GERMAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES DIRECTED TO LIMIT PROCUREMENT FROM ...
There was another geopolitical development recorded in the past few weeks as well. You'll recall that during the NSA scandal, China directed its various government agencies to cease procuring hardware from American companies, fearing infestation by "backdoors" and corrupted software. The fear is a legitimate one, for as I have noted in previous blogs, it was the deliberate "leak" of such corrupted software to the Soviet Union during the Reagan administration that caused a massive gas pipeline explosion - visible from space - in a Soviet Pipeline. You'll also recall that Russia also considered moving back to typewriters for creating sensitive documents fear from American snooping.
Now Germany has joined China in officially directing its intelligence services to limit purchases of American made hardware and software, and has joined Russia in considering the reintroduction of the typewriter to generate official and secret documents:
Germany Instructs Its Companies To Limit Cooperation, Procurement Orders With The US
‘No joke’: Germany mulls using typewriters to combat US snooping
Now, I'm an analogue sort of guy... I still think vinyl analogue recordings are much more faithful to the flattened compressed sound of CDs, and most readers here know my distrust of ebook platforms and the immense potential for corporations or governments to change an author's words or delete or add text at their whim, and claim it as an author's. Hence, my constant requests to all of you to buy books, and not the shoddy electronic and manipulable substitute for them (I mean, c'mon here... are you really going to trust a certain company whose CEO now attends Bilderberger meetings?). So, notwithstanding that all of us gain immensely from the digital and computer age, there's a certain part of me that gloats over the simple analogue solutions to the massive billions spent on electronic eavesdropping. Don't get me wrong. The IBM Selectric won't come back...the Russians and Germans will just build their own... and make sure to burn the cartridge tapes after using. And for good measure, they'll probably put their typewriter pools on separate electric grids to make sure the NSA doesn't try to read the keystrokes via the power lines.
But the real problem is highlighted toward the end of the Zero Hedge article:
"According to Bloomberg, the German chancellor’s office has issued instructions to national intelligence services to limit cooperation with U.S. following alleged U.S. spying case, Bild reports without saying where it got information.
"The newspaper also says:
- Instructions cover all activities not related to the immediate security interests of Germany and the safety of German soliders in Afghanistan, other foreign missions and terrorism threats
- Decision to ask U.S. intelligence representative to leave taken July 9 after the regular cabinet meeting at special meeting at Chancellery attended by Chancellery Minister Peter Altmaier, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, Justice Minister Heiko Maas and Interior Thomas de Maiziere
- Main reason for decision was failure of U.S. to cooperate in investigation of operations following revelations by Edward Snowden
- Foreign office subsequently gave U.S. Ambassador John Emerson 72 hrs to have U.S. agent leave Germany voluntarily or formal expulsion proceedings would be started against him
- Only 3 of the 218 BND documents sold to CIA were related to Bundestag espionage investigation
"That said, the US is hardly be too worried: after all it is a well-known "secret" that of all European leaders with a very checkered past, the NSA has all the goods on Merkel (and her proximity to the communist system in her DDR days), which can and will be disclosed using the proper channels at a moment's notice, with an appropriate (pre-vetted by the State Department of course) replacement in place should relations with Germany truly sour. It certainly explains why despite loud demands for a "formal espionage investigation", nobody in the German government has lifted a finger to find out just how deep the NSA rabbit hole goes."
For once, I'm in disagreement with Zero Hedge. Merkel, like virtually every other German from the former Eastern Zone, had some connection to the Communist party of the former German Democratic Republic.
But let's assume for a moment that Germans were mistrustful of their current Chancellorin on that basis, this does not necessarily mean that a Washington pre-approved Chancellor is waiting in the wings. After all, if Frau Merkel and her government were as much under Washington's thumb as the article avers, it is doubtful that even these actions would have been taken. The bottom line here is, that the Germans themselves are going to be more alive than ever to a careful vetting of all their political candidates, not just at their federal level, but also at the level of Laender politics as well. And slavish kowtowing to Washington probably won't be on the top of the list of electability.
And oh, by the way, did we mention France...?
See you on the flip side.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RuhmajHiexo
Anyone see this interview with an NSA insider who is claiming massive incompetence within the organization?
Granted, this could just be another way to defuse the tension over the Snowden stuff by claiming that the NSA is the Keystone Cops.
Back to the future huh, typewriters were some slick technology back then, but the main theme here is to stop snooping. How do you stop someone snooping, well you threaten them, Frau Merkel must be seen to be standing up to the western elites, but “typewriters” come on, that’s back to the past, and we all know how smart the Germans truly are. How about using smoke signals or morse code, that’ll fool em.
Several years ago I invented / patented ( and sold to NSA ) a nanochip that transmits ( via radionic-scalar-torsion waves — RSCTW ) a hologram of all pressurized movement ( e.g., writing on paper ) of a pencil or pen. Another embodiment of the invention is designed to work with typewriters ( each key has its own chip ). The RSCTW transmissions of EVERYTHING you write are recorded in an infinite-capacity artificial Akasa, also invented by me.
These devices are now embedded in all pens, pencils, crayons, and typewriters.
Now I’m filthy rich, and I have Hyper-Cosmic Security Clearance with a prepaid ticket to the Pleiades when the SHTF.
Sayonara, suckas !
P.S. The “C” in RSCTW is ultra-classified. But I can give you this clue : it means
While I realize you’re joking, such gear would not be embedded in say a pencil.
Off topic; but I recently finished listening to Dr. Farrell on Guns and Butter with Bonnie Faulkner. This was his first presentation(another was to follow the next day) and was edited to approx. 60 minutes. Primarily concerning the financialization aspects of the “Breakaway Civilization”. Excellent presentation[even in edited form].
http://kpfa.org/archive/id/104979
Where is one’s allegiance in these mercenary beginning days of the 21 Century? Indeed, have the mercenary mercantile ways and means ever changed? So is the Corporate State in charge? Or is the State Corporate, or the Corporate Global Hegemony? Are the public sphere being reduced to a hodgepodge of virtual realities, beamed globally across public heads, with corporatized 2×4 media platforms; insuring the people, that public has still not been privatized into non-existence? Is the managed perception been achieved that the public at large still exists? Have they been atomized into digitized social networks of bots? Or, Is it to be bots; or, not to be bots. Are the bots swarming those who have not been conformed, into the botized social sphere?
What I’m saying, is whether German, American, Or Mexican Or whatever being; it is the human being that lives in a free public sphere, this sphere is not owned by corporations or states. Those are but forms given by the consent of the people, to form, in a more or less, public sphere of liberty/freedom; NOT created for the purpose of destroying liberty/freedom in the peoples’ name – whether German, American, Mexican or by whatever means to an end.
(Boy, that’s some wicked Vodka I just drank.)
Robert, I dig this thought train. You should expand upon it; these concepts are vital. And we suffer a poor vocabulary to describe the platonic notions of the “commons” and the diverse permutations that our advanced age and social engineering manifest. Private and public, is not just critical to all these meta-thoughts but is the very dynamism that splits Americans into their progressive and conservative categories, where the former fears the encroach off the private and the latter the encroach of the public. But as demonstrated by astute observers of the FED, such an animal exists through the alchemical bond between the two, with one lending authority to the another and vice versa. Pope and King, Bank and State, etc…
Very astute Solfeggio.
Let’s do it.
[to be continued…]
Have you seen this web site Solfeggio?
http://privatizationwatch.org/
Solfeggio
You hit on so many hot buttons whose concepts are vital.
In language: when you want to destroy a people you take away their language. This is a DEEP subject matter because perceptions are shaped by culturally prefigured templates implanted in our minds w/o conscious awareness. To become critically aware of these ingrained images is not only an act of self-education; it is an act of self-defense.
What we currently have is an international coup d’état by Big Capital over the peoples of the world.
The extreme wealth & income are economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive, and environmentally destructive. Even nature herself is being privatized.
Yes, Max Keiser dwells on that particular of the alchemical bond being manifested in a Ponzi scheme kept afloat by more & more debt, more hypothecation, more lending between the plutocrims, etc.
By the way, did you know I’m a reader?
One book that expresses some of your observation in-depth, in novel-story form is?(drum roll….)
The Milkman
A Free World Novel
by Michael J Martineck
All the countries spy on each other, so I don’t understand the outrage that these people are displaying…they (including the Germans) spy on the US as well. Perhaps it’s just that the US makes a lot of the hardware and software that these countries use, so it makes it worse for them. I think there’s something else going on here.
I think Germans, etc didn’t take the mass collection, and sorting, of things like emails seriously. So it’s not getting the metadata thing for so long that’s causing these cries of “how could you?”
Just look how long it took for people to realize the huge abuses of search engines like Google. In the 90s, I’d figured out that improved search engines would be a big help for users of the internet.
Passing things like the Patriot Act didn’t help, it was obvious that it had huge abuses written into it.
As you realize I’m sure: None of what Snowden has revealed is real surprising.
There were reasonably well documented stories about Echelon in about 1999; it’s the same thing. (In 1999-2000 Echelon was simply dismissed as conspiratorial ranting.)
D:
Despite claims to the contrary, western Europe has had much more free hand to monitor things like banking, travel, and phone calls than the US has had–until the time that the internet made mass collection possible thru new tech.
It does a disservice to victims of the Nazis to claims the US establishment as nazified. There is a significant difference between Nazis and run of the mill totalitarian governments.
Irony the US establishment (Dulles brothers) did indeed support the Nazis.
So it’s back to future typewriters instead of word processors. The intelligence services of USA will have to go back to the pre-computer days of spying slow but when they get the hang of it will be business as usual. So hand me that hot dog top with mustard and victory cabbage and hand those victory fries.
Ah. I remember the day at work when I received my IBM Selectric with the built in correct type cartridge! The envy of those still punching away on and clattering with the manuals! The slam of the return carriage.
But I do date myself.
Now, where did I put my abacus?
I, too, got one of the first Selectrics for my job. I got a BLUE one! I was over the moon. It had TWO PAGES of MEMORY! It meant I could correct my mistakes on anything under two pages! That was HUGE at the time, as my job was typing carbon-set contracts and ONE MISTAKE meant throwing the whole thing out (and the forms were expensive) and starting over.
I guess I’m dating myself, too! 🙂
Thing is that editing is easier with word processor than with a typewriter. Hard to send emails from a typewriter or read this blog. Anyhow, at a level way above where Snowden operated, it’s likely possible to spy on individuals writing with pen on paper in a closed room–of course such capacity implies a different physics.
As for CDs, and vinyl sounds better, well most of the time, until a the last say 8 years it wasn’t possible to buy a CD player which played back all of the CDs’ capacities for less than a couple of thousand dollars. This has changed significantly in the last few years.
Then one can purchase much higher bit-rate, and higher frequency expression, downloads from sources like Acoustics Sound.
So many of the problems with digital music playback have indeed been solved, but it takes effort and sometimes money to access those capacities. But it is simply no longer true that a $400 turntable+$200 cartridge always produces better sound than anything but less than a $3000 CD player.
Now I can’t speak to what a $4000 turntable and cartridge can do with a good pre-amp, amp, connector cables, speakers and speaker cables, but that’s easily $8000 total. And then one still has to flip the record after 20 minutes. But then there’d be digital improvements to counter an analog advantage. So then turntables become $8000 items.
Thing is that editing is easier with word processor than with a typewriter. Hard to send emails from a typewriter or read this blog. Anyhow, at a level way above where Snowden operated, it’s likely possible to spy on individuals writing with pen on paper in a closed room–of course such capacity implies a different physics.
As for CDs, and vinyl sounds better, well most of the time, until a the last say 8 years it wasn’t possible to buy a CD player which played back all of the CDs’ capacities for less than a couple of thousand dollars. This has changed significantly in the last few years.
Then one can purchase much higher bit-rate, and higher frequency expression, downloads from sources like Acoustics Sound.
So many of the problems with digital music playback have indeed been solved, but it takes effort and sometimes money to access those capacities. But it is simply no longer true that a $400 turntable+$200 cartridge always produces better sound than anything but less than a $3000 CD player.
Now I can’t speak to what a $4000 turntable and cartridge can do with a good pre-amp, amp, connector cables, speakers and speaker cables, but that’s easily $8000 total. And then one still has to flip the record after 20 minutes. But then there’d be digital improvements to counter an analog advantage. So then turntables become $8000 items.
A bit of, well actually no, a lot of high end speculating here but could this be a deep covert ploy to hit the American economy really, really hard? For instance, now that it is public knowledge that governments are wary of American I.T software and hardware because of eavesdropping issues, how long will it be until the average man in the street (outside the U.S) starts looking elsewhere for his her hardware and software also?
What would happen to the likes of Microsoft, Dell, IBM and all the other significant players there in California if 300,000,000 or more people around the world stopped buying their products and how would it affect the American economy?
Just a thought.
Why do you think the Android OS and things like Gmail are free?
There might be some 70-year cycle here… after the Nazification of the US establishment, Germany itself is pulling the plug.
See above.