I'm so glad you connect the end of secrets with the end of paper. I'm often astonished by the stuff people put in emails. The guide used to be: don't put it in an email unless you want the whole world to be able to read it. Good luck getting our government agencies--as well as business-- to realize and correct what the end of paper means in today's world.
Unless, of course, you want the email to be "discovered," despite its putative sub rosa requirements, as part of some intel op, but none of these people would do anything like that, so we can rule that out...
Presidents have access to just about everything, digital or on paper. This is not true of, e.g., a "20-year-old specialist holding the second lowest enlisted rank in the Air Force."
That's highly unorthodox, judging by the history of past intel leaks and the subsequent outcry to
to have a thorough housecleaning about who gets top secret clearances, and how they are handled.
I hope for world peace, though, even despite the record of endless recourse to endless, organized aggressive actions by various nations and non-state actors, against other states and non-state entities!
Here's one solution. Fire the guy who supervises the guy who supervises the grunts. Fire the top General who tolerates laxitude and FUBARS. Recall that British Admiral John Byng was executed by firing squad in March 1757, following his court-martial for "failing to do his utmost" to defeat a French fleet during the Battle of Minorca in 1756. Britain's defeat resulted in the Royal Navy's ouster from the Western Mediterranean, leaving Britain holding Gibralter and Malta only, with the British occupation of the Island of Minorca ended, at least for a time.
This intelligence failure was not a fighting retreat against insuperable odds. Rather, it was unforced errors in judgment at numerous levels of the intelligence establishment. News reports state that Jack Teixeira's supervisors were aware that he was poking his nose into places where it didn't belong, and yet they failed to take formal disciplinary action against him. This indulgent attitude needs to end.
probably through that kid what ever his name is. and anyway, it seems the intelligence community could use a refresher about how to hire with integrity and not these 20 y.o. gamers
Unless someone wanted him to generate just these kinds of leaks, but that would mean treating Jack Teixeira as expendable, a prospective patsy, a dupe, which never happens when the stakes are this high, correct? We always learn so much from history, and this is especially true of the Pentagon...
Good GAWWWD! You revealed a treasure trove and I am not sure how I’m feeling now about the security of our nation. I can’t say I was ever unhappy about the bombing of the pipeline, however. That lil’ pipsqueak will be spending a lifetime in prison for his egregious acts. He opened Pandora’s box and then some. Why is it that the US most powerful agencies are so vulnerable, so penetrable? This is a horrible way to find out...
Up voted for your usual justified moral outrage, which I share, but notice this question, posed in a comment by George Merlis, on this very thread:
"[Why] is this clown who stole secrets while on active duty facing civilian charges and not an AF court martial?"
No "lifetime in prison for his egregious acts," in all probability.
It is a fascinating issue as to exactly why he was left on duty after the initial discoveries by superior officers (and they would ALL be his superior officers, for the most part, since Jack Teixeira was so low on the totem pole!) that he was goofing off instead of securing his top secret material.
Nothing about his superiors being investigated but apparently they admonished him twice, once in Sept and Oct of last year. All the good that did. 🙄
Here’s a quote from Reuter’s:
“I have stuff for Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran and China,” Teixeira said on social media, according to prosecutors. A month earlier, he referred to “all of the shit I’ve told you guys I’m not supposed to.”
The lack of anticipation of the pitfalls on the dissemination of electronic information is dumbfounding given the decades it’s been a fact of life - perhaps especially for anyone who’s worked daily with the most comprehensive access to financial information on high net worth clients.
Did you read Sy Hersh's piece on this? His sources say this was a US operation that came directly from the top, Biden and Blinken. I see this latest piece as more CIA obfuscation of their act of war.
This is not new to the agency; in fact, the most novel thing about it was the success of actually blowing the thing up. Sy was written more about this, including a piece today where he highlights Blinken's rabid hatred for Russia. I
take all these things with a grain of salt, but the cop's adage of "follow the money" shows that, at the very least, the weapons cartel and oil interests were poised to take advantage of this war. Ukraine at this point seems to be functioning as a NATO contractor where they get to do all the horrid work but reap none of the benefits. They've shown that Russia's "fearsome war machine" is yet another case of successful PR.
I'm pretty sure the NATO allies have good reason to believe that their tactical nuclear program is in similar condition, though that is a high-stakes bet.
It really doesn't matter who ordered it, or who carried it out. What matters is that an Air Force specialist got hold of a secret and spread it all over the place. That's the end of secrets.
"...by using the work of John Newman, Lisa Pease and David Talbot to expose the prevarications of his source Sam Halpern, on both Bobby Kennedy and Charles Ford and the plots to kill Castro. We also look at the dubious claims about a 1962 Italy trip by both men and a final look at the problems with his Nord Stream claims. *****
"Hersh now says that the divers deployed off a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter. Yet no Alta class mine sweepers took part in that particular BALTOPs exercise. Also, Hersh wrote that the charges would be detonated by a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane with a sonar bouy. These planes were not active at that time. They were only in training usage in the northern part of Norway, many hundreds of kilometers away.
When Hersh was confronted with the information about the Alta, he reacted the same way he did when confronted with the forged signature of Janet DeRosiers on the phony Marilyn Monroe trust documents. He lashed out at the source and called it a stupid lie. The problem is that the last time that ship moved under its own power was about ten years ago. It was towed for scrap iron on June of 2022.
Even if Hersh made an error, not uncommon with him, ships close to that class were not in the area at the time or in a position to have planted the charges. (See Oliver Alexander’s “Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh’s Pipe Dream”.)
Does all this mean that the USA had nothing to do with Nord Stream? No it does not. As I noted, Hersh would be a fine messenger for a faulty story. Since he has no pesky editor. Great way to distract from the real story. But I would also not rule out Ukraine or the Poles. *****
"WE NEED MORE FACTS!"
Facts established after some kind of cross-examination in a public venue, not "facts" that emerge from the Dark Web, or anonymous leakers connected to someone in the Pentagon, or emails ripped out of context or intentionally planted for a later "revelation.
This is also close to the "Look ma, no chain of custody, but it's Hunter Biden's laptop!" farrago of fact, fiction and forecast.
Is that still going on, or have the wingnuts moved on to some new scandalous crisis?
I tend to view all of this with serious skepticism.
I see the CIA as almost wholly incompetent with a colossal legacy of continuous failure (except for their ability to cast disaster as success, such as the stories of Laos and Iran). Look no further than Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes for a chronicle of their failures dating back to Wild Bill Donovan.
Hersh's book on Camelot exposed a lot of things about the Kennedy administration that were not widely known, though he certainly got some stuff wrong. I think it will likely prove the same with this Nordtream piece. I see CIA fingerprints on the "new information" being released through the good ol NYT and WP channels, home of your favorite WMD Yellowcake sandwiches.
Biden and Blinken haven't been shy of using the hawkish language so typical of men who never saw combat, and you can't argue that the US and British oil interests haven't made major bucks since the Russian supply was choked off.
The problem with conspiracy is that people are really shitty at keeping secrets (unless they are killed). OBL's death reeked of convenience to me, but that whole chapter made so much money for the defense contractors that it's always been super stinky.
IMO, it's not necessarily wingnut to mistrust a government who continually lies to and betrays the American people for moneyed interests. Biden is not Trump or anywhere close. Trump is a cheap grifter who was awfully convenient to a mob of scabrous characters who looted the public treasury in ways Harry Dougherty could only have dreamed, whereas Biden is a company man all the way.
That said, this whole thing is not what we're being told, if for no other reason than it never has been. History usually uncovers most of this, but certain improbable narratives like JFK's assassination and 9/11 seem destined to remain cloaked in secrecy.
As for your other lumped-in argument of Hunter's laptop and the "Biden family" corruption, I'll leave that floating in Tucker's toilet. Hersh broke Abu Ghraib and My Lai among many other suppressed embarrassments, so he has earned credence.
Why is no one discussing the subject of my piece? That a 21 year old in the Air Force serving part time in the National Guard got hold of secrets, however accurate or inaccurate, and spread them all over the place online?
My apologies. I think it is an indicator that none of us are shocked at this sloppiness on the part of intelligence information. It seems to me that keeping secrets is a 19th century idea. Spy agencies have always been riddled with informants and leaks, but in this age of 4chan, Twitter, reddit, and other sources for widespread anonymous information dissemination, the idea that such secrets would remain in the hands of the leaker is outdated. One more lens between whatever is true and whatever is widely believed.
Yes, it depends on how real it really is to be a really existing secret, as opposed to merely treated as a real secret in a conventional sense, or something...
THIS is really what you want, maybe! Or maybe not, I can't really say!
The nature of secrets has been grist for the publishing mill for a very long time. One best seller that comes to mind is "Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation," by Sisela Bok, wife of a former Harvard president. (Checking the title on Amazon, I found her listed before books about "Bok Choy." Entertaining.)
Giving free association free reign, Mr. T.'s commentary is most often the written version of the old-timey practice of having Uncle Somebody (and even Mayor LaGuardia) reading the "funny papers" on the air. What he chooses to write about is hardly funny, but what he is disseminating is definitely about the human comedy of politics and governing. And sometimes one has no choice but to laugh -- else, I feel certain, one would cry.
I'd like to think a thwarted Amazon union organizer was responsible for connecting Sisela Bok and bok choy, but acknowledge it probably was just the kind of algorithm that cavorts in spellchecks. But c'mon, Margot, that's not much worse than IDing her as a Harvard president's wife as though she weren't a scholar in her own right. Whatever—entertaining observations, and I think your characterization of what lktiv does with his platform is quite perceptive.
I wish I had a name, so I'll just say "Dear Dif:" I hope you'll give me a pass about ID'ing Sisela as a college president's wife because I know them both, and some unusual history. They were friends of my mother's, and when I moved to Cambridge I saw them occasionally. My information, however, came from my mother. Sisela told Derek, when he was appointed president of Harvard, she had no plans to pour tea or do anything else a college president's wife was expected to do. I thought this rather odd, but, hey, she was the child of two Nobelists (Myrdal) and she had her own career. And there's more. She also didn't care much for doing laundry or shopping for their kids when they were little, so Derek did it!!! Ergo, my ID'ing her the way I did was likely my subconscious way of talking about her most unusual way of *not* being a college president's wife. (Her brother had an unusual way of dealing with his famous parents and sister: he wasn't on speaking terms with any of them.)
Feel free to call me Annie, my longtime nom du net with roots in print related to my avatar. I'm not a doctrinaire feminist, so you're off the hook. After all, you know the Boks as a social unit—and one that's particularly intriguing. That's my kind of feminism—I seem to have been born without the domesticity gene myself. Interesting, her brother. Puts me in mind of Chesa Boudin's uncle. Kathy and her brother, Michael, were red diaper babies in a family of renowned leftists. Michael became a successful corporate lawyer, then a well respected conservative federal judge. I don't know how friendly he was with the family, but assume he was responsible for the modest bronze plaque in the ginkgo treebed in front of the brownstone where he and Kathy grew up that reads: Jean and Leonard Boudin / They passed this way
Luc is right - that is nice. And being from Chicago, I knew of the Ayers connection. (His father, btw, was chairman of the power company, making him (Bill) an interesting rich kid. (And I'll have no trouble remembering your name.)
Oh, right—Chesa grew up in Chicago with the Ayers-Dohrns. Appropriate stand-in parents in that case—arguably, I guess. They had formidable models in the Meeropol adoption of the Rosenberg boys. I don't think any of the Boudin clan live in NYC now; Michael's career was in D.C. … I smiled at your Annie observation. The pen name served your family well.
"The only way to guarantee that two people {A, B} can keep a secret is for one of them to be dead." That pithy saying would read closer to truth if it began with the word one rather than the only way. An oath, vow, NDA, swearing to, are all example of a person's word on a matter of outermost importance.
So, does the death of a personA free the (living) personB from her/his word to the deceased? Upon being notified or personally seeing the CIA post a de-classification of an event on their website free the living sworn to silence from writing/speaking to it? What happens if the de-classification itself is not truthful (includes redactions, half-truths and errors of omission)?
Re: outbreak of honesty. Count me as one who doesn't understand omitting honesty as one of the virtues, whether it be the theological or capital virtues. Might that explain the reason there hasn't been an outbreak? Or is the answer found in A Few Good Men where honesty was thrice punished and reflecting upon honesty was enough for one man to take his own life?
After all my years can see how doublethink and doublespeak have taken their toll. Remain optimistic a generation will emerge to say end this nonsense. All of it. Now.
OMG I might have figured it out. It could wind up being crazy, but here goes:
The leak comes from the U.S. Government and is related to the Trump documents probe. A grand jury questioned a Trump advisor today about early 2022 conversations concerning SOME of the same aspect as this! This link should work as a "gift" article from me to the world https://wapo.st/3oPyyKO
What IF Trump knew of this information from inside government sources? What if it turns out these documents were, or are, in the hands of the Saudi government?
Basically, this information has to go public because it is in fact part of the upcoming Trump indictment.
Up voted for true creativity in generating cool hypotheticals, albeit with a surfeit of unanswered questions and details, and plenty of wild logical leaps!
Don’t we know how it leaked? Wasn’t it the work of that white supremacist AF reservist who has been arrested for these leaks. And, not to be a broken record, but why is this clown who stole secrets while on active duty facing civilian charges and not an AF court martial?
I'm (not really) astonished but I am dismayed at how many secrets seem to be leaking these days
Interesting piece on Robert Hanssen this morning on NPR Morning Edition. That guy gave away the farm. I was astonished at the magnitude of what he sold. May he rot forever
I remember when the breathtaking scope of the fallout from Hansson's treason was first revealed—all the executions he caused!—and was glad to learn he had died alone in a supermax cell. In some pain, I would hope. Although I initially was inclined to cut Teixera some slack because of his youth, the more facts come to light the more I wish him that fate—after several decades in supermax. I heard the NPR refresher too, and thought it well done. Had forgotten (if I ever knew) Hanssen was the third generation of corrupt government authority—his father and grandfather were dirty cops.
"The documentary made a detailed assessment of what Russian ships were doing in the months leading up to the incident.
One of its vessels, the Sibiryakov, is believed to be capable of underwater surveillance and mapping as well as launching a small underwater vehicle.
It switched its communications to a secret receiver and took an unusual route near where the pipeline would later blow up in June, according to the Royal Navy officer, who remained anonymous in the documentary.
Another vessel, the SB-123 naval tugboat, is alleged to have arrived five days before the September explosions.
Its radio communications suggest it stayed there the whole night, before sailing back towards Russia.
"We have used satellite imagery and other sources to verify the positions from the radio messages," said investigative reporter Gulldahl. "We are confident to say that these vessels were in the area, and also at what time they were there."
He continued: "We don't, however, conclude whether or not they had a part in the leaks. Future reporting might give us more answers there."
In April, the series by Denmark's DR, Norway's NRK, Sweden's SVT, and Finland's Yle broadcasters revealed that Russian vessels were mapping out offshore wind farms, gas pipelines, power, and internet cables in the North Sea for possible sabotage attacks. *****
Contingency plans, just an innocent coincidence, who knows? Who can say for sure which of any number of state or non-state actors, acted?
I'm so glad you connect the end of secrets with the end of paper. I'm often astonished by the stuff people put in emails. The guide used to be: don't put it in an email unless you want the whole world to be able to read it. Good luck getting our government agencies--as well as business-- to realize and correct what the end of paper means in today's world.
Unless, of course, you want the email to be "discovered," despite its putative sub rosa requirements, as part of some intel op, but none of these people would do anything like that, so we can rule that out...
The end of paper=the problem ? Look at the paper files that our own ex president has been flashing around. The Pentagon Papers? Etc.
Presidents have access to just about everything, digital or on paper. This is not true of, e.g., a "20-year-old specialist holding the second lowest enlisted rank in the Air Force."
We need to have a thorough housecleaning about who gets top secret clearances, and how they are handled.
That's highly unorthodox, judging by the history of past intel leaks and the subsequent outcry to
to have a thorough housecleaning about who gets top secret clearances, and how they are handled.
I hope for world peace, though, even despite the record of endless recourse to endless, organized aggressive actions by various nations and non-state actors, against other states and non-state entities!
Here's one solution. Fire the guy who supervises the guy who supervises the grunts. Fire the top General who tolerates laxitude and FUBARS. Recall that British Admiral John Byng was executed by firing squad in March 1757, following his court-martial for "failing to do his utmost" to defeat a French fleet during the Battle of Minorca in 1756. Britain's defeat resulted in the Royal Navy's ouster from the Western Mediterranean, leaving Britain holding Gibralter and Malta only, with the British occupation of the Island of Minorca ended, at least for a time.
This intelligence failure was not a fighting retreat against insuperable odds. Rather, it was unforced errors in judgment at numerous levels of the intelligence establishment. News reports state that Jack Teixeira's supervisors were aware that he was poking his nose into places where it didn't belong, and yet they failed to take formal disciplinary action against him. This indulgent attitude needs to end.
probably through that kid what ever his name is. and anyway, it seems the intelligence community could use a refresher about how to hire with integrity and not these 20 y.o. gamers
Unless someone wanted him to generate just these kinds of leaks, but that would mean treating Jack Teixeira as expendable, a prospective patsy, a dupe, which never happens when the stakes are this high, correct? We always learn so much from history, and this is especially true of the Pentagon...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Were_Expendable
Good GAWWWD! You revealed a treasure trove and I am not sure how I’m feeling now about the security of our nation. I can’t say I was ever unhappy about the bombing of the pipeline, however. That lil’ pipsqueak will be spending a lifetime in prison for his egregious acts. He opened Pandora’s box and then some. Why is it that the US most powerful agencies are so vulnerable, so penetrable? This is a horrible way to find out...
Up voted for your usual justified moral outrage, which I share, but notice this question, posed in a comment by George Merlis, on this very thread:
"[Why] is this clown who stole secrets while on active duty facing civilian charges and not an AF court martial?"
No "lifetime in prison for his egregious acts," in all probability.
It is a fascinating issue as to exactly why he was left on duty after the initial discoveries by superior officers (and they would ALL be his superior officers, for the most part, since Jack Teixeira was so low on the totem pole!) that he was goofing off instead of securing his top secret material.
Nothing about his superiors being investigated but apparently they admonished him twice, once in Sept and Oct of last year. All the good that did. 🙄
Here’s a quote from Reuter’s:
“I have stuff for Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran and China,” Teixeira said on social media, according to prosecutors. A month earlier, he referred to “all of the shit I’ve told you guys I’m not supposed to.”
LOL, exactly!
The lack of anticipation of the pitfalls on the dissemination of electronic information is dumbfounding given the decades it’s been a fact of life - perhaps especially for anyone who’s worked daily with the most comprehensive access to financial information on high net worth clients.
Agree. See some confusing and/or conflating information with security. Easy to go down a rabbit hole from there.
Unless and until security is seen and treated as the same level as the information (whether governmental, corporate or individual) chit will get out.
Did you read Sy Hersh's piece on this? His sources say this was a US operation that came directly from the top, Biden and Blinken. I see this latest piece as more CIA obfuscation of their act of war.
This is not new to the agency; in fact, the most novel thing about it was the success of actually blowing the thing up. Sy was written more about this, including a piece today where he highlights Blinken's rabid hatred for Russia. I
take all these things with a grain of salt, but the cop's adage of "follow the money" shows that, at the very least, the weapons cartel and oil interests were poised to take advantage of this war. Ukraine at this point seems to be functioning as a NATO contractor where they get to do all the horrid work but reap none of the benefits. They've shown that Russia's "fearsome war machine" is yet another case of successful PR.
I'm pretty sure the NATO allies have good reason to believe that their tactical nuclear program is in similar condition, though that is a high-stakes bet.
It really doesn't matter who ordered it, or who carried it out. What matters is that an Air Force specialist got hold of a secret and spread it all over the place. That's the end of secrets.
Oh, not this again.
www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/sy-hersh-falls-on-his-face-again-and-again-and-again
Part One of Two,
www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/sy-hersh-falls-on-his-face-again-pt-2
"...by using the work of John Newman, Lisa Pease and David Talbot to expose the prevarications of his source Sam Halpern, on both Bobby Kennedy and Charles Ford and the plots to kill Castro. We also look at the dubious claims about a 1962 Italy trip by both men and a final look at the problems with his Nord Stream claims. *****
"Hersh now says that the divers deployed off a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter. Yet no Alta class mine sweepers took part in that particular BALTOPs exercise. Also, Hersh wrote that the charges would be detonated by a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane with a sonar bouy. These planes were not active at that time. They were only in training usage in the northern part of Norway, many hundreds of kilometers away.
When Hersh was confronted with the information about the Alta, he reacted the same way he did when confronted with the forged signature of Janet DeRosiers on the phony Marilyn Monroe trust documents. He lashed out at the source and called it a stupid lie. The problem is that the last time that ship moved under its own power was about ten years ago. It was towed for scrap iron on June of 2022.
Even if Hersh made an error, not uncommon with him, ships close to that class were not in the area at the time or in a position to have planted the charges. (See Oliver Alexander’s “Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh’s Pipe Dream”.)
Does all this mean that the USA had nothing to do with Nord Stream? No it does not. As I noted, Hersh would be a fine messenger for a faulty story. Since he has no pesky editor. Great way to distract from the real story. But I would also not rule out Ukraine or the Poles. *****
"WE NEED MORE FACTS!"
Facts established after some kind of cross-examination in a public venue, not "facts" that emerge from the Dark Web, or anonymous leakers connected to someone in the Pentagon, or emails ripped out of context or intentionally planted for a later "revelation.
This is also close to the "Look ma, no chain of custody, but it's Hunter Biden's laptop!" farrago of fact, fiction and forecast.
Is that still going on, or have the wingnuts moved on to some new scandalous crisis?
I tend to view all of this with serious skepticism.
I see the CIA as almost wholly incompetent with a colossal legacy of continuous failure (except for their ability to cast disaster as success, such as the stories of Laos and Iran). Look no further than Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes for a chronicle of their failures dating back to Wild Bill Donovan.
Hersh's book on Camelot exposed a lot of things about the Kennedy administration that were not widely known, though he certainly got some stuff wrong. I think it will likely prove the same with this Nordtream piece. I see CIA fingerprints on the "new information" being released through the good ol NYT and WP channels, home of your favorite WMD Yellowcake sandwiches.
Biden and Blinken haven't been shy of using the hawkish language so typical of men who never saw combat, and you can't argue that the US and British oil interests haven't made major bucks since the Russian supply was choked off.
The problem with conspiracy is that people are really shitty at keeping secrets (unless they are killed). OBL's death reeked of convenience to me, but that whole chapter made so much money for the defense contractors that it's always been super stinky.
IMO, it's not necessarily wingnut to mistrust a government who continually lies to and betrays the American people for moneyed interests. Biden is not Trump or anywhere close. Trump is a cheap grifter who was awfully convenient to a mob of scabrous characters who looted the public treasury in ways Harry Dougherty could only have dreamed, whereas Biden is a company man all the way.
That said, this whole thing is not what we're being told, if for no other reason than it never has been. History usually uncovers most of this, but certain improbable narratives like JFK's assassination and 9/11 seem destined to remain cloaked in secrecy.
As for your other lumped-in argument of Hunter's laptop and the "Biden family" corruption, I'll leave that floating in Tucker's toilet. Hersh broke Abu Ghraib and My Lai among many other suppressed embarrassments, so he has earned credence.
Why is no one discussing the subject of my piece? That a 21 year old in the Air Force serving part time in the National Guard got hold of secrets, however accurate or inaccurate, and spread them all over the place online?
My apologies. I think it is an indicator that none of us are shocked at this sloppiness on the part of intelligence information. It seems to me that keeping secrets is a 19th century idea. Spy agencies have always been riddled with informants and leaks, but in this age of 4chan, Twitter, reddit, and other sources for widespread anonymous information dissemination, the idea that such secrets would remain in the hands of the leaker is outdated. One more lens between whatever is true and whatever is widely believed.
Maybe I'm jaded from watching The Americans, but I have to doubt that any secrets really exist in today's internet connected world.
Yes, it depends on how real it really is to be a really existing secret, as opposed to merely treated as a real secret in a conventional sense, or something...
THIS is really what you want, maybe! Or maybe not, I can't really say!
plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/
The nature of secrets has been grist for the publishing mill for a very long time. One best seller that comes to mind is "Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation," by Sisela Bok, wife of a former Harvard president. (Checking the title on Amazon, I found her listed before books about "Bok Choy." Entertaining.)
Giving free association free reign, Mr. T.'s commentary is most often the written version of the old-timey practice of having Uncle Somebody (and even Mayor LaGuardia) reading the "funny papers" on the air. What he chooses to write about is hardly funny, but what he is disseminating is definitely about the human comedy of politics and governing. And sometimes one has no choice but to laugh -- else, I feel certain, one would cry.
I'd like to think a thwarted Amazon union organizer was responsible for connecting Sisela Bok and bok choy, but acknowledge it probably was just the kind of algorithm that cavorts in spellchecks. But c'mon, Margot, that's not much worse than IDing her as a Harvard president's wife as though she weren't a scholar in her own right. Whatever—entertaining observations, and I think your characterization of what lktiv does with his platform is quite perceptive.
I wish I had a name, so I'll just say "Dear Dif:" I hope you'll give me a pass about ID'ing Sisela as a college president's wife because I know them both, and some unusual history. They were friends of my mother's, and when I moved to Cambridge I saw them occasionally. My information, however, came from my mother. Sisela told Derek, when he was appointed president of Harvard, she had no plans to pour tea or do anything else a college president's wife was expected to do. I thought this rather odd, but, hey, she was the child of two Nobelists (Myrdal) and she had her own career. And there's more. She also didn't care much for doing laundry or shopping for their kids when they were little, so Derek did it!!! Ergo, my ID'ing her the way I did was likely my subconscious way of talking about her most unusual way of *not* being a college president's wife. (Her brother had an unusual way of dealing with his famous parents and sister: he wasn't on speaking terms with any of them.)
Feel free to call me Annie, my longtime nom du net with roots in print related to my avatar. I'm not a doctrinaire feminist, so you're off the hook. After all, you know the Boks as a social unit—and one that's particularly intriguing. That's my kind of feminism—I seem to have been born without the domesticity gene myself. Interesting, her brother. Puts me in mind of Chesa Boudin's uncle. Kathy and her brother, Michael, were red diaper babies in a family of renowned leftists. Michael became a successful corporate lawyer, then a well respected conservative federal judge. I don't know how friendly he was with the family, but assume he was responsible for the modest bronze plaque in the ginkgo treebed in front of the brownstone where he and Kathy grew up that reads: Jean and Leonard Boudin / They passed this way
Nice.
PS. I just noticed that you keep vampire hours, as I do.
I do, roughly—I fight not to get too out of sync with the world.
Luc is right - that is nice. And being from Chicago, I knew of the Ayers connection. (His father, btw, was chairman of the power company, making him (Bill) an interesting rich kid. (And I'll have no trouble remembering your name.)
Oh, right—Chesa grew up in Chicago with the Ayers-Dohrns. Appropriate stand-in parents in that case—arguably, I guess. They had formidable models in the Meeropol adoption of the Rosenberg boys. I don't think any of the Boudin clan live in NYC now; Michael's career was in D.C. … I smiled at your Annie observation. The pen name served your family well.
The only way to guarantee that two people can keep a secret is for one of them to be dead.
If we could do away with more of the secrets, there would be far less need for posturing which might eventually result in outbreaks of open honesty.
"The only way to guarantee that two people {A, B} can keep a secret is for one of them to be dead." That pithy saying would read closer to truth if it began with the word one rather than the only way. An oath, vow, NDA, swearing to, are all example of a person's word on a matter of outermost importance.
So, does the death of a personA free the (living) personB from her/his word to the deceased? Upon being notified or personally seeing the CIA post a de-classification of an event on their website free the living sworn to silence from writing/speaking to it? What happens if the de-classification itself is not truthful (includes redactions, half-truths and errors of omission)?
Re: outbreak of honesty. Count me as one who doesn't understand omitting honesty as one of the virtues, whether it be the theological or capital virtues. Might that explain the reason there hasn't been an outbreak? Or is the answer found in A Few Good Men where honesty was thrice punished and reflecting upon honesty was enough for one man to take his own life?
After all my years can see how doublethink and doublespeak have taken their toll. Remain optimistic a generation will emerge to say end this nonsense. All of it. Now.
Am grateful.
OMG I might have figured it out. It could wind up being crazy, but here goes:
The leak comes from the U.S. Government and is related to the Trump documents probe. A grand jury questioned a Trump advisor today about early 2022 conversations concerning SOME of the same aspect as this! This link should work as a "gift" article from me to the world https://wapo.st/3oPyyKO
What IF Trump knew of this information from inside government sources? What if it turns out these documents were, or are, in the hands of the Saudi government?
Basically, this information has to go public because it is in fact part of the upcoming Trump indictment.
Reply to self (ha):
A) Nordstream directly affects Saudi fortunes
B) Trump grouses about Germany a lot, and this is NOT information that Germany would want out in the wild
C) Why did the Saudis give Kushner all that $$$?
D) How does Russia fit in?
E) Who gave classified documents to Trump when he was OUT of office? (if my theory is correct)
F) Does this have anything to do with the PGA/LIV Golf merger also playing out? Trump has some kind of stake in that.
Hmmmm...
Up voted for true creativity in generating cool hypotheticals, albeit with a surfeit of unanswered questions and details, and plenty of wild logical leaps!
Don’t we know how it leaked? Wasn’t it the work of that white supremacist AF reservist who has been arrested for these leaks. And, not to be a broken record, but why is this clown who stole secrets while on active duty facing civilian charges and not an AF court martial?
You answered your own question, possibly
"[It is] the work of that white supremacist AF reservist who has been arrested for these leaks."
Birds of a feather flock together.
I'm (not really) astonished but I am dismayed at how many secrets seem to be leaking these days
Interesting piece on Robert Hanssen this morning on NPR Morning Edition. That guy gave away the farm. I was astonished at the magnitude of what he sold. May he rot forever
I remember when the breathtaking scope of the fallout from Hansson's treason was first revealed—all the executions he caused!—and was glad to learn he had died alone in a supermax cell. In some pain, I would hope. Although I initially was inclined to cut Teixera some slack because of his youth, the more facts come to light the more I wish him that fate—after several decades in supermax. I heard the NPR refresher too, and thought it well done. Had forgotten (if I ever knew) Hanssen was the third generation of corrupt government authority—his father and grandfather were dirty cops.
The guy they interviewed on NPR, Tim Weiner, was really good. I'm going to read his books about the CIA and FBI.
Yeah. How DID it leak. That's the question.
The CIA "LEAKED" IT.
Does that mean Sy Hersch's claims are mistaken?
If you believe the CIA
www.euronews.com/2023/05/03/russian-ghost-ships-near-nord-stream-before-blast-reports
*****
"The documentary made a detailed assessment of what Russian ships were doing in the months leading up to the incident.
One of its vessels, the Sibiryakov, is believed to be capable of underwater surveillance and mapping as well as launching a small underwater vehicle.
It switched its communications to a secret receiver and took an unusual route near where the pipeline would later blow up in June, according to the Royal Navy officer, who remained anonymous in the documentary.
Another vessel, the SB-123 naval tugboat, is alleged to have arrived five days before the September explosions.
Its radio communications suggest it stayed there the whole night, before sailing back towards Russia.
"We have used satellite imagery and other sources to verify the positions from the radio messages," said investigative reporter Gulldahl. "We are confident to say that these vessels were in the area, and also at what time they were there."
He continued: "We don't, however, conclude whether or not they had a part in the leaks. Future reporting might give us more answers there."
In April, the series by Denmark's DR, Norway's NRK, Sweden's SVT, and Finland's Yle broadcasters revealed that Russian vessels were mapping out offshore wind farms, gas pipelines, power, and internet cables in the North Sea for possible sabotage attacks. *****
Contingency plans, just an innocent coincidence, who knows? Who can say for sure which of any number of state or non-state actors, acted?