NSA, Fallen Angels, Climate, and the Republic

Mail 777 Monday, June 10, 2013

On the data collection scandal:

SUBJ: Six lines . . .

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."

– Cardinal Richelieu

And now your every email and every board posting are available for the amusement of the Richelieus.

Like many others, I believe the Republic perished last November. We are now merely being presented the conqueror’s terms.

"An intelligent victor will, when possible, present his demands to the

vanquished in installments." – Adolf Hitler

With public outrage, the "Overton Window" now moves a fraction back to the left. But its architects are relentless.

I pray good men will rebel while they still can.

Cordially,

John

This is no time for rebellion. This is a time for regrouping and making sure that we win the 2014 election.

NSA whistleblower

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

The young man obviously knows little history and cannot put things into context.

NSA’s capabilities don’t really bother me. They are a pretty mission oriented group and both Cyber warfare and terrorism are real threats that make heavy use of modern communications. What bother’s me is the administration we have and it’s willingness to miss use their resources.

Phil

I am more afraid of the government than of terrorists now. I hope I am wrong.

A good overview of what NSA did and why

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/silicon-valley-doesnt-just-help-the-surveillance-state-it-built-it/276700/

Phil

I understand they had good reason for what they did. I still fear that the cure is worse than the disease.

And yet, none of this helped prevent the Boston Marathon bombing . . .

<http://theweek.com/article/index/245311/sources-nsa-sucks-in-data-from-50-companies>

——

Roland Dobbins

An afterthought: How did they really discover Petraeus’ and Broadwell’s emails? The story given at the time seemed wildly unlikely.

IE, does the political operation *already* have access to this database?

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald is claiming NSA types have already used it to listen in on personal enemies. Which also tends to support my guess that they are archiving call content as well as metadata.

I’m beginning to think I haven’t been nearly paranoid enough…

Porkypine

A frightening thought.  Surely not?  Surely…

 

Walter Russell Mead on "Public Peace, Secret War: The Snooping Scandals and The President’s War Strategy’

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/06/06/public-peace-secret-war-the-snooping-scandals-and-the-presidents-war-strategy/

P

Peggy Noonan’s IRS piece

For me, Peggy Noonan’s best line in that piece about the IRS was this one: “But why did all the incompetent workers misunderstand their jobs and their mission in exactly the same way?”

It’s a shame we can’t get a conservative Sam “See here, Mr. President!” Donaldson vetted into the White House Press Corps. It would be fun to hear Jay Carney answer that question.

–John

Jerry:

I noticed a reference to this article on your blog.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii?page=0,3

Since you were unwilling to subscribe to read the article, I bypassed the paywall to take a look at it.

I actually agree with part of the author’s analysis. The destruction and carnage inflicted by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was far from unprecedented. Both had a lethal radius of about one mile and a lethal area of a little more than one square mile. This was far from a quantum leap in the destructiveness inflicted by conventional bombings. The author’s argument that a force of 500 planes carrying 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of bombs each could inflict 1/20th to 1/10th the damage actually overstates the the relative destructiveness of nukes. Because of the weapons effects scaling laws, 2,500, one ton conventional bombs can be expected to do about as much damage as a single, 30 kiloton nuke. In fact a single, Iowa class Battleship with a full bag of 1,100, 16" rounds can equal the destructiveness of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. You will recall that the older battleships that had been salvaged at Pearl Harbor were assigned to the task of bombarding Japan. The ships could destroy any cities that the air force couldn’t reach.

Where I disagree with the author is the perception of threat from the Soviet Union by the Japanese. In spite of the proximity of territory, Stalin’s ability to project force into the Japanese theatre was severely limited by logistics. The Soviets were totally reliant on the Trans Siberian railway to transport goods and troops to the far East. That is a very long, vulnerable supply line of limited capacity. Keep in mind that the coal fired trains of the era had lousy fuel economy, on the order of a few ton miles per ton of coal. To ship freight over thousands of miles, you needed to think in terms of mass ratios just like a rocket. Even more significant was the lack of naval forces, particularly amphibious assault ships, available to the Soviets. They could kick the Japanese out of Manchuria because America had cut Japans logistics, but if they had attempted to invade the home islands of Japan they were up a creek.

In the final analysis, the Atomic bombs were the final psychological weapon that was needed to give Japan a pretext to surrender.

James Crawford=

Yes. I went through that chain of reasoning long ago. So far that article has told me nothing I have not known for years.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were events that could save face for the Emperor, and the Emperor’s surrender could save face for most of the Japanese officer corps. Still more than 2000 commited sucide after the announcement.

Jerry Pournelle Chaos Manor

I forgot to mention the one issue that made Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost imperative.

As this author points out, the Japanese recognized the evidence that nuclear weapons had been used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How would the Japanese know what the distinguishing characteristics of a nuclear weapon would be? The answer is that the Japanese had their own nuclear weapons program. Some believe that Japan might actually have conducted a test of a nuclear weapon in Europe.

Assuming that the US believed that Japan had a nuclear weapons program, there would have been a strong motivation to force Japan to surrender before they could employ it. Japan could not have delivered a nuke by aircraft, but mounting a bomb on a submarine then sailing it into a US harbor such as San Francisco or Seattle was very plausible.

James Crawford

== ==

The Japanese surrender

Dr. P,

Like you, when I first saw the headline for the article about what caused Japan to capitulate when it did, I was expecting a pile of propaganda. What I read instead was a surprisingly nuanced discussion of the decision process from the Japanese perspective which makes a rather compelling argument that the Japanese decision to surrender was not driven by fear of more atomic bombs but by the sudden shift of the Soviet Union from being a neutral power (who might mediate a negotiated surrender) into an enemy already attacking Japan’s least-strong frontier. In other words, the dashing of Japanese hopes for Soviet assistance in negotiating a surrender was the actual strategic change which drove them to accept an unconditional surrender.

If you are interested in reading it, I have included a copy of the complete article below. I think you will find it worth the few minutes it takes to read.

Regards,

Bill Clardy

Thank you.

Becoming a Democracy rather than a Republic

Current events signal a disturbing trend toward a Democracy rather than a Republic envisioned by the founders.

Democracy appears nowhere in the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence.

Article IV, Section 4 declares "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…".

The pledge of allegiance does not say "the democracy for which it stands" not is there a "Battle Hymn of the Democracy".

John Adams said "You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe."

Nothing in our constitution was envisioned as a grantor of rights, rather, as a protector of rights.

In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison, said that in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual." At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said, ". . . that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy." John Adams said, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Later on, Chief Justice John Marshall observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

The current administration and Congress seems to be devolving into the kind of tyranny that the founding fathers suffered under King George III.

Bud Pritchard

Kipling has a relevant poem that I recommend. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/special/oldissue.html

Volcanic Thimbulwinter ?

Dear Jerry;

Here to add to the received medieval history of climate as taught in the grade school textbooks of yesteryear is report of a thoroughly successful effort to correlate hard times in medieval Irish chronicles with explosive volcanism as measured by sulfate and particulate levels in Greenland ice cores

http://m.iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024035/article

—

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University

‘Some 1,000 years ago, the Vikings set off on a voyage to Notre Dame Bay in modern-day Newfoundland, Canada, new evidence suggests.’

<http://news.yahoo.com/north-america-viking-voyage-discovered-131333241.html>

—

Roland Dobbins

Fallen Angels

“Wade”

I’m reading Fallen Angels again. Wonderful. The first few pages are a wonderful sly introduction to the story, giving us a painless background.

I have reached Capt. Lee Arteria. She is working with INS. She is dealing with angels on a glacier. Since your book was written, INS has become ICE. Seems fitting.

Ed

Jerry

I used to think that the US you portrayed in Fallen Angels was a wildly improbable dystopia. Satire, I thought it.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when it became real. Now, all we need is the long-delayed return of the glaciers to make it complete.

Ed

It’s still a good read. http://www.baenebooks.com/p-137-fallen-angels.aspx

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I note the title of your latest piece is "

Nightmares and Despair: 2012 is crucial to the republic. Illegitimi non carborandum <https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=14154> "

May I suggest that however crucial 2012 was to the Republic, it is now more than six months in the dustbin of history? Normally I’m not a smartass who makes those observations, but I can’t determine from context whether you mean 2013 (this year), 2014 (the next congressional elections) or 2016 (the next presidential election).

"Illegitimi non carborandum", however, is excellent advice in all seasons.

Respectfully ,

Brian P.

In your most recent View headline, that’s "carborundum." It is, of course, not real Latin, but rather a pun on a brand-name abrasive, but the brand is "Carborundum," not "Carborandam."

—

Meredith Dixon

I have fixed the errors. Thanks.

Since you are recommending it, I wanted to correct the name.

Herman Miller is here in Holland, Michigan.

JED

Thanks for the correction. They are very good chairs. If you will spend a large part of your life in a chair, this is the chair to have.

Apparently, they still use slide-rules in Spain.

<http://o.canada.com/2013/06/06/spain-builds-submarine-70-tons-too-heavy/>

—–

Roland Dobbins

I got my first slide rule as a birthday present before I entered 10^th grade. It helped me a lot all through high school, and some of the other students got slide rules when they saw how useful mine was. My first was fairly basic. By the time I graduated I had a log log decitrig – and still have it. It hangs on the wall on the other side of the room. And yes I too managed to mismanage the decimal point when using a slide rule.

Phone & Net Surveillance

Jerry,

I’m utterly unshocked by the revelations of the last 24 hours. To sum up what I’ve seen so far, the NSA is running something approaching a universal domestic phone transaction and net transaction+content database. (I’d not be that shocked if the database also includes phone content – at a couple kilobits per second for individuals-recognizable voice recording, that’s a mere few thousand terabytes a month.)

I’m mildly surprised that this should be revealed, yes – I take that as one more sign there’s a civil war within the Dems, now going from cold to hot. (Admittedly circumstantial, but notice how all the new scandals began surfacing, gift-wrapped, right around the time the White House became pressured enough on Benghazi to start hinting at throwing the former SecState under the bus.)

This NSA database may well be legal, within the letter of the "Patriot Act" hastily passed post 9/11. It’s well outside of the Act’s intent, according to Representative Sensenbrenner, one of the authors. (Good intentions, Road to Hell, pavement…)

In theory the database’s content is only available to intelligence professionals, and even then only accessible when a given transaction is algorithmically determined 51% likely to involve at least one foreign party.

But then, in theory the IRS was firewalled off from being used for political thuggery.

My view, then and now, was summed up nicely today at

http://datechguyblog.com/2013/06/07/how-stupid-do-you-think-we-are-paulie-was-right-edition/:

"Don’t give a power to one administration that can’t be trusted to all of them."

The big question now is, can we take these powers back before we’re destroyed by them? I’m not wildly optimistic.

"Guard? Guard? I want to see my Ambassador!"

"Easily done – he’s in the next cell."

– Firesign Theater, ~1970 – back then we thought it was comedy…

cynically (but cynically enough?)

Porkypine

= = =

Some additional observations:

NSA is also collecting all credit card transactions. The implications as part of a permanent searchable database of national scope are left as an exercise for the student. Hint: If our betters decide it’s bad for us, and you’ve *ever* bought it for other than cash, watch out.

Instapundit asks, given this NSA database exists, how long till the data-miners at Organizing For America are rooting through it? If they aren’t already. Oh, and that cam and/or mike you may routinely leave plugged in to your computer? Bad idea.

If you consider the liberal media that’s angry versus the liberal media that’s still defending even this as Clintonista versus Obamaista, it makes a surprising amount of sense. The NYT apparently contains both, from the overnight addition of "on this" to "lost all credibility".

It’s a good war – it may inadvertently give us back our freedom. But make no mistake, that will be unintended collateral damage. Both sides will happily resume colluding to rule us the instant that war is settled. If we let them.

Subj: Dogs still remember the Pact

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350387/dog-saves-abandoned-newborn-jonah-goldberg

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

We have sometimes forgotten it, but the pact still holds.  Thank you.

Subject: U.S. publishes details of missile base Israel wanted kept secret

And we have this, among all the rest of the scandals:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/03/192895/us-publishes-details-of-missile.html#.UbEm1nbnaUk

Well …. Obama DID promise to ‘fundamentally change America’

He also promised us the most open administration in the history of these United States.

 

Jerry,

"A top Vatican official has said around 100,000 Christians are killed every year for reasons linked to their faith…" "Monsignor Silvano Maria Tomasi was quoted by Vatican radio on Tuesday as saying that the figures were "shocking" and "incredible"."

http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/CNG—4fd7225a1fea039d4d9f6435239 389ed—6b1

"Another senior Vatican figure, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Mario Toso, said recently that discrimination against Christians "should be countered in the same way as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia"."

Hmm, ultimately that’s the Israeli Defense Forces and al Qaeda he’s talking about. Knights Templar II, anyone? One would hope closer to IDF style than al Qaeda…

Seriously, I’ve been wondering just how long we’ll keep on turning the other cheek to the growing outrages against local christians in various third-world hellholes. It’s getting harder to ignore in recent years.

Porkypine

Subject: Domestic Surveillance

Jerry,

In my over twenty years in the intelligence field, it literally took an act of Congress for us to do any surveillance on an a US citizen. When we determined a US Citizen was involved in any of our collection efforts, we immediately ceased the interception and turned it over to the FBI.

Now, it seems it’s being done on a daily basis. Cry for us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/us/us-secretly-collecting-logs-of-business-calls.html?hp&_r=1&

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/usa_patriot_act/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> , according to a highly classified court order <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order> disclosed on Wednesday night.

The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/verizon_communications_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org> all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

T

 

Jerry,

Atmospheric temperature:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/ (June 4th post)

Sharp cooling continues this spring.

Arctic Sea Ice

http://www.iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/ssmis/extent_n_running_mean_F17_previous.png

Currently trending at the highest level for early June in the past 6 years,

Jim

But we are told that the warming trends continue.  Of course all those grants can’t produce bad theories can they?