FW: [Am-info] Gates gets government security at tax payer expense

[Hans Reiser]

Jeff Wasel wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>Unfortunately, the usually spot-on Hans has missed this one.
>
>I spent 15 years working in the intelligence community, using sources from
>Ft. Meade, the CIA and others, and the platform then, as it is today is
>Solaris and Sol 86 on Intel running ADA or other DOD-specific OS. HP has
>some of the data storage component which is done in a distributed fashion
>for safety's sake. The secretaries and such use Office, but it ties into a
>UNIX and Linux back end. Windows is not as pervasive as M$ would like, nor
>is it used by most of the other gov't agencies for mission critical stuff.
>  
>
I heard that Homeland Security is standardizing on windows because it 
allows everyone to interoperate easily.  Is this inaccurate?  The 
security professional who told me this was well connected to the 
government and not impressed by their decision.

>
>What you read about the security services is up to you - I like it when they
>are perceived as dullards, idiots and the like, as it just lulls the threat
>to sleep. Last time I looked, the KGB was on the losing side, and just
>because the upper echelon of an organization may be too heavy, that doesn't
>negate operational successes, witness Afghanistan. 150 CIA agents, with the
>help of 700 Army, Navy, and Marine Special forces and those of Australia and
>the United Kingdom, overthrew the gov't of Afghanistan in roughly a month -
>a month to neuter a 10,000+ seasoned guerrilla army and national
>infrastructure that has not had peace in 25 years. So much for our
>incompetence.
>  
>
Afghanistan being toppled was truly impressive.  I was amazed by it.  
You deeply deserve kudos for that.

The minor quibbles:

Unfortunately you are losing the peace by not respecting human rights, 
and thus tossing your moral legitimacy into the toilet.  Unfortunately 
you backed persons who were slimeballs (excepting Karzai) and you don't 
understand that it causes people to equate you with them.  It reminds of 
Vietnam, yes?  Unfortunately the one non-slimeball you back, Karzai, 
doesn't get from you enough support to control the country because you 
don't seem to actually care.

Unfortunately you still don't understand why the Arab peoples are mad at 
you, which you could find out by walking into any cafe and actually 
listening to what they tell you is the reason (hint, think ethnic 
cleansing of Palestine and human rights in Palestine.  Another hint: 
they don't really give a shit whether your women wear veils, and would 
hate you with about the same level of violence that the french hate you 
if it was not for Palestine.  Final hint: being the rulers that torture 
less than Sadaam Hussein is not the way to win hearts and minds, however 
practically important that might be to people's lives.  Moral purity can 
be a powerful force, try it.)

The major problem:

Unfortunately you just lost Russia, which was > 100x more important to 
not lose than Afghanistan, and 10x more important than the Middle East.  
The KGB successfully infiltrated and undermined the democratic forces 
you were ineffectively backing, and took the country back.  You (here I 
toss the state department in with you, apologies if that offends) 
publicly backed the corrupt oligarchs who ripped off the common russian 
while singing the praises of the ways of the USA, and thus taught the 
russian masses that western democracy = them being ripped off.  You  
still publicly defend Khodorkovsky without the slightest clue that maybe 
you should find somebody with some moral legitimacy like those NTV 
reporters to back instead.

You are spending massive amounts of money on Osama, who has killed less 
people than a month of auto accidents, and do little about the return of 
the guys who could and someday might destroy every single city the USA 
has, and leave the rest of the race of man in serious radiation troubles 
as an unintended side effect of doing so.  Your choice of priorities 
seems to be determined by press headlines rather than a grasp of who has 
how many nukes.

Thanks to Gorbachev, there was a chance in the early 90s to end the 
major part of humanity's nuclear danger, and you guys muffed it.

The chinese are successfully stealing your nuke designs today, the 
russians stole the H-bomb in the late 40s, and every retrospective on 
spying history shows that you have been penetrated deeply by the 
Russians your entire history.

Your president says on Russian TV that he has looked into Putin's soul, 
and he liked what he saw, and all of Russia snickers.  Somebody in the 
CIA needs to tell the fool what is KGB.  KGB is where the acting is more 
professional than Hollywood because the training is more serious.  KGB 
is where if you see an emotion on the face, it is fake, and lack of 
emotion is as honest as it gets.   Have you noticed at all that Putin 
has an incredible gift for always saying just the right thing?  Putin is 
probably the best the KGB ever produced in its history.  It is rather 
unlikely that he is still capable of displaying a genuine emotion 
without a conscious decision to do so, and Russians at least know it.

The KGB is the best and brightest of Russia.  The CIA is not the best 
and brightest of America, and I am glad we put our best and brightest 
into the private sector instead, as it has made us much wealthier. 

end of my rant. ;-)

If you want my respect, dear CIA, restore democracy in Russia. 

>END of off-topic rant...
>
>That said, hope everyone's fine, and Gene and Felmon, thanks for your
>interesting observations on the duality of rage...
>
>Jeff
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: am-info-admin@lists.essential.org
>[mailto:am-info-admin@lists.essential.org]On Behalf Of Hans Reiser
>Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 9:56 AM
>To: Mark Dodel
>Cc: am-info@lists.essential.org
>Subject: Re: [Am-info] Gates gets governmemnt security at tax payer
>expense
>
>
>A more serious worry is that the department of homeland security has
>standardized on windows, and is now trying to make it secure, which I
>fear will perhaps wind up being an enormous subsidy for the windows OS.
>
>If you guys are going to make remarks about our intelligence services
>being morons (they are), keep in mind that at a time when the Russians
>and Chinese and Europeans and everyone competent is moving from windows
>to linux for their intelligence services, we are standardizing on
>windows.  Yes, they are the least competent intelligence agency in the
>world, and their ability to select an OS without knowing or caring that
>it has a few security problems is one of the measures of it.  They are
>so far behind the Russians in skill level, it is a sad joke.....
>
>Hans
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>  
>