Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/21/ring-ring-stupidphone.html
…
4 Likes
This is like a guy or gal who is in trouble by their significant other for liking and making comments to another guy or gal on Social Media. They get called out on it, claim nothing is going on, and then the next day post, “Happy Birthday to a beautiful person, so-and-so.”
1 Like
So, to summarize: multiple sources at the White House leaked a story to the press about Drumpf and Kelly being mad about leaking?
This is not a ship of state, it’s a collander.
29 Likes
Obtain used as an intransitive verb! (Applause)
11 Likes
To be fair, it will be more important to be in Putin’s good graces than his own Chief of Staff’s when Trump flees to Russia. /s
10 Likes
Those were not the leaks he was looking for.
7 Likes
Especially on the “comes around” part.
2 Likes
I might be thicker than clag, here, but I didn’t get the assertion that this was coming from the IC.
I don’t know what the purpose of this ‘deep state’ echo is. Yes. They operate (operated) with relative impunity, but within a massive, complex ecosystem of interrelated interests. The shit coming out against Trump doesn’t need to be sophisticated. It’s not coming from the dark core of the american state. It’s just shitty people being shitty to other shitty people.
…
Maybe there’s a second layer here. There was a book on my parent’s bookshelf when I was a kid - a heavy book called ‘The Puzzle Palace.’ It was a relatively straight, thorough history of the NSA - dating from the early eighties. And it outlined all of the processes used by that agency to harvest and process SIGINT, including five-eyes approaches. Core to this, was the story about automated watchlist and trigger word systems operating on domestic lines in the US. Mass surveillance, recorded and indexed - documented back in the 1970s.
…
But that’s been the NSA’s remit - it’s solipsistic. Do they advance policies? Structure or take down domestic governments? Or are they caught in their own fictive narrative around the predictive powers of information - total and complete information.
…
There’s no ‘deep state’. There are powerful organisations with vested interests in the status quo - but they are not in the business of statehood. American power was never, explicitly, fascism - it never made the conceptual leap from focused activity to total control. The IC never wanted to govern - and it’s telling that the most… overtly corrupt aspect of the collected community (Hoover, and his era) fell more squarely into the frame of policework, of the private-dick kinda mode of power and leverage.
…
Hell, no ideas here. I don’t trust the IC. But they were an organisation that spent billions on complex Corona satellites - that spent decades perfecting them. That overthrew legitimate governments from Chile to Canberra. They don’t play politics with Trump. They don’t need to.
…
And that might be their undoing.
15 Likes
Actually…US spooks are the ones I trust the most.
3 Likes
“There are powerful organisations with vested interests in the status quo” … yeah, I guess there are. I am not sure that is all a bad thing. Currently we have an Administration that is disrupting the status quo deliberately in ways that are deeply alarming. Trump came into power with people like Bannon whispering his ear: Bannon thinks destroying most of the existing government structure is a fine idea. Trump doesn’t even really have a coherent set of policies in most respects, but he was receptive to that message. He believes he is smarter than all his advisers and that he also doesn’t need the advice or help of any career civil servants. Plus he is ignorant, impulsive, vindictive, and very likely compromised by a foreign power. We should all wish for a little more status quo and a lot less of the random destructive behavior we are getting now.
15 Likes
I think we are agreeing, here. And I think this is a freakish moment where this could all go awry because we are looking to collective figures like the IC, like the military, for stability.
And we know where that leads.
We’re for civilian government for fucks sake. We’re not in some Heinlein fanwank where being a Soldier automatically makes you a supermagic human who understands statehood and all its myriad pitfalls.
…
10 Likes
Yeah, I am not looking for the IC or military to save us, but I do think there are people in those institutions who rightly value stability and are not just in it for self-interest.
However, we need to save ourselves. “Sauvons-nous nous-mêmes/ Décrétons le salut commun.”
3 Likes
If it’s unclear whether Trump read something, it’s a safe bet to assume he didn’t.
If it’s unclear whether Trump played golf, it’s a safe bet to assume he did.
If it’s unclear whether Trump lied, you haven’t been paying attention.
30 Likes
Cory, can you document how the U.S. intelligence service has been operating “without adult supervision” for decades, because I would think that that kind of expose would be pretty explosive?
1 Like
"DO NOT CONGRATULATE"
Roger That!
7 Likes
This WH careens from one rage to the next. It is in constant upheaval and disarray. Can you imagine having to actually show up for work at that place? What a nightmare, for the staffers and the nation. God damn, fuck trump.
4 Likes
I am assuming the term IC is ‘intelligence community’ but I actually Googled it. The most hits referred to ‘Interstitial cystitis’.
5 Likes
By the way, I think the trump admin has Interstitial cystitis.
6 Likes
You’d think that by this time they’d understand that instructing him not to do something in ALL CAPS will almost guarantee that he will do it. Kelly really needs to hire some mothers of problem children as consultants.
12 Likes
It’s like an undergraduate philosophy class!
1 Like
