! Also packen wir es an! Das Deutschland sich an einen sterbenden Hegemon klammert verstehe ich nicht! Es gibt besseres!

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Wann sind wir endlich in der Lage uns vollständig von der Ex-Besatzungsmacht zu emanzipieren?
Snowden#s Asyl wäre ein Zeichen - alles andere ist Augenwischerei!

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Nach dem 11 September und der Proklamation des Bündnisfalls wurde den Amerikanern durch unsere damalige Regierung des Ausspionieren genehmigt. Die Amerikaner agieren vollkommen legal: Sie können in Deutschland alles und jeden abhören. Die Bundesregierung weiß das natürlich auch. Ihre Erregung ist eine bemerkenswerte schauspielerische Leistung.

Die Grundlage ist der Artikel 3, Absatz 2 des „Zusatzabkommens zum Nato-Truppenstatut“ vom 3.
August 1959.

Vollständiger Artikel auf DWN 7.7.2014. Sehr lesenswert.

-----

Mir scheint die meisten verwechseln das Wort Mut   mit einer kindlichen Trotzreaktion!

[Update 1 March 2015]  For a treacly, self-licking, autogynophilic view of the DGSE, check out the “exclusif” in today’s “For Dummies” section of Le Figaro:

http://madame.lefigaro.fr/societe/dgseparis-nid-despionnes-230215-94803?a1=DOL-761204&a3=77-7043883&a4=DOL-761204-77-7043883