Posts from — September 2013

First off, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is quite capable of writing in English and German, and probably other languages, but the idiom used in the op-ed was American, so aides polished it.

While it is addressed to Americans and appeared in the New York Times the target audience was the rest of the world.

The content is ironic and almost sarcastic by design, and he is well aware that most American officials will miss that, no doubt claiming that it is ‘ironic’ for the President of the Russian Federation to have written it.

The Guardian has the text of the op-ed without requiring the deposit of your first-born child.

The problem for Americans is that they receive their news primarily from the US corporate news media, and have no idea what the US gets up around the world, nor how what we do internally is viewed by other countries.

Most Americans don’t understand that to extradite people from Europe we have to guarantee they won’t face the death penalty. There are a lot of things the US does that are considered barbaric by most of the rest of the world. The US is not seen as a shining beacon of hope anymore.

The sad reality is that Vladimir Putin has more credibility in the world than Barack Obama. This is payback for the cancellation of the face-to-face meeting.

CBS reports that in the center of the Florida Peninsula:

Polk County sheriff’s deputies arrested Pastor Terry Jones, 61, and his associate pastor, Marvin Sapp Jr., 44, each on a felony charge of unlawful conveyance of fuel as they travelled in a pickup truck towing a large barbecue-style grill filled with Qurans soaked in kerosene. Jones had said he was heading to a nearby park to burn 2,998 Qurans — one for every victim of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Sheriff’s officials said that Jones was also charged with unlawful open-carry of a firearm, a misdemeanor, and that Sapp faces a charge of having no valid registration for the trailer.

This clown received his notoriety for staged burnings of Qurans at his double-wide ‘cathedral’ up in Gainesville, Florida. Apparently the locals felt that his activities were affecting UF Gators football, so he has left and is now in Central Florida on the I-4 Corridor.

When I look at those charges I know that he gave a traffic cop a hard time. Polk County hasn’t voted for a Democrat for President since LBJ, so it isn’t some ‘liberal conspiracy’, it is a PO’ed police officer. Flammable liquids, as most people do not know are required to be carried in a Department of Transportation approved container when being transported on a highway. A barbecue grill does not qualify. A charge like that requires research, so the officer was not happy with Brother Jones. The other charges were thrown in just to up the bond required.

I assume that the trailer and contents were seized as evidence, that would be the procedure for a felony arrest.

Position: 19.7N 94.0W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [270°] near 2 mph [ 4 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1003 mb.

Currently about 145 miles [ 235 km] East-Northeast of Veracruz, Mexico.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the Gulf Coast of Mexico from Coatzacoalcos to Barra de Nautla.

This was expected and has formed in the Bay of Campeche.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Position: 23.4N 29.7W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northwest [345°] near 12 mph [19 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 80 mph [130 kph].
Wind Gusts: 95 mph [150 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 205 miles [335 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 35 miles [ 55 km].
Minimum central pressure: 984 mb ↑.

Currently about 630 miles [1015 km] Northwest of the Cape Verde Islands.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Position: 35.1N 67.7W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northeast [015°] near 10 mph [17 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [ 80 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 70 miles [110 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1008 mb.

Currently about 450 miles [ 720 km] South-Southeast of Nantucket, Massachusetts.

The storm has regained strength this morning.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Marcy Wheeler has been busy going through a new pile of documents that are the result of a Freedom of Information request on NSA and the FISA court and is generating multiple posts about the oversight of the system.

The bottom line is that there is no effective oversight, nor is such oversight actually possible, because Alexander the Geek and his merry band of hackers and crackers don’t actually know how their own system works.

There are a 1000 system administrators, but no overall system administrator who rules them all. There doesn’t seem to be a master system design showing how the parts are supposed to function and who is responsible for what, and who has access to what. Despite being ordered to isolate and protect certain types of information, there is no effective method of doing that in the current overall system, which will come as a shock to anyone who has ever set up a network, because that capability is readily accomplished in almost all network software I’ve ever used going back decades.

This reflects such complete incompetence and total lack of planning and design, that it makes me suspicious that it may have been done on purpose to cover what they were really up to.

So Pam Bondi ran for Florida Attorney General based on being tough on criminals. One of her signature issues was to reduce the time from being convicted of a crime and given the death sentence and having that sentence carried out. She was going to eliminate all of the ‘unnecessary delays’ caused by defendants getting stays of execution.

Floridians now know that she has added a new justification for a stay of execution: to accommodate her reelection fundraiser.

A man convicted of multiple murders and rapes was give a three-week stay because the execution date would interfere with Ms Bondi’s reelection launch. This is her idea of doing her job.

Position: 33.0N 67.0W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [300°] near 6 mph [ 9 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1010 mb ↑.

Currently about 135 miles [ 220 km] West-Northwest of Bermuda.

The storm has weakened to a tropical depression.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Position: 19.1N 29.0W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North [360°] near 13 mph [20 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 85 mph [140 kph].
Wind Gusts: 95 mph [150 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 150 miles [240 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 35 miles [ 55 km].
Minimum central pressure: 982 mb ↓.

Currently about 395 miles [ 630 km] Northwest of the Cape Verde Islands.

The first hurricane of the season and tied for latest to form since World War II.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

September 11^th, 2001

Having already helped to put Edward Snowden on the Nobel Peace Prize list, the current administration has made Vladimir Putin a contender.

Someone needs to take John Kerry aside and explain that it is the Secretary of Defense who should be arguing for war, not the Secretary of State. They can also explain that there wouldn’t be ‘boots on the ground’ in a nuclear exchange but it is still war.

If the US had proposed international control of Syria’s chemical weapons at the UN Security Council and been turned down, then it could have moved on to discussing war, but it dismissed any attempt at diplomacy and went directly to war.

I have already read people attempting to spin this as more ’11 dimensional chess’ on the part of Zero, but Kerry’s attempt to back off his comment about international control of chemical weapons makes it obvious that it was just thrown out as an impossible choice.

Everyone in the Middle East remembers what happened to Saddam Hussein when he complied with the demand to prove he had no WMDs – the US told the weapons inspectors to leave when they weren’t proving the existence of the weapons, and Iraq was invaded. The US has a credibility problem when it comes to inspection teams, not Syria.

Zero is still pushing for a Use of Force resolution from Congress to be used if Assad doesn’t cooperate, but Congress and the public are in no mood for that sort of thing. John Kerry has sounded too much like Colin Powell for people to trust the government.

Position: 15.4N 28.4W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [315°] near 7 mph [11 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 70 mph [110 kph].
Wind Gusts: 80 mph [120 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 115 miles [185 km].
Minimum central pressure: 995 mb ↑.

Currently about 270 miles [ 435 km] West of the Cape Verde Islands.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Position: 32.0N 65.0W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North [355°] near 8 mph [13 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Wind Gusts: 70 mph [110 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 115 miles [185 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1004 mb.

Currently about 25 miles [ 40 km] South-Southwest of Bermuda.

The storm found favorable conditions and has spun back up. It is stronger than initially thought.

Bermuda is getting pummeled by the storm.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Bermuda.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Having already cost US companies money by making people leery of putting their data on sites based in the US, as Badtux notes Alexander the Geek has destroyed the credibility of US hardware suppliers. No one builds a massive castle wall and surrounds it with a moat, and then installs a footbridge to a garden gate through the wall in the back, hoping no one notices.

If you install a backdoor, it will be found and it will be exploited, and not just by the people who ordered it built. It has probably already been exploited by the pros, and the script-kiddies will be along eventually. Does NSA realize that their system has the same vulnerability?

I mentioned the motto of the Australian DSD: “Reveal their secrets … Protect our own”. NSA has failed in the second part, and seems to include everyone in ‘their’.

The Internet will adapt to these realities, but it is very likely that the US won’t have a place at the table where the changes are agreed to. Very few international meetings are held in the US these days because of the extremely restrictive visa policies that have been adopted. When the technical committees meet in the foreign locations, it is fair to assume that new standards will be approved for services that will negate much of what NSA has done. I expect that more than a few people will want to discuss how to route around the US.