The Associated Press reports the loss of a mere terabyte of data recording the Clinton era from the National Archives. An investigation has been launched with the hope of recovering the data. The dates during which the data went missing — “October 2008 and March 2009″ –may provide a clue as to the perpetrators. Just saying.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The National Archives lost a computer hard drive containing massive amounts of sensitive data from the Clinton administration, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and Secret Service and White House operating procedures, congressional officials said Tuesday.
One of former Vice President Al Gore’s three daughters is among those whose Social Security numbers were on the drive. Other information includes logs of events, social gatherings and political records.
The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation of the matter, according to Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and senior committee Republican Darrell Issa of California.
The lawmakers said they learned of the loss from the inspector general of the National Archives and Records Administration. The drive is missing from the Archives facility in College Park, Md., a Washington suburb. The drive was lost between October 2008 and March 2009 and contained 1 terabyte of data – enough material to fill millions of books.
Towns said he would have the FBI and inspector general brief committee members so they can “begin to understand the magnitude of the security breach and all of the steps being taken to recover the lost information.”
Some people say that the power of the scribe is to allow people to remember. But you could argue equally that his real power is to make people forget so nobody ever figures out what is going on. Poof! It never happened!. We’ve heard this story before. It’s a classic tale and begins this way:
I was born ten days ago. A full-grown man, born ten days ago. I woke on a street of this city. I don’t know who I am, or where I’ve been, or where I’m going. Someone wiped my memories clean. And they tracked me down and tried to kill me. Why? Who are you? I ran. I managed to escape them the first time. Then the hand, my hand, told me what to do.
Too bad it’s from the Outer Limits, but maybe that was set in Washington, DC. Or maybe the story is a continuation of the video below.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Contribute to the Tip Jar or make a $5 Subscription before we too forget who we are
Calling Mr. Berger… Mr. Berger…
The study carrel you reserved is ready now…
Will you be needing any scissors, or exacto blades, or maybe a large industrial electromagnet?
JJ beat me to it.
Perhaps Sandy Berger burgled it. God knows our enemy government will leak the goods to their comrades and hide the goop from their sworn enemies, the people who work in the salt mines to support their kingdom. Information is terror when it is controlled by this spiteful lot. At the very least they will not protect Americans, not at our borders, not our information, not our lives. Heads on a stick for the lot of them.
Incredible, incredible.
Berger was one of my first thoughts too. I would guess it is an inside job.
“Some people say that the power of the scribe is to allow people to remember. But you could argue equally that his real power is to make people forget so nobody ever figures out what is going on. Poof! It never happened!. We’ve heard this story before.”
Yes, Wretchard, we have heard this story before. About a Senator from Illinois, who might have been born in Hawaii or Kenya, who is not remembered at the universities he attended, who might or might not be the author of two books he claims to have written, whose bona fides were not checked by the nation’s press, who campaigned as an agent of hope and change but seems to offer neither, and who has recently risen to the most powerful job in the world — if he chooses to keep it thus. Hmmmm. If a Hollywood screenwriter turned in such a science fiction script it would be thrown out as too unbelievable. And now a part of the historic record that might just corroborate (or not) his background has gone missing. Is this hope? Or change? F
A naive question. Would not that data have been backed up?
Jim
1 TB…. sad in a way today’s that technology allows such a massive amount of data to be stuffed down the memory hole relatively easily. Of course, backing up such data is clearly impossible.
No more bulging socks necessary for the assassins of evidence.
An operational database would be backed up in multiple ways, simply because it is too valuable to lose. You’d have onsite backups, offsite backups, etc. And there would be be backups to points in time. A database administrator should be able to restore up to a given point in time. How far back depends on policy. Policy will probably determine what you do with archival material. There’s no technical obstacle to backing up one TB.
If the thief simply wanted to view the data, he would not be concerned about the existence of backups and maybe there are some lying around, provided somebody has documented their whereabouts. But if the thief wanted to deny the data to others then he/she would have taken care to abstract the sole existing copy. If that’s what happened, then you’d really have to look hard at the organization itself, because somebody knew just exactly how to flush something down the memory hole in an organization designed to prevent the very thing.
Yes, there might well be backups. But where? Materials in the National Archives are stored there for historical purposes. Backups that might exist could well be located in repositories that are not, and will never be, accessible to scholars, researchers or the general public. As Wretchard says, somebody very likely knew what could be taken that could not be found elsewhere. And then there’s the matter of timing, of course: days or weeks before the election, when disclosure might have changed the course of events. No, this is not a random theft. F
Years after the NYT published the so-called “Pentagon Papers” I finally picked up a used paperback copy. 50 cents.
Set against all I’d read in the previous decade about WWII, WWI, Russia and the West, China and the West, it struck me that there was a kind of glacial inevitability to the progress of events. Anybody can criticize the results, but there are damn few geniuses who could have taken the same situations, treaties, alliances, economic ties, and tides of history, and made decisions that would have brought about happier outcomes.
Hindsight is not helpful, except maybe to temper future impulses.
Sandy B notwithstanding, we have an institutional memory resident in a watching population.
A hard disk missing?
Check Sandy’s pants!
(sorry – it was my first thought too)
As a techie I have real problems with this one. Most data sources are AT THE LEAST RAID5. That means that any one disk of three can fail and the data can be restored. If it is a SAN then there is even more redundancy. So this much being ‘just gone’ is very weird.
I ain’t buyin’ it.
The question is, who profits? Who would pay for the information?
Knossos was a lively town
Or so the ancients say
Its splendor gained it great renown
A marvel of its day
But gods are mortal after all
And fall in love with bulls
And thus was born what we would call
A monster dressed in wools
His body man, a bull for head
Poor Minos was distraught
His wife, the goddess he had wed
Dishonor on him brought
And so was built the labrynth
To house the half-man beast
With name inscribed upon a plinth
In letters deeply creased
Good Theseus did undertake
To slay the monster dead
But first precautions he must make
By stringing out a thread
Behind to help in the escape
For Minotaur lay hid
In deep recess with spools of tape
A terabyte for bid
Does anyone remember when 1TB drives became available? It is just recently that there exists such a thing generally available. And they are SATA. Do the powers that be expect us to believe that their machines are not still using EIDE? I don’t.
I managed to not lose one email or file in some 20 years of doing that stuff. It was all available even through failures of HUGE 160 & 340Mb drives. That I could heft into place using both hands. Backing up onto 6250bpi tapes… I didn’t spill a drop, as the old phrase went.
There is no excuse at all for losing that data. Well, no acceptable excuse.
But I digress.
tom
This is not about the vicissitudes of hardware, nor are we talking about catastrophically failed hardware; nor are we beset in this case by flood, fire, earthquakes, electrical overload or anything of that nature. In this case our problems go around on two legs and have a set of fingers, and worse, the fingers seem to know where to go.
You don’t need 1 Tb drive to store 1 Tb of data. With a good compression (depending on the format in which the info was kept) you could fit it onto a 250Gb drive. Of course, that presumes that the drive is used as a removable device, data recorded, device unplugged, labeled and stored.
That would explain the uncertain exact date of disappearance, else if the drive was a part of a data bank, someone would notice rather quickly.
Walt,
Most excellent verse. While my mere limericks pale in comparison, I offer one up in homage to your talent.
— —
The drive was from the archive conveyed
Lest the Clintons should remain too afraid
Though Sandy had socked
Files previously locked
There was more to be nabbed on a raid.
— —
Cheers,
L3
Leo, there is nothing mere about a limerick. If you would like to contribute to my verse blog, click on Walt and I’ll be happy to post you as guest versifier.
Walt
Walt and L3:
You are both going from bad to verse.
“If the thief simply wanted to view the data [1 Terabyte], he would not be concerned about the existence of backups and maybe there are some lying around, provided somebody has documented their whereabouts. But if the thief wanted to deny the data to others then he/she would have taken care to abstract the sole existing copy. If that’s what happened, then you’d really have to look hard at the organization itself, because somebody knew just exactly how to flush something down the memory hole.” -Wretchard
“…I have real problems with this one. Most data sources are AT THE LEAST RAID5.” –Robohobo
The Clinton Crime syndicate looks to be computer savvy. And, they are still in the White House.
Yes, striped with parity (raid 5) requires at least three disks and any disk that fails can be rebuilt. It’s odd such a large amount of data is missing.
Maybe, the Nation Archives was wrong about it being backed-up and no harm done from Sandy Berger’s thefts.
I am suspicious. The Clinton’s can be very thorough.
Walt and L3: Either one of you a cowboy?
If so, you can inherit the title long held by Will Rogers: Poet Lariat.
“there is nothing mere about a limerick. If you would like to contribute to my verse blog, click on Walt and I’ll be happy to post you as guest versifier.”
Walt Why must you seek rhymed di-verse-ity
Leo’s lims lament contra verse eee ah lee,
puns meant to demure
the disk-course obscure
in pant-o-loons penned obliquely.
And on topic too, I might add
No historical archive would just keep a hard drive as is. They’re certain to become unreadable pretty quickly. The data would have been copied somewhere and that somewhere would continually be backed up. The original HD is of no consequence at that point.
The story in the NYT says that it was “an external hard drive that contained copies of electronic storage tapes from the executive office of the president of the Clinton administration.”
It doesn’t appear that its about lost data but rather that someone stole sensitive information. The data stolen isn’t thought to compromise national security.
The loss may have simply that it was thrown out by the cleaning staff. It may have been stolen by someone with strategic resources who just wanted to prepare damage control for political and financial interests.
I think that the interesting thing is that it was information about events more than 9 years ago stolen less than 7 months ago. At the height of the financial crisis when the world was holding its breath and the hunters of witches were collecting firewood. Larry Summers anyone? It has to have been someone too smart by half.
The Sandy Berger affair, of course, comes to mind. But given the time window in which the data went missing – October 2008 to March 2009 – it is possible that this could be an outgoing Bush admin official. By October 2008, it was pretty clear who would be occupying the White House for the next 4 years – and it was certainly clear after early November. Maybe someone thought they would get some especially valuable information about the Clinton admin, like maybe Eric Holder’s legal advice on extraordinary rendition? A sort of insurance against prosecution by the newly empowered Left? One’s imagination could go pretty far on this sort of speculation…
What would be worth stealing now about that Clinton administration? Maybe its records of meetings with Chinese money-men?
I will roger that.
Agree with 23. Blindman, it seems the device containing data is missing, not the data itself – though the story – [if only it had been written by a competent journalist] – could have been clearer.
The really interesting aspect to me is the “who” in who is worried over this event. Hmmmmmm. Strange and interesting times. What is coming down the pike next?
26. 49erDweet: What I am pondering is what sort leverage is to be gained from the data? And who will be leveraged? I’ll bet there are many people in DC looking over their shoulders right now as this sort of detailed insider knowledge could be used a both a sword and a shield, particulary with “proper editing”.
OTOH it is good to see that the National Archives have learned a lot from the Sandy Berger incident.
What would be worth stealing now about that Clinton administration? Maybe its records of meetings with Chinese money-men?
Well, for one thing, the 1995 metaststization by Clinton & Co. of the Community Reinvestment Act, and the means and methods of doing so. The data was stolen during the period when large numbers of people were scratching their heads about the causes of the subprime mortgage collapse, and the feared failure of connected banks and financial institutions. The theft could have been committed by one posse looking for, or its counterpart hoping to destroy, certain evidence.
This “hard drive” was probably an external 1TB hard drive used as a backup. In other words, my unsophisticated guess is that the missing drive is THE backup drive. If that is the case, the original data could have been already erased and this was the only copy of the information left. So, this theft could be 1) an attempt to destroy the only copy of this information existing, or 2) an attempt to steal this information to use against someone (three guesses who, and the first two don’t count), or 3) some one of the many passerbys (read the AP article) saw an opportunity to steal a 1TB external hard drive to keep their movies and pictures on at home.
Somewhat OT:
As most of you may or may not know, the only truly secure way to purge the data from a complete disk drive is to drill a hole in each of the four corners of the drive, pour it full of gasoline, light it and then after the flames die down (and you beat out the fire on the living room floor), throw it into the deepest marsh that you have access to.
Perhaps we have a multi-layered blackmail tit-for-tat situation.
1. We know Obama stole the primaries from Clinton by rigging the caucauses via his mau-mauing storm troopers.
2. Perhaps the Clintons had some hard facts around this which were on said hard drive.
3. Perhaps Clinton demanded the Secretary of State job, which she got on Dec. 1, 2008, right in the middle of that date range.
4. Perhaps the pay-back to Obama was to make sure those records were destroyed, lest any enterprising journalist (I know, it is to laugh) were to dig around where the bones were buried.
You could replace facts about stealing the caucauses with facts about pretty much any of the deep, dark side of the Big O, since that swamp is miles deep. The story would run the same way.
And there could be a hundred other scenarios. It’s a fun parlor game, but I don’t expect we’ll ever know the truth.
Yesterday the senate approved Democratic economics apparatchik Gary Gensler as chairman of the crucial international watchdawg, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Gensler, from Clinton’s Treasury Dep’t, designed the regulation that, in the yr 2000 regulatory reforms, specifically exempted from clearing, custody, reportage, or specific accounting rule, an odd little derivative called the credit default swap (the rationale seems to’ve been along the lines of privacy needed in order for USA to be able to compete internationally for the new ‘hedge fund’ non-USA registered ‘dark pools’).
When clinton signed the Act, there existed several hundred million dollars in these CDS tools. Seven years later, when the crash began, and someone thought to take a look, whoops, it had emulated what at an atomic level analog would be enough thermonuclear blast to wipe out all the work done by all the people on earth over the previous three or five years, that is, locked in these cds, stateside alone, sat sixty trillion dollars.
Also in the news, today the PERAB is holding its very first meeting. The 16 member “President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board”.
There are some folks on that board who were in attendance at all the course changes, dead reckonings, and defensive zig-zags which led last year to the great ships of world finance colliding with each other on the high finance seas –as unerringly as if guided by a radar from hell.
If i start listing these names and their points of pivot, i’ll be writing this comment all day and into the night. And no one will read it. So –just use some tight searches on a few of the names –like this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_en&q=privacy+act++year+2000+gensler+cds&btnG=Search
(take a look what turned up)
So anyhoo, a three-pronged coincidence in the current 24 hour cycle –the report of the theft of the hard drive –the record put together by among others many of the folks holding –in the White House i believe –their first meeting today (they were appointed back in February –Volker to guide, Goolsbee to direct), and the senate confirmation of Gensler as global commodity cop.
We have but a fraction of the works of Aeschylus. Plays that won and defeated the poets whose works we have are destroyed. Literate civilizations have vanished with barely a trace. The Talmud was at one time on the edge of being lost. More recently Hollywood movies with famous actors have disappeared when their luminous nitrate stock film disintegrated or combusted. The records of millions of WW-II era veterans, my father among them, were destroyed in a fire at St Louis. The world is a fragile place. The loss of knowledge is an extinction, a world gone forever.
oops, should’ve noted, the lead in the three-act news-cycle show, actually has a soliloquy (it’s the first link, the following two just establish another little thang to keep your eyes on):
http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_en&q=bill+clinton+haiti
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_en&q=maurice+strong+interview+canada+west+magazine
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_en&q=maurice+strong+haiti
I’t mean to drift excessively tin hat, but, allowing as to the post title, “Into the Labyrinth”, i do believe that even the least of pattern-seekers would have to admit that somewhere in this room there is this being who hates the western heart and wants it broken, and that this spirit has been for some time influencing events seemingly entirely exogenous.
So, therefore, i posted a link to an interview given by the man who founded the Davos Conferences –where Progressivism and Trade besmirch themselves with each other, bowing to necessity in the most delicate high mountain air of the stronghold of the Knights Templar.
This interview is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what has happened to us.
The interview may be only a glimpse of one thread of the calamity, but, still, it does form the boundary line, the enclosing, of the Soros/Nazi-resurgence/masters of the universe implausibility for which many of us search diligently for the relief of finding a disproof.
Buddy L.
Where is the link? I would like to check it out.
I don’t know if it is a full-blown conspiracy or just that we have reached a critical mass of commie group-think.
Like a SWAT Team where every member knows his job and knows that the other members know their job, you don’t have to communicate out loud. You know what everyone else is trained to do, and when you see them act, you know what they are doing and what your job is.
Sort of an instinctive response to stimuli.
>>There is no excuse at all for losing that data. Well, no acceptable excuse.
Quite right. Which suggests to a 99.99% certainty that said data was *not* lost, but stolen.
And if I read the comments above correctly, somebody actually floated the theory that Bush staffers are to blame! (Or perhaps it was sarcasm.) Uh, guy…if I have the time-line right, the drive hadn’t been in the White House for, oh, a decade or so. It had been transferred to the National Archives, where Bush staffers would have had a very hard time walking off with it. (Only former Clinton staffers like Sandy Burglar can get away with brazen shit like that.)
Here’s an idea: Let’s find some email addys of the honchos at the National Archives, and once a month post an “update” to the effect of “Well, they still haven’t found it,” and suggesting that readers email the N.A. asking for the status of the alleged “investigation.” Because I think most of us agree that the “investigation” is a giant sham, designed to convince Joe Sixpack that the disappearance was *not* an inside job.
Amazing that the nation is disintegrating so quickly.
antn/35; the middle of the three links in my #33 goes to a google search, which lists many presentations of that interview –with varied and instructive commentary –i’m sure the interview itself in original publish is somewhere in the back pages –it’s from 1990, tho, so maybe not.
But you want the meat of it, so start here –with this essay by this anarchist feller who writes very brightly, and expresses the outrageous meaning of the guy who at the time was the kingmaker at the UN, being not only a green genocidalist but also secure enough about same to indulge his ego by bragging it to reporters!
Claudia Rosett interviewed the guy, some few years ago –if anyone’s credibility & credentials are beyond reproach, that would be her –just search the two names together, it’ll come up.
I thought of him when i read that yesterday Bill Clinton had been given by our government a ambassador-light mission to Haiti. M. Strong for years used the Caribbean island nations, prominently Haiti, to procure and buy influence with and generally bestow like a king to those who pleased him, that good old free UN money –as well as to keep his open UN official pass into privy meetings with any head of state he wanted to cajole, bribe, hire, enlist, corrupt, or otherwise entangle.
And there’s a big job opening for a big shot fixer, right now, along the southern approaches sea lanes –what with Allen Stanford’s First Kremlin MoneyWashing Bank & Trust of Antigua now in DEA receivership.
Look at the timing –new admin comes in, out goes the Texan racketeer, and in comes the new sec of states’s hubby –who learned the racket from the Dixie mafia, way back in the Mena airport days.
Thanks Buddy, scary stuff.
Entirely Off-Topic; It looks as if Billy Clinton (more likely an intern) has finally got around to reading “The Three Conjectures”. He has pronounced that a nuke-armed “..Iran will lead to a Mid-East Arms Race”.
Just saw it on Yahoo news.
37. buddy larsen: Looks rather like the Plame-Wilson scam writ large.
The first lesson of security is there is no such thing as foolproof security. The closest thing is the quantum schemes being talked about and that is not necessarily security in the normal sense, it is just a tripwire.
Security is a matter of costs. How much are you willing to spend in terms of effort and dollars to secure your stuff and how much is your opponent willing to spend in order to get at it.
I have no idea what is exactly on the volume(s) in question here, but it does not, at least at first glance, anything earthshaking. If it were really data related to current and high security stuff it would not be in a place like that, Langley, the Secret Service, the NSA, or some other black office would be safeguarding the data.
What does it take to gain access to the national archives? We do know information security is not a priority in that place. The question I have is: is there another copy of that volume(s) around? I doubt it, after all what is the purpose of an archives?
In the end, there is definitely a disagreement in the value of the data on those volumes.
So it turns out that the Clintons did have copies of The One’s birth certificate, Indonesian school admission papers, passport records, college transcripts, senior thesis, selective service forms and Illinois State Bar admission application. Who knew?
Buddy, old buddy, that is most assuredly some radical stuff. I read the last words of some famous atheist (Ingersoll or Huxley, I believe.)
As he was expiring he gasped, “So it’s true after all”. Maybe the black helicopter, Illuminati / CFR/ UN fearing conspiracy buffs weren’t missing the essence of the story.
The question is what do freemen do? Trust God and keep your powder dry, I guess.
anton/39; he must’ve awakened this morning with a horse’s head in his bed –and a note saying “Vot, in your bed a horse’s head you don’t like?” –signed, ‘your friendly Mossad stable boy’.
Ledger @19,
“The Clinton Crime syndicate looks to be computer savvy. And, they are still in the White House.”
Got me to wondering, how is Obama’s silicon savvy like Bill’s? Then I remembered, the EU is suing Intel! Under Clinton it sued Microsoft, David Boyle representing. Other than this trans-Atlantic comparability, can you think of any other similarities?
This transnational shake-down syndicate’s focus on American info-dynamos is computer savvy indeed.
Cutting to the chase: I think Clinton/Obama are apt to use foreign courts as proxies to avoid domestic electoral consequences.
I think Axelrod’ll want to avoid launching Holder at an iconic American hi-tech manufacturer, if only because It’ll make Obama’s donor-lists more interesting than they already are.
The White-Glove Rule (also known as the “Rule of Plausible Deniability”) holds that, it’s better to let Belgium put Intel in the stocks instead. One gots to keep one’s guantes clean.
Hmmm, They do not care much for Bubba in Haiti as many blame him for corrupting Aristide. Perhaps Haiti is where the Clintons hide the hard drives and contents of Sandy’s socks. Obama and Rahm must have turned Bill loose to do Fran Drescher azz checks and courier goods to hide. I mean who would check an ex pres for sensitive stuff? Brilliant.
trangbang/43; it can get spookier –if you read all the way down to the end of that Brainsturbator piece, about the recommendations in the Paul Erlich book about adding sterilants to the water supply –then start recalling these funny things you hear and see over the past decade.
American male sperm counts drop to half of normal. Sudden explosion of obesity in mid-90′s –epidemic, they call it –esp in American male children. Then you read about sky-high “estrogen-like” compounds in many of the nation’s rivers.
Then there’s that Russian nationalist politician who routinely refers to American men as “turning into fags”. You start seeing tv Cheerios commercials where in aspect the men are women and vice versa –so you google around a bit and see that the General Mills Foundation (which BTW co-sponsred with Soros much of Al Franken’s campaign) is of the very core of the money/power far left, and that the Cheerios label is totally misleading as regards to genetically-modified ingredients –using a technicality to avoid mention of that. That they have a discount program to put the product in every elementary school in the USA (if you were Dr No, what better project than the nationally-distributed packaged food industry?). Women’s breast cancer rates are high and tho i haven’t looked have a feeling the incident/time chart might be not good. Then just about the time you’re feeling like General Jack D. Ripper doodling “purity of essence” on yer computer, here comes news that Cheerios is under fire from FDA –which may be a ruse to cover, to get people in on the laughability of a bunch of bureaucrats forcing Cheerios to be classified a drug –after which reclassification General Mills can REALLY start doping the aggressive warlike testoterone drive out these brutish Americans. You find that you no longer laugh at the anti-genetically-modified foods people. You find yourself telling your daughter “Please, do NOT let the baby eat Cheerios”.
Yeah, i know, i sound like a nut. No, i AM a nut. –but did you read all the way to the end of that Maurice Strong essay? The respected academic, the great scientist & philosopher Dr. Paul Erlich, in that old book of his “The Population Bomb”, old as the hills, actually recommends the terrorist act of adding what must be estrogen-like compounds to the nation’s waters?
Then you happen across the odd article here and there –estrogen-like compounds ten or a hundred times normal –one on the St Lawrence river fairly recently, and your usual default position that “large conspiracies can’t work”, is suddenly a little raggedy –especially in light of those scientists who wrote the IPCC Report for the UN –the report about temperature, where a third of the thermometers were later shown to’ve been lazily, haphazardly, scattered around major heat sinks –and you recall thinking to yourself, whoah, they’ll REALLY get laughed out of the ballpark for THAT –but then a year or two or three goes by and they are just keeping it up, like robots, selling their flagrantly fraudulent report –just as if the scoffers who in their millions KNOW what they are up to, do not even exist !
–and then –suddenly it’s in congress, as the cap and trade bill, certain to cost your house another four grand a year to heat and cool –and the money is for WHAT? Equalizing society? Virtue and vice are ‘artificial constructs of a patrirchal society? WTF is going on? The lunatics HAVE taken over (that would be them, not us) –for REAL, and it’s no freaking joke !
And where is Maurice Strong –advocate of population reduction –these days? Hanging out with the North Korean nuclear scientists, for one thing.
Search it –search all of it –my whole post –maybe it’s just me –reacting to fringe crap. but damn.
Thinking a little about this….If I had come into a position where I could gain this hard-drive with all it’s info would I take it , or make a copy a leave it where I found it? First option is rather easier, the second far more effective.
The first method sends a message; Hey everybody look what is missing, so if you have any dirt it may come back to haunt you! The second would give you all the info and allow you to use it at your leisure, to catch an opponent (or simply a blackmail target) off guard.
The first would be the mark of somebody that hasn’t thought deeply about this (Sandy Burger comes to mind), it will certainly send hundreds of people into a damage-control frenzy but it is a “known unknown” and allows them to start assessing their positions. “Take it and Run”, very linear thinking.
The second method would open an entire spiderweb of possiblities, the people that don’t want certain tid-bits of information to leak would be perfect marks for blackmail, the info could be used to get way inside the OODA loop of opponents. Heck, there are probably a few thousand unsavory types that would be happy to pay heavily to have access to White House Operations protocols.
Of course, it has been missing for up to seven months now, maybe both games have been played and the victims have finally discovered how the info leaked.
I hope somebody took it and has been using to store downloaded TV shows.
Bill can handle a Labyrinth:
Proof
Dang buddy, now you are really starting to freak me out.
Endocrine Disruptors in Potomac River Fish
Finally Now, I know why the fish dont fight like they used to!
Buddy @ 36: This Justin Boland is? What can I say? Brainsturbator says it all. He plays with himself in his own mind. A typical new agey, self obsessed egomaniac. He has nothing useful to say but ME! ME! ME!. Useless git.
For all of those new agey types who want to do whatever, I say, YOU FIRST! That usually shuts them up. He lives in Western Civilization but wants to see it torn down and remade in his own image or some such.
Wasting time inside conspiracy theories is a good place for the useless in the society. Keeps them out of the way of the productive members. The only problem is they still thief O2.
Here is the new conspiracy theory for them. 2012 IS a nexus BUT you must self terminate for it to come into effect. And it has to be done by the end of 2011. Have fun.
/sarc off
Ding, Ding, Ding,
Nice comment by Zaphod found over at protein wisdom under the Shrummery Post
#
Comment by Zaphod on 5/20 @ 10:48 am #
A Clinton-era hard drive containing over a terabyte of information has suddenly and inexplicably gone missing from the National Archives….
Hmmmm.
The missing hard drive contained details of the “extraordinary renditions” Bill Clinton personally authorized against terrorism suspects. If Congress is going to pursue allegations of “torture” against President Bush, all evidence that Bill Clinton knowingly authorized real torture in multiple foreign countries must be destroyed.
Remember, Sandy Berger stole and destroyed classified anti-terrorism documents from the National Archives only after Congress authorized a comprehensive investigation by the September 11 Commission.
The exact same thing is happening here.
robo, yep, but if you ignore his editorial, and just cogitate on how big this guy was inside the UN, and how big the Davos Conference is (the biz cables cover it in near real-time), and that he co-founded it, and that he’s often called the ‘father of the green movement’ –and THEN read how cloud-cuckooland nuts he is –well, there’s just no longer any need to speculate why the far-right jihad works so hand-glove with the far-left greenies –they’re both bona-fide death-cults. and the green one has (cough) several cabinet positions in the US gov’t. There’s not much to do about it but stay vigilant –and, uh, listen to the advice of Jack D. Ripper.
anyhoo, a quote from the post’s article link (my bolding):
“…the hard drive was moved from a “secure” storage area to a workspace while it was in use. The inspector general explained that at least 100 badge-holders had access to the area where the hard drive was left unsecured.
Besides those with official access to sensitive material, the inspector general said janitors, visitors, interns and others passed through the area, according to Issa. Further, the workspace is in an area that Archives workers pass through on their way to the bathroom and the door often is left open for ventilation.”
wait –”visitors” ?
52. joe buzz:
Or it is in Obama’s hands and he is using it to keep a leash on Hilly and Billy as well as any Sen/Cong that was in the know.
Or it is under Cheney’s pillow, notice how fast Obama backed off on a lot of promises from the campaign re: GWOT.
The possibilities are almost endless.
We can only guess what is REALLY on the drive…..
or, it’s in hilly-billy hands and being used to get them the secretariat of state –from where mebbe billy can pay off some of those asctonishingly generous lie-berry “donations”.
See what I mean….the possibilities boggle the mind.
Putin could probably have some fun with it as well, but my money is that it is held (maybe not here in the US anymore) by a domestic actor. A copy could be set up almost anywhere to “self-publish” as a safety device for the person playing the system. That way a stray bullet or auto accident can’t save the target of the scam(s).
This could be the plot of a pretty decent movie, somebody call Roger Simon.
They stole the data. That’s bad. Where’s the backup, was that stolen too? Is the National Archives saying it doesn’t do backups? I find the lack of specificity very annoying.
Joe Buzz/51; i hope everyone reads your link –or saves it for later.
The article says the estrogen in the Columbia might be birth control pills in Seattle waste water. But what about the Potomac? A few paragraphs nearby it says (quote);
In 2003, intersex fish were first found in the area of the Potomac River’s South Branch, a tributary over 200 miles upstream from Washington D.C. Increasing numbers of affected smallmouth and largemouth bass were discovered in a section of the upper Potomac near Sharpsburg, Maryland in 2004 (unquote).
So, how does a Seattle-sized steady feed of birth control waste originate in South Branch creek, up in the sticks 200 miles upstream of DC?
Maybe that’s why the only pols who make any sense anymore are the drunks –they drink imported scotch instead of city water.
If you look at who benefits, it’s not Obama. Obama would want control/custody of the Hard Drive, particularly if it had embarassing things about the Clintons. A useful check that he could “declassify” and use to purge the Clintons and allies if need be.
Bush? Perhaps or forces allied with him, as a useful reminder to the Clintons that they too can be brought down in a purge of the ones who went before by the new Obama regime. But that strategy would be merely to make copies, surreptitiously, and hold them as insurance for political leverage over purges.
The Clintons? Most likely, They need to DESTROY the embarrassing data. What is most disturbing about Obama is how passive he is wrt various allies and so on, the Clintons, Reid, Pelosi, and so on. He’s more energetic in going after Rush Limbaugh than making sure Pelosi (and now Hoyer) don’t embroil him in a war against the CIA, which he is now engaged in, until the CIA or Obama destroy the other.
Ultimately, Obama has these bouts of passivity wrt allies, and it will cost him.
IF there is sensitive information on that drive, only a select few individuals could use it successfully.
I’m talking a Cheney, an Obama, a Clinton… maybe a Supreme Court Justice… but that’s about it.
Example:
Say an ordinary Joe, out for a twilight jog in DC, noticed a well-dressed man slipping a small bag beneath a park bench – at first, ol’Joe hurries to collect the bag and catch its owner, who surely must have forgotten his property, right?… well, just before sprinting after the owner, Joe peeks into the bag and spies a 1TB Maxtor external HDD… Whoa, now…
In a moment of indecision, Joe considers keeping the little treasure (“I’ve always wanted one of these!”), but being a fundamentally decent sort, he thinks better of it and turns to chase the old guy down… but he’s no longer in sight.
Oops… so Joe finishes his jog, takes the hard drive home, plugs it into his laptop (“I’ll figure out who the owner is and call the guy…”), but HOLY HANNA… the drive is stuffed with subdirectories like:
UDAY AND QUSAY EMAILS
IRAN FORWARD
HA HEZ AND IS.JI.
REINVIGORATING THE DRUZE
LEBANON LAUNCH
BEK.VALLEY
PASSWORDS
JEWS
BLOCKING SAMSON
REVERSING 911
ESTROGEN IN THE WILD
ACORN
{fill in your favorite conspiracy here, etc}
Joe’s eyes go wide as silver dollars as he thumbs through various PDF’s of emails that look, for example, like backdoor contacts between major US political players and elements of Saddam’s government, the focus of which appears to be to undermine a sitting president’s effort to build a case for going to war against Iraq…
Treason and firing squad material… “My God, this looks real”…
Joe stays up late… wondering how to confirm whether or not this is just someone’s idea of a joke…
From the PASSWORD directory, he selects what appears to be someone’s AOL I.D. and password… and logs in around 3am… AND IT WORKS.
So, being a redstater, Joe believes it’s his duty to alert…. who, exactly?
Does he contact the FBI? CIA? Some other federal agency supposed to be on “our” side? After watching what’s happened in the last 8 years to Bush at the hands of his own govt? Not a good choice…
How about contacting a well-known patriot?
If you’re Hannity, and you receive a FedEx Sampler of docs from the disk showing that a former president actively undermined the policy of a sitting president in a time of war, leading directly to the loss of 4000+ servicemen and women… do you take it seriously, or do you figure that ol’Joe’s a crank who lives in his dear old mom’s basement and yanks his monkey watching the PlayBoy Channel when he’s not actively delusional? If you’re Hannity, you dump the entire package in the building incinerator and forget you ever saw it, because the odds are the guy IS a crank, and Hannity’s career would be toast if he ran with what would almost certainly be a hoax.
So, what about Rush? Liddy, maybe? Michael Ledeen? Hitchens? Our own Wretchard, perhaps?
NOBODY WOULD TOUCH IT.
What should ol’Joe do? Well, don’t try and look up the owner and return the “lost” property, since that’ll likely get Joe a spot in the same resort where Hoffa’s been cooling his heels for the last few years. His best bet is to hope that God still smiles on the good, while performing a 35-pass overwrite of the drive, and using it to store ripped copies of his upcoming NetFlix rentals….
Bottom Line: If there is anything REALLY sensitive on that drive, then it’s no good for anyone except a Titan… or a janitor who needed a bit more storage for his porno collection.
The question then: Which is it?
Followup question: Will we ever know?
Triton
Take little time to look up history BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International.) After it’s founding in Karachi, Pakistan (!) bank expanded into European operation with Luxembourg charter, presumably because of that country’s relaxed regulatory regime. Bank has been shown to have been used by many of drug cartels, and various U.S. administrations as conduit by which they were able to launder, hide, legitimize, or quietly fund operations what they did not want known.
It can be argued by both Democrats and Republicans that government legitimately needs methods of keeping clandestine sensitive transactions. If we learned any thing from business with Daniel Ellsberg it was that there are substantial consequences for embarrassing allies by violating confidences and by letting slip things what were meant to remain hidden.
On the other hand, BCCI lent self to crime pure and simple, not just ‘plausible deniability’ for delicate informal intergovernmental transactions.
Much Crime.
Great Steaming Piles of Looting, Larceny, and some inconvenient bodies lying about.
Recall Webster Hubbell, close associate of Clintons who died in prison ostensibly because his cardiac meds were shorted. Name seems to appear along with other principals of Rose Law firm on numerous documents linking BCCI to vanishing-money-deals in Arkansas. BCCI and many of high-profile banks and government persons later indicted or implicated in large-scale financial scandals came to Rose Law firm to connect with local financiers more amiable than strict in their dealings.
I remember wondering how unknown like William Jefferson Clinton was propelled to presidency from two unremarkable terms as governor of Arkansas. Very likely it goes back to his Rhodes Scholar Student days when he took time to visit Soviet Russia. Some speculate he was compromised by KGB, which was dominating presence among InTourist guides who accompanied any Western visitor allowed into CCCP.
Arkansas is NOT crucible in which perspective on foreign policy or appreciation of U.S. Constitution is nurtured.
So present Secretary of State came to position, let us remember, NOT because of stature and experience as a diplomat, or as scholar of international relationships, nor even because she took Wellesley undergraduate course in 20th Century Political Economy.
She met Bill Clinton while both attended Yale Law School, participated as friend of ACLU monitoring legal proceedings in New Haven murder trial of Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, connected to many Marxists and their organizations, participated as clerk to prosecutor in impeachment investigations of Nixon, then accompanied husband Bill to Arkansas and Rose Law.
She is where she is because she knows where many bodies are buried.
May be why information keeps disappearing.
12/Walt. Love the imagery.
Doulton makes rather nice water filters. You can call and ask whether they have a ceramic candle that will filter out hormones. They have water quality data correlated to zip code and will advise you to get, say, an additional arsenic filter if that’s an issue for your area.
Triton:
What to do with the drive if you found it and it contained the kind of info you describe?
Real simple. Make copies on CD. Mail copies to Sean and Rush and Neal and Glenn and Micheal and Mark and Laura. And to certain authors, such as Goldberg and Gertz and Levin and Coulter, and just for fun, Clancey.
And then also put it on the Internet. All of it. The abovementioned persons could help.
And send the original back to the National Archives.
Then sit back and watch the fun.
Buddy,
“Then there’s that Russian nationalist politician who routinely refers to American men as “turning into fags”.
they also want to reconsider how their history was written
http://ow.ly/81IB
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars. The men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” H.L. Mencken.
George Bernard Shaw: “The powers of astute observation are often mistaken as cynicism by those who do not possess powers of astute observation.”
C. S. Lewis,1938: “We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
When are the bureaucrats be held responsible? 100 badge holders with access. The People’s hard drive stolen; not the first time Klintoon Administration artifacts have been looted. Dock all 100 badge holders 5% of their retirement for the missing hard drive, for each missing hard drive, and hard drive security, most likely, will improve. When will the bureaucrats be held responsible?
Hehe, YES V CAN
Dock 5%? Hell, start with the pinkie on the left hand and keep taking one every time they screw up until they don’t have a grip to make such a move!
Buddy, thanks for the link to Strong. We had a discussion about that wingnut awhile back. And I lost the note to research him.
It seems we are seeing the chips fall from the facade of the Parthenon in real time… You know there are real Greek people still alive even though their civilization descended centuries ago?
It should not be forgotten that Bush failed to purge a large number of Clinton appointees.
Walt,
Thanks very much for the kind invitation. However, I’m a monoblogist, and right now I’m gonna stay faithful to the BC. It’s also why I’m a monogamist; with so much of the rest of my life in a state of constant dynamism, I need a few things that are ever fixèd marks, marriages of true minds, if you will.
That being said, you have my permission to copy any limerick of mine that is posted here onto your blog, so long as you show attribution both to me and the BC. It would be an honor to have my tossed-off doggerel displayed on your site.
Cheers,
L3
So I should be worried when my little grandson munches on Cheerios, his favorite snack food?
Frank Perdue had large chicken farms on the Delmarva Peninsula, prior to moving the ops to Arkansas. Massive amounts of Estrogen that get into everything, even the Colonel’s special recipe. And you know, now they both have fish on the menu. And the changes referred to by Buddy all started when McD and KFC began to branch out, Don’t cha know.
Shhh, They’re changing our essense.
Actually, they’re just giving us the bird.
Promethea/71; –i think you should look into that question.
i typed your question into serch and there’s some, uh, info wheat among the nutzo chaff.
Here’s a little info that alludes to the history and recent huge growth (and now pervasiveness) of engineered food –which normally (‘normal’ meaning a state of being around no lethal pod people in positions of influence & authority) i’d be all *for* –the new GM rices that are feeding third-world millions much more reliably than ever, for example.
It’s just –well, call it the ”IPCC Effect” –with the doors all open for ventilation (as at the National Archives) what are the odds that a Maurice Strongish political cell won’t sooner or later form, and won’t become a fraction of the biotech industry, and won’t “go IPCC” on us?
one could feel that, tho there’s no exigency in this day & time for such a back-burner issue, one ought to keep one’s eyes, all three of ‘em, wide open.
after all, there’s the Mad Fiddler, and his comment #9 (“number nine, number nine,number nine”), the second paragraph, the first sentence.
Marie Claude/65; –oh lord, please, not again, not “false consciousness” again !
qu’est-ce que tu dis ?
qu’est-ce que tu dis “fausse conscience” ?
C’est a partir de Marx: ‘C’est-a-dire, ne faites pas confiance a vos yeux, parce que vos yeux ne voient pas la verite superieur.’
“Comment puis-je savoir la difference?” vous poser.
Je reponds: “C’est tres simple – ne me demandez et je vais vous le dire.”
The Rosett Report: Cheerios & Climate Change
(open quote)
Here’s a puzzle: General Mills is in trouble with the Food and Drug Administration for allegedly violating federal law by advertising Cheerios as “clinically proven” to do good things for you.
But the same federal government that runs the FDA is now pushing via the Environmental Protection Agency for carbon dioxide restrictions that would cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars, on grounds that reducing CO2 emissions would be good for public health. Scientifically, and economically, no matter what you’ve been told by the United Nations or the EPA (or Al Gore or Barack Obama or Maurice Strong or the Man in the Moon) there is plenty of well-grounded skepticism about claims that lowering CO2 emissions will affect “global warming” (or combat “climate change” — or intercede at all in whatever aspect of the climate the eco-marketers have most recently latched on to).
So why is the FDA giving Cheerios a hard time, but doing nothing about the CO2 pseudo-science of the EPA? Here’s a prescription that would really do good things for you. Let the FDA go after the EPA over the CO2 racket, and leave the rest of us to hash out with General Mills the truth about Cheerios.
(close quote)
“Let the FDA go after the EPA over the CO2 racket” –that might be a fruitful line of attack –a sort of genteel Cloward-Piven: complain to Leviathan’s elbow about Leviathan’s knee. One Lilliput string at a time –volume & time, time & volume.
buddy @ 74: All food as you know it is modified. The chicken little’s at raw-wisdom (do I smell an oxymoron there or just morons?) don’t know about farming for squat. Try and find a natural tomato. What you know to buy, those red things in the stores are not heirloom varieties. Cotton, corn and a lot of other farm products are the output of ag-college work doing hybridization. What they do is cross-breed (read pollinate) natural sources for desirable characteristics. Then reinforce those selections via natural cross-breeding. THAT is what has made it possible to feed the world.
Case in point. NMSU has an ag program that has done remarkable work cross-breeding chili. They have come up with strains that are disease resistant and reproducible. One is Big Jim which I think is the product of cross breeding (read pollinating) Anaheim and New Mexico strains then interbreeding for the desirable characteristics.
You like blue corn? The modern blue corn is a product of an ag program. The Indian (sorry, Native American) variety is stunted and produces very little in the way of produce. It is still grown on the pueblos here. Mostly for religious purposes.
The point is that there are too many who make pronouncements, like the folks at raw-wisdom, without the benefit of research nor education. There are some points to what they say but they tend to take their philosophy to extremes. I know from personal experience the benefits of getting away from high fructose corn syrup (it is in everything). Go look and read food labels. Some believe it may be the cause or at least a contributor to the obesity problems in the country and the diabetes problems. It turns out that high fructose corn syrup is VERY hard to digest. I have a couple of degenerative diseases and severe allergies. By getting away from HFCS the allergies have abated along with the symptoms of one of the degenerative conditions. And for full disclosure, I also use chiropractic to help. The combination of the two has made a big difference, I believe. Note well, I said I believe. Anecdotal evidence only.
My point is, reasonable people do not take small bits of evidence and go off of the deep end. Extremism is just extreme, not reasonable. (Like my chiro thinks that chiropractic is THE be all and end all of medicine. He is a quack, albeit a likable one. But chiropractic does seem to work.)
In the state we find ourselves these days a good tactic is to get back to planting victory gardens. Plant lots of fruit and veg that you grow yourself. Hard squashes that store well, tomatoes that can be sauced, canned and frozen, beans can be blanched and frozen, onions, garlic, even corn. There are lots and lots of sources for heirloom seeds whose plants and fruits produce viable seeds. It can also reduce your costs considerably. Do you know how to use an olla (squash shaped earthen ware pots) to water plants? Punch a small hole on the bottom and put one near the base of a squash hill for instance. Fill with water. The water seeps out slowly to distribute water to the plant roots. It turns out that this method is a probable way that the Anasazi were able to farm in the desert. Plus the fact that the SW was once much wetter than it is today. (/sarc on) Must be why their SUV burros caused their version of AGW – too much methane in the atmosphere – and why the weather changed. (/sarc off)
robo –thanks –and thanks for checking out the links. You’re right –but in defense, i was less trying to set my hair on fire and more trying to just keep the weather eye. Speaking of which, yesterday, did that sunset look funny to you?
humm, Buddy, this was only an article, doesn’t mean that I was taking part in what it said, he, I’m not naive, nor marxist, just amused : standing in the middle, it’s funny how the extrems (east and west) like to write their versions of history…
I undertand, Marie Claude –you were pointing to the article, not endorsing it. I in turn was complaining about the article, not about the lovely Marie Claude! IOW, we were agreeing. Oui?