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WikiLeaks has published transcripts of 10 months of German Parliamentary hearings into the National Security Agency and Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The 1,380 pages cover 34 witnesses from May 2014 to February 2015. "WikiLeaks has also written summaries of each session in German and English as the inquiry, due to its subject matter, is of international significance." For example, there is a synopsis of William Binney and Thomas Drake's appearance before the Bundestag inquiry in July. The inquiry calendar lists hearings with documents and synopses indicated by paper clips and hourglasses respectively. Some hearings are labelled "Synopsis to follow". Although the transcripts are of public hearings, WikiLeaks claims that "despite many sessions being technically public, in practice public understanding has been compromised as transcripts have been withheld, recording devices banned and reporters intrusively watched by police."
The Register reports:
The inquiry was set up in March 2014, tasked with investigating surveillance activities by the United States on German soil and to what degree German agencies have been complicit in this spying. During the inquiry it emerged that the German Chancery sent a letter to the chief exec of Deutsche Telekom calling for help with the continuous mass surveillance of German and international internet and telecommunications data at Deutsche Telekom's Frankfurt exchange point. This operation, codenamed "Eikonal", saw these intercepts then pass from the BND to the NSA.
More recently, it emerged that the NSA was passing on selectors – IP addresses, emails, and mobile phone numbers – for spying. Targets included members of the French government and European industry, including the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) and Eurocopter. Airbus, another target of alleged spying, has launched a lawsuit.
The NSA also reportedly wanted the BND to spy on Siemens over its alleged business with Russian intelligence. The BND-NSA co-operation on surveillance was ostensibly about fighting international terrorism but much of what happened in practice seemed to be about harvesting geo-political intelligence, if not downright economic espionage.
Some weeks into the inquiry, a German intelligence agency staffer was arrested after allegedly being caught spying on behalf on the US.
Highlights of the leaked files include how the BND tap fibre optic cables from the German intelligence officer who does the tapping. WikiLeaks is saying it released the files in order to inform the debate.
(Score: 1, Troll) by zugedneb on Thursday May 14 2015, @07:23PM
Don't worry, I posted anon for sake of argument, but here, an earlier post of mine.
This was modded troll, on the topic of disemboweled blogger:
I do not understand your posts...
but now that I think about what I have read in the news in the last few years, "arabs" must be substituted by "muslims" in general.
It was a mistake by me not to write it so...
Apart from muslims, I do not know other cultures that punish the woman that severely...
Is this not true?
So what is the problem, and I want to know who the fuck downmodded it and why.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday May 14 2015, @07:54PM
Duh. Because you're making broad-based assumptions about either 1 billion people or hundreds of millions.
Guess what? Turkey isn't Saudi Arabia. Kyrgystan isn't Yemen. Malayasia isn't Pakistan. The HDI's and treatment of women in these very distinct Muslim majority nations aren't identical.
People mod you down because it's plainly racist and not nearly as insightful as you think it is.
(Score: 0, Troll) by zugedneb on Thursday May 14 2015, @08:23PM
Good post...
Now I understand the difference between most of you guys and me...
For you, the important thing is to act with dignity, act maturely and sensibly.
Never point finger, never demand collective responsibility.
When someone comes to you and says "I am a different type of muslim...", you just take the bullshit. Maybe you are not aware of what the "holy" text says...
And, you call the warriors that evolutions has given you, to protect the clan and the society stupid racist, because they don't fall for the "i am a different type" bullshit.
The simple minded people who go out and fight and kill for the land and nation, who hold you more precious then themselves, are now the stupid racists...
And the psychological disorders and constant rage that burns in the mind, from having "killing" other men hardwired into the brain...
Will you reach out a hand to me, my brother? My kind has fought for you once...
Ah, the stupidity.
My brother, it is one thing to believe in evolution, and other to try and understand it.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @08:53PM
> And, you call the warriors that evolutions has given you, to protect the clan and the society stupid racist
So what you are saying is, "You can't handle the truth!!!"
Aren't you just the cutest thang? Mom's little basement warrior. All grown up, but still raging in the basement.
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Thursday May 14 2015, @09:03PM
Says the brave civilian, who is kept safe by more agencies then all my fingers, toes, testicles and dick put together.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @09:55PM
> Says the brave civilian, who is kept safe by more agencies then all my fingers, toes, testicles and dick put together.
You aren't a warrior, you are a whiner.
Stop trying to co-opt military honor for your narcissism.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday May 14 2015, @09:14PM
Okay, definitely a bit of a word-salad you've got going on in that post.
You've reverted to some very defensive posturing where you're writing motives onto me when I was explaining, as honestly as I could, why you were modded down given the clearer context. Exactly what you think is motivating me is a bit inscrutable due to the aforementioned word-salad problems.
But let's continue this off-topic drift here and try to give you another chance. Why not.
You're suffering from some pretty severe misunderstandings of human evolution, and more importantly post-enlightenment human history. And it's driving you to think you've stumbled onto some hidden secret of agenda on the part of those different from you in relatively trivial ways. And more-over that there's some sort of "honor" or valor in fighting this invented conspiracy.
That attitude isn't going to solve any problems for you, in your day to day life, or in whatever you imagine your effect on culture is. Let it go.
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Thursday May 14 2015, @09:37PM
"You're suffering from some pretty severe misunderstandings of human evolution, and more importantly post-enlightenment human history."
That was not enlightening.
When you talk to someone, ask not if the person is disturbed, but ask if the person is actually an idiot.
We are not in an era where anyone understands evolution and/or the human mind.
Explain your points, and if you cant, don't trashtalk those who at least give it a try, but may not live up to "academic standards"... :D
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @09:57PM
> When you talk to someone, ask not if the person is disturbed, but ask if the person is actually an idiot.
OK.
Are you actually an idiot?
(Score: 0, Troll) by zugedneb on Thursday May 14 2015, @10:27PM
No, I am not...
And, when it comes to topics that are not about science, it is me and a couple of other trolls that give some color to this grey =)
Otherwise, it is just a bunch of sensible and mature bozos complaining about alphabet agencies and privacy.
Go, faggot, mod up your kin =)
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday May 14 2015, @11:37PM
Let me put it to you this way.
There's Southern Christian Identity [wikipedia.org], which I guess is just now called Christian Identity. There are a lot of very intelligent people who follow that faith, and if you follow what they have to say, it follows the Old Testament very well. If anything, I'd have to say it's probably the most well-researched brand of Christian fundamentalism I've run into, provided your goal is to take the Old Testament literally (instead of, oh, I don't know, loving thy neighbor).
Then you have the Westboro Baptist Church. We have a number of people here who are Baptists, but those folks are decent people. You won't find them picketing funerals and rabble rousing to attempt to incite something they can sue over. The Westboro Baptist Church is a family business that just happens to be named to evoke religion but has nothing more to do with Baptists.
Then there's the Christian Reformed faith around here in flyover country. They've tried to do loony things like ban Halloween and tell their followers that it's a sin to buy chocolate bunnies during Easter. In fact, in a real pretzel of logic, I heard they oppose Christmas trees! Every Christmas we have to hear about how those evil infadels are trying to take away our Christmas trees, and here's a brand of Christianity that wants to take away our Christmas trees!
Then there's Unitarian Universalists. Their faith started as an offshoot of Christianity and from what I've been told it's kind of morphed into a panthiestic-agnostic belief system. Every now and then I have an urge to go attend services (I know several LGBT folks who follow that faith), but I'm usually too hung over on Sunday morning.
I could go on like this. Naming a few other Christian faiths I've seen churches for recently: Lutheran, Presbyterian, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, hmm, I'm sure there's more.
Why do you think it would be any different for any other holy book?
never demand collective responsibility
Think about what you said long and hard. It could be that demanding “collective responsibility” is what got us in this mess in the first place.
Or are you prepared to help get every descendent of an African slave 40 acres and a mule? Surely you could at least do your part and help out at least one descendent of an African slave. If you buy up the land in flyover country you might be able to come in under $10,000.
You're the one who wants “collective responsibility.”
If you're a man, are you looking forward to taking “collective responsibility” for the mistreatment of women you've identified. There are some women (with whom I vehemently disagree) who think you should. Why does religion or ethnicity need to be the categorizing method in “collective responsibility?”
And the psychological disorders and constant rage that burns in the mind, from having "killing" other men hardwired into the brain
Yes, PTSD is a serious thing. If you or someone you know is suffering from PTSD, please [va.gov] get [maketheconnection.net] help [mayoclinic.org]. My sympathies, but advocating racism and religious discrimination is not the way forward.
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Friday May 15 2015, @12:32AM
To be honest, with "collective responsibility" I meant that I (and some others) do not take the "I am a different kind of insert_shit_here"...
If someone claims to be something, than they must not deny it and make peace with the entire history of that something. Every aspect, not just the cute ones...
This go for simple things, as example, a friend who trained Iaido, that is the art to draw the japanese sword, the katana. I asked him, how do you relate to the fact that all these movements are optimised methods to kill people? What do you think when you perform them? What do you think of the many deaths that it took to perfect this?
This is not meant as a "I am holier than thou" mentality, I just like to reflect on things, and when I come up with something I like or am troubled by, I pester others with it.
And the psychological disorders and constant rage that burns in the mind, from having "killing" other men hardwired into the brain
And here is this... You do not have to go to war to have things snapping in the head.
This is a deep topic, and I do not seem to get understanding when I mention the fact that the human is a nasty piece of work.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday May 15 2015, @02:12AM
If someone claims to be something, than they must not deny it and make peace with the entire history of that something.
Ok, this I understand. I can pull out my rants about feminists as an example. I think we may have a common frame of reference here.
I encountered a vicious, mean-spirited brand of feminism. The deep irony is that I could march into the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival unquestioned, but I would rather stand with Camp Trans because I know I'm just a birth certificate check away from incurring the wrath of these gender lunatics. (Plus, I'm not sure I even want to know what happens at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival that not even post-op trans women may see, so I never actually have stood with Camp Trans.) Yet, folks like Thexalon and some feminists I've met IRL have helped to counter that. I've reflected on the nature of feminism and how we got to this point.
Here's what I mean. Remember when Violet Blue's panel got shut down [wikipedia.org] by Valerie Aurora of the Ada Initiative? Now compare and contrast with “date rape” presentations that incoming freshmen are required to attend at many US universities. Frankly, I'm having trouble finding any significant difference between Blue's panel and the date rape presentation I was required to attend due to being legally male except one: I've never researched Blue's outreach on matters of sex education, but I have a distinct feeling that she doesn't go about blaming “all you men sitting here today” for date rape.
I wonder why Valerie Aurora and the Ada Initiative hasn't attempted to shut down these date rape presentations at universitites? Well, one of the common themes to those presentations is not only that everyone assigned the male gender, regardless of anatomy, is guilty of being a rapist who hasn't been caught in the act yet, but that people assigned the male gender at birth may be rapists without even knowing it! I remember a character from Xenogears, Miang [wikipedia.org], who could possess any woman at any time. It's as though Aurora's brand of “feminism” thinks that there's a male Miang out there who can take over any assigned male at any time and turn him into a rapist.
For a long time, I thought these attitudes were normal in feminism.
However, it turns out that like the examples of Christian denominations I gave, there are many different kinds of feminists. To address your point of making peace with the entire history of something, it becomes a moot point for feminists who aren't gender lunatics. It's not part of their history. Why should they make peace with some sexist lunatics?
We hear those who shout the loudest, and extremists like the Westboro Baptist Church and the gender lunatics shout the loudest. Have you ever encountered Amazon philosophy? Probably not; they keep to themselves. What about the millions of women who see feminism as a force for true gender equality to be used to deal with practical, real problems? They work quietly and without drama to solve practical problems. We'll hear about some cunt lawyer suing somebody else in Silicon Valley and it gets painted as somehow representative of the real issues, yet we don't hear about the girl who has the mind of a programmer but is stuck in the “pink ghetto” (never thought I'd use that term sympathetically). We just hear from the drama queens.
Where I live in flyover country is a very diverse place. I suppose that's why I settled here. It's an island of sanity in a sea of ignorance (although as I've indicated in previous posts, the ignornace and insanity seems to be gaining ground lately). There are many muslims. Yet, all of them would rather just get along peacefully while practicing their faith. I used to live just down the road (less than a kilometer) from a “Temple and Cultural Center” where they would gather, peacefully, every Sunday for worship. Actually they might have been Hindu, but they did the whole head-scarf thing. Forcing the “no true Scotsman” fallacy on them is not the correct approach (especially if they were Hindu and not Muslim!). It's been said many times by many people that Islam was the excuse for the Charlie Hebdo attack, not the root cause. Racism and lunacy were the root causes.
I guess what I'm saying is that if you keep insisting that they're all true Scotsman, you're just encouraging the more mentally unstable and marganalized individuals in that group to actually become a true Scotsman.
No, I'm not attempting to provide a justification for lethal violence from religious lunatics. I'm all in favor of honey pots like that convention in Texas recently. These extremists are people with larger issues that are only using mumbo-jumbo woo as an excuse for their violence. The woo is not the root cause. As Hairyfeet pointed out earlier today (and one of the reasons my first example of a Christian denomination was Christian Identity), the Old Testament contains more than enough woo. Justice is the only way, not prejudice.
There is no argument here that humanity is a nasty piece of work. For a while, I was obsessed with end-of-the-world scenarios and End of Evangelion showed up often in my playlist (not the touchy-feely bits, I just wanted to see the death of everyone on the planet), and one of the themes is that humanity, the 18th angel [yahoo.com] (apologies again for linking to Yahoo! answers) is the only angel in the series actually capable of causing the end of the world. Yes, the raw cruelty of humanity can cause someone to snap (thus adding to the aggregate cruelty, kind of like entropy). That's why I suggested help. Yeah, I know, that's kind of a cheesy thing to say. Psychology has plenty of woo of its own.
Iaido I am not terribly familiar with, but now that you mention it, I recognize it. The martial arts discipline I trained in when I was in China focused on unarmed techniques.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @03:39PM
The actions of 0.0125% of a group do not speak for the other 99.9875% and never will, no matter how much you bigots wish and cry and throw temper tantrums. This is obviously fallicious [wikipedia.org] and is a good indicator that hateful morons like you will never have a grasp on reality. Delusional people like you need help.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday May 20 2015, @06:59PM
In general (I haven't read this discussion in detail) don't wear yourself out arguing against people clasping onto taboos, dogma, and hypocrisy, you might as well argue with a rock in most cases. It's not that I don't make the same mistake, I do from time to time but It's a religious argument for most of them (they cling to their beliefs as if it was religion) and they don't even realize they're doing that.
People who are unable to question themselves don't like it when others do.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @07:58PM
My guess to the prior problem is not using Hanlon's razor (Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity). Some bad behavior in western eyes is blamed on Islam often. You were seen as jumping on that bandwagon with your wording for the sake of blaming Islam rather than seeking the answer to your question, "What other cultures share these views?" I feel off calling you stupid because you were smart enough to say you don't understand and ask.
As for your 'no more anon moderation' post, you state something you think is happening means something must change even though you only think it happening. Then state 'we' by yourself, then insult those who disagree with you before you end by saying "there's no point in debating, as is" refusing to debate your argument.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by moondrake on Thursday May 14 2015, @11:23PM
I'll bite, although I should not...but this off-topic thread is so long already that I might as well chime in....
I did not mod you down, but i might have. Probably not, as you kept it just vague enough to give you the benefit of the doubt, but then, following your disappointing discussion in this thread, I think I would have modded you down if you had been slightly more explicit in ventilating those things you seem to believe. And I will attempt to explain why I would have done so.
My understanding so far is that you know perfectly well that you have prejudices over groups of people with a different religion or ethnic origin. You feel however that this is justified, and that people who do not see this are being foolish.
Many would disagree with your opinion, but that would not be my reason to downmod you. The reason why I would (and why I feel it is justified you were modded down) is simply that you are fully aware that such statements (and in this thread your post are filled with lots of expletives as well) hurt and enrage other people, and are likely to induce (and probably meant to induce) a flame war. That is the very definition of flamebait, and is generally thought of as very productive or enlightening.
You might think your ability to name a duck a duck is only a testament of your great understanding of things and is what the world needs. But let be break it to you: that is not how things work. Most smart people will stop listening, and most stupid (read: impressionable) people will join you in cheering "burn her!". Even if you were right, more can be achieved with diplomacy compared to flamebaiting.
Since I would feel there is no point in discussing these things with you, as you are being blunt and uncivilized, and you respond to arguments by calling people fools (evidence in this thread), the alternative is to downmod you. To which you respond by complaining (have you ever analyzed your own behavior?).
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday May 15 2015, @12:10AM
"Apart from muslims, I do not know other cultures that punish the woman that severely..." -- Is this not true?
Christianity was pretty harsh toward witches at some point in time. Many got burned. Eventually it got better.
It is also important to understand that one becomes Muslim at the moment s/he is born to Muslim parents. One could also convert to the faith - but not away from it. Plenty of people had been signed up as Muslims without even believing. Many other people believe, but have no desire to kill others. Christianity wasn't looking all that great during Crusades. Would Salah ad-Din be morally right to bomb Europe with nukes if he had them at the time?