Snowdon is a dummy

@BillRM,

True.

@cicerone imposter,

It's a pity Norman Mailer isn't here to write about it.

0 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

I know: she could be a terrorist and thus was on NSA-surveillance, too, but ...

Quote:
Angela Merkel has used the first, agenda-setting speech of her third term in office to criticise America's uncompromising defence of its surveillance activities.

In a speech otherwise typically short of strong emotion or rhetorical flourishes, the German chancellor found relatively strong words on NSA surveillance, two days before the US secretary of state, John Kerry, is due to visit Berlin.

"A programme in which the end justifies all means, in which everything that is technically possible is then acted out, violates trust and spreads mistrust," she said. "In the end, it produces not more but less security."

Merkel emphasised the need for wider access to the internet for citizens: "We want to make sure the internet retains its promise. That's why we want to protect it".
Source

And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that sometime during the same day she made those remarks...she had occasion to discuss intelligence gathered by German operatives in not terribly dissimilar ways.

Countries spy on each other.

2 Replies

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Quote:
and it creates more mistrust amongst our allies.

The distrust in not only with out allies but among the US population as a whole as it is hard to trust a government that so distrust their own citizens that they claimed the need to do massive spying on all of us.

Not all...and you do not speak for all. Nor do the people who applaud what you say.

You, and those others, are, as I have mentioned several times, the kind who will bellyache that the government did not do enough in the event of some future disaster.

Your forte is bellyaching...and you people are filled with anger and frustration primarily because you are angry, frustrated people...not primarily because of what "the government" is doing.

0 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

Countries spy on each other.

You think that our Federal Intelligence Service had bugged Obama's phone and is listening what other leading US-politicians talk?

2 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

I wonder if Apisa understands Frau Merkel's forbidding phrase " in which everything that is technically possible is then acted out" as she intended it with her knowledge of not only what is technically possible now but what the boffins are getting ready.

I suppose Apisa has no clue about either just as is the case with everything else.

He has just defended the use of the "technically possible" if it might save an unspecified number of American theoretical lives.

He is thus prevented from wondering what it is that makes terrorists want to attack us and when they do risking their lives. If nobody wanted to harm us there would be no risk.

0 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Frank Apisa wrote:
Countries spy on each other.

You think that our Federal Intelligence Service had bugged Obama's phone and is listening what other leading US-politicians talk?

What I think or what you think on the matter really doesn't matter.

I suspect if your intelligence agencies have the capability of doing so...they are doing it; if they don't, I suspect they would love to have it.

Counties spy on each other...and I SUSPECT they seldom say, "Well, yeah, we could easily spy that way, but let's be nice and not do it."

Do you think otherwise, Walter.

Do you think the intelligence community of Germany has the resources and capability to obtain more information than they are...but are not doing so out of a sense of honor and "niceness?"

3 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

I suspect if your intelligence agencies have the capability of doing so...they are doing it; if they don't, I suspect they would love to have it.

What, do you think, would be the American reaction in such a case? Do you really think they would say something like "We do, let's them do it, too"?

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

Do you think the intelligence community of Germany has the resources and capability to obtain more information than they are...but are not doing so out of a sense of honor and "niceness?"

They certainly do "unlawful things".
But I really can't think that they spy on leading politicians of allied countries, especially not on the head of state/prime ministers etc.

1 Reply

From reuters

Quote:

U.S. intelligence head wants Snowden, 'accomplices' to return documents
WASHINGTON Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:58pm GMT
The top U.S. intelligence official called on Wednesday for Edward Snowden and journalists who obtained documents the former contractor took without authorization from the National Security Agency to return the materials to authorities.

At a hearing where the heads of five U.S. intelligence agencies ratcheted up rhetoric calling Snowden a "grave threat" to the nation, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made comments that appeared to accuse journalists who wrote stories based on Snowden's leaks.

"Snowden claims he's won and that his mission is accomplished," Clapper testified at the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's annual hearing on global security threats.

"If that is so, I call on him and his accomplices to facilitate the return of the remaining stolen documents that have not yet been exposed to prevent even more danger to U.S. security," he said.

Clapper's comments were immediately criticized by Glenn Greenwald, a writer who met with Snowden in Hong Kong and wrote about documents he received from him in the Guardian and other media outlets. Greenwald currently is setting up a new media venture with EBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

"Is it now the official view of the Obama administration that these journalists and media outlets are 'accomplices' in what they regard as Snowden's crimes? If so, that is a rather stunning and extremist statement. Is there any other possible interpretation of Clapper's remarks?" Greenwald wrote on a personal blog.

0 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Do you think the intelligence community of Germany has the resources and capability to obtain more information than they are...but are not doing so out of a sense of honor and "niceness?"

Nobody disputes that. It misses the point.

Which is Snowden pulling the plug and starting a debate which might well end up with us all having a sense of honor and "niceness".

We once, not that long ago, had little or no sense of honor and "niceness" regarding animals. Now we have a modicum. After a debate on the subject.

And was there any other way to start the debate without which the drift into the technically possible is impossible to stop. Or slow. Or prevent accelerating. Thought about from a 10 year old's point of view. A 77 year old has not much to fear.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

Quote:
Do you think the intelligence community of Germany has the resources and capability to obtain more information than they are...but are not doing so out of a sense of honor and "niceness?"
Nobody disputes that. It misses the point.

Franks theory is that since in olden times men could beat their wives to keep them in line then all men must have beat their wives....after all, why would they hold back to be "nice" since there was no value in that?

No.

2 Replies

@hawkeye10,

But his theory enables him to deplore wife-beating and thus be thought of as a compassionate man.

0 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Frank Apisa wrote:
I suspect if your intelligence agencies have the capability of doing so...they are doing it; if they don't, I suspect they would love to have it.

What, do you think, would be the American reaction in such a case? Do you really think they would say something like "We do, let's them do it, too"?

NO...and if it were the world before the Snowden revelations...we would be reacting with the same indignation as Merkel and many others around the world.

Not only do nations spy on each other...the pretend indignation when they catch someone else doing it to them.

0 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Frank Apisa wrote:
Do you think the intelligence community of Germany has the resources and capability to obtain more information than they are...but are not doing so out of a sense of honor and "niceness?"

They certainly do "unlawful things".
But I really can't think that they spy on leading politicians of allied countries, especially not on the head of state/prime ministers etc.

Yeah...many Americans would have said the same thing about our intelligence agencies a while back.

I doubt I would have been one of them...but...

I admire the fact that you think the intelligence agencies of your country have standards of conduct above the standards of the intelligence agencies of the US.

0 Replies

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
Quote:
Do you think the intelligence community of Germany has the resources and capability to obtain more information than they are...but are not doing so out of a sense of honor and "niceness?"
Nobody disputes that. It misses the point.

Franks theory is that since in olden times men could beat their wives to keep them in line then all men must have beat their wives....after all, why would they hold back to be "nice" since there was no value in that?

No.

Thank you for sharing the way you supposing I feel about something like that, Hawk.

I don't...but in arguments of this sort, often people do what you did here.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Thank you for sharing the way you supposing I feel about something like that, Hawk.

I neither know nor care how you feel, I dont know you. I pointed out how your logic is flawed...IE what is wrong with your work.

2 Replies

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
Thank you for sharing the way you supposing I feel about something like that, Hawk.
I neither know nor care how you feel, I dont know you. I pointed out how your logic is flawed...IE what is wrong with your work.

You most assuredly did not point out how my logic was flawed...

...you attempted to distort my logic in order to make it seem defective.

There was nothing wrong with my logic whatever.

EDIT ADDITION: Your distortion of what I said...and the suppose extension of it...simply do not follow.

0 Replies

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

I neither know nor care how you feel, I dont know you.

I have an idea how Apisa feels. It is quite common.

He watches the exciting news breaking from moment to moment with breathless urgency and feels that he ought to be a part of it. Lining up two-foot putts, scrambling out of bunkers, hacking out of the light rough, scratching his balls, drying the pots, looking out of the window, poking a fork prong through the salt cellar holes, stirring the sugar into his coffee and the few thousand other banal activities which daily life consists of, is not conducive to his sense of self esteem.

As that it is a very important aspect of his mental furniture it is necessary for him to feel a part of, and a player in, the important matters of the day the news broadcasts have brought to his attention and his contributions are intended to allow him to feel his significance in the general scheme of things.

He's in denial of his almost total insignificance. I can't say total because there is always the possibilty that the forensic researchers conducting an autopsy on his corpse will find something to get excited about although I cannot imagine what it might be.

1 Reply

@spendius,

You're getting mighty base there, spendi. Shocked

0 Replies

Snowdon is a dummy

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know