February 2016 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Fwd: Arc of history; ultimate vindication
by coderman 06 Feb '16

06 Feb '16

"Both the journal and the documents she obtained from the government show how her own targeting helped to galvanize her resolve to expose the apparatus of surveillance." they've made fatal errors; miscalculating the blow back of global privacy destruction. against such injustice, some will spend every life hour left in opposition to this moral atrocity. "Nope, Never. Fuck NO!" best regards, --- http://www.wired.com/2016/02/snowdens-chronicler-reveals-her-own-life-under… Snowden’s Chronicler Reveals Her Own Life Under Surveillance Andy Greenberg Security Date of Publication: 02.04.16. 02.04.16 Time of Publication: 9:03 am. 9:03 am Laura Poitras has a talent for disappearing. In her early documentaries like My Country, My Country and The Oath, her camera seems to float invisibly in rooms where subjects carry on intimate conversations as if they’re not being observed. Even in Citizenfour, the Oscar-winning film that tracks her personal journey from first contact with Edward Snowden to releasing his top secret NSA leaks to the world, she rarely offers a word of narration. She appears in that film exactly once, caught as if by accident in the mirror of Snowden’s Hong Kong hotel room. Now, with the opening of her multi-media solo exhibit, Astro Noise, at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art this week, Snowden’s chronicler has finally turned her lens onto herself. And she’s given us a glimpse into one of the darkest stretches of her life, when she wasn’t yet the revelator of modern American surveillance but instead its target. The exhibit is vast and unsettling, ranging from films to documents that can be viewed only through wooden slits to a video expanse of Yemeni sky which visitors are invited to lie beneath. But the most personal parts of the show are documents that lay bare how excruciating life was for Poitras as a target of government surveillance—and how her subsequent paranoia made her the ideal collaborator in Snowden’s mission to expose America’s surveillance state. First, she’s installed a wall of papers that she received in response to an ongoing Freedom of Information lawsuit the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed on her behalf against the FBI. The documents definitively show why Poitras was tracked and repeatedly searched at the US border for years, and even that she was the subject of a grand jury investigation. And second, a book she’s publishing to accompany the exhibit includes her journal from the height of that surveillance, recording her first-person experience of becoming a spying subject, along with her inner monologue as she first corresponded with the secret NSA leaker she then knew only as “Citizenfour.” Poitras says she initially intended to use only a few quotes from her journal in that book. But as she was transcribing it, she “realized that it was a primary source document about navigating a certain reality,” she says. The finished book, which includes a biographical piece by Guantanamo detainee Lakhdar Boumediene, a photo collection from Ai Weiwei, and a short essay by Snowden on using radio waves from stars to generate random data for encryption, is subtitled “A Survival Guide for Living Under Total Surveillance.” It will be published widely on February 23. “I’ve asked people for a long time to reveal a lot in my films,” Poitras says. But telling her own story, even in limited glimpses, “provides a concrete example of how the process works we don’t usually see.” That process, for Poitras, is the experience of being unwittingly ingested into the American surveillance system. On the Government’s Radar Poitras has long suspected that her targeting began after she filmed an Iraqi family in Baghdad for the documentary My Country, My Country. Now she’s sure, because the documents released by her Freedom of Information Act request prove it. During a 2004 ambush by Iraqi insurgents in which an American soldier died and several others were injured, she came out onto the roof of the family’s home to film them as they watched events unfolding on the street below. She shot for a total of eight minutes and 16 seconds. The resulting footage, which she shows in the Whitney exhibit, reveals nothing related to either American or insurgent military positions. “Those eight minutes changed my life, though I didn’t know it at the time,” she says in an audio narration that plays around the documents in her exhibition. “After returning to the United States I was placed on a government watchlist and detained and searched every time I crossed the US border. It took me ten years to find out why.” laura-poitras-whitneyClick to Open Overlay Gallery A Whitney Museum visitor looking at a selection of Poitras’ FOIAed documents framed in a collection of light boxes. Andy Greenberg The heavily redacted documents show that the US Army Criminal Investigation Command requested in 2006 that the FBI investigate Poitras as a possible “U.S. media representative … involved with anti-coalition forces.” According to the FBI file, a member of the Oregon National Guard serving in Iraq identified Poitras and “a local [Iraqi] leader”—the father of the family that would become the subject of her film. The soldier, whose name was redacted, questioned Poitras at the time, and reported that she “became significantly nervous” and denied filming from the roof. He later told the Army investigators that he “strongly believed”—but without apparent evidence—“POITRAS had prior knowledge of the ambush and had the means to report it to U.S. Forces; however, she purposely did not report it so she could film the attack for her documentary.” One page shown in the Whitney exhibit reveals that the New York field office of the FBI was tracking Poitras’ home addresses, and Poitras believes the reference to a “detective” working with the FBI indicates the New York Police Department may have also been involved. By 2007, the documents reveal that there was a grand jury investigation proceeding on whether to indict her for unnamed crimes—multiple subpoenas sought information about her from redacted sources. (Poitras says that the twelve pages she published in the Whitney exhibition are only a selection of 800 documents she’s received in her FOIA lawsuit, which is ongoing.) Being Constantly Watched Private as ever, Poitras declined to detail to WIRED exactly how she experienced that federal investigation in the years that followed. But flash forward to late 2012, and the surveillance targeting Poitras had transformed her into a nervous wreck. In the book, she shares a diary she kept during her time living in Berlin, in which she describes feeling constantly watched, entirely robbed of privacy. “I haven’t written in over a year for fear these words are not private,” are the journal’s first words. “That nothing in my life can be kept private.” She sleeps badly, plagued with nightmares about the American government. She reads Cory Doctorow’s Homeland and re-reads 1984, finding too many parallels with her own life. She notes her computer glitching and “going pink” during her interviews with NSA whistleblower William Binney, and that it tells her its hard drive is full despite seeming to have 16 gigabytes free. Eventually she moves to a new apartment that she attempts to keep “off the radar” by avoiding all cell phones and only accessing the Internet over the anonymity software Tor. When Snowden contacts her in January of 2013, Poitras has lived with the specter of spying long enough that she initially wonders if he might be part of a plan to entrap her or her contacts like Julian Assange or Jacob Appelbaum, an activist and Tor developer. “Is C4 a trap?” she asks herself, using an abbreviation of Snowden’s codename. “Will he put me in prison?” Even once she decides he’s a legitimate source, the pressure threatens to overwhelm her. The stress becomes visceral: She writes that she feels like she’s “underwater” and that she can hear the blood rushing through her body. “I am battling with my nervous system,” she writes. “It doesn’t let me rest or sleep. Eye twitches, clenched throat, and now literally waiting to be raided.” Finally she decides to meet Snowden and to publish his top secret leaks, despite her fears of both the risks to him and to herself. Both the journal and the documents she obtained from the government show how her own targeting helped to galvanize her resolve to expose the apparatus of surveillance. “He is prepared for the consequences of the disclosure,” she writes, then admits: “I really don’t want to become the story.” In the end, Poitras has not only escaped the arrest or indictment she feared, but has become a kind of privacy folk hero: Her work has helped to noticeably shift the world’s view of government spying, led to legislation, and won both a Pulitzer and an Academy Award. But if her ultimate fear was to “become the story,” her latest revelations show that’s a fate she can no longer escape–and one she’s come to accept. Poitras’ Astro Noise exhibit runs from February 5 until May 1 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the accompanying book will be published on February 23.

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Looks like DHS sabotaged a FOIA request on Cryptome
by Michael Best 06 Feb '16

06 Feb '16

I filed a FOIA request about Cryptome with DHS a while back: Any records relating to Cryptome, also known by its web address of > Cryptome.org, which posts pictures of sensitive sites and potential > security holes as described at > www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/nyregion/mapping-natural-gas-lines-advise-the-pu… > by the New York Times. https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/cryptome-dhs-22647/ Sent through MuckRock on December 1, acknowledged on December 2. Also closed on December 2, according to the DHS FOIA website. No notification or explanation provided, not through MuckRock or to me directly. I say to me directly because they also closed another FOIA of mine without explanation, insisting on opening a new one when I tried to follow up within the 30 days. http://www.dhs.gov/foia-status FOIA # *2016-HQFO-00099* Weird, right?

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Article: going post quantum
by Cari Machet 05 Feb '16

05 Feb '16

http://www.miracl.com/blog/going-post-quantum

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Tacit Futures: Building Snowden Archives (with Cryptome)
by Michael Best 05 Feb '16

05 Feb '16

Audio only: https://voicerepublic.com/talks/tacit-futures-1-building-snowden-archives Anyone know of a video source? Today, WikiLeaks is building an unprecedented library consisting of millions of leaked documents, thereby advancing a seminal world heritage form. Its immediate prehistory as well as its latest offspring will be investigated in the *Tacit Futures* dialogues. Participants will explore Cryptome.org, which is widely considered the precursor of digital leaking platforms, and which has been the first organization to start systematically collecting Snowden documents. Moreover the discussion will dive into projects building Snowden archives such as the Snowden Document Search, the Snowden Digital Surveillance Archive, and the Snowden Archive-in-a-Box. Bringing together pioneering archivists of the files leaked by Snowden, this round table is a culturally significant world premiere, aiming to reflect the motivations and challenges experienced by each initiative. *Tacit Futures: Diving Into Snowden Archives* is the follow-up to UN|COMMONS and a cooperation between Berliner Gazette and transmediale in the context of the Tacit Futures project by Berliner Gazette <http://berlinergazette.de/feuilleton/jahresthemen/2016-tacit-futures/>.

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Re: request for comment re "contributor-covenant.org"
by shakeitoff＠ghostmail.com 05 Feb '16

05 Feb '16

>> Genuinely anti-social communication is actively discouraged, and this includes >> those who communicate deceptively regarding their own needs and or social >>environment requirements, as well as those who communicate in a passive >> aggressive way. If you this any of these types of communication may apply to >> you, then be prepared to suffer the consequences should you join this mailing >> list- we shall roast you in words, with glee! Why doesn't the gleeful roasting extend to the bigotry and chauvinism on this list? Why are these silently accepted? Cypherpunks defines government as “a home for bullies masquerading as a collective defense.” Interestingly, that is how I would describe your above approach. Be careful of becoming the oppressor. Look around. Do the people around you look like you? Think like you? Come from the same background as you? This is a problem. The lack of diversity in this group is not a magical phenomenon without a root cause. There is a deeper problem. If (and how) this should change is up to this community. Sadly, the ideals of this community are often lost in the (typically incoherent) bigotry spewing from the trolls. 4.12.4. "Crypto Anarchy sounds too wild for me." - I accept that many people will find the implications of crypto anarchy (which follows in turn from the existence of strong cryptography, via the Crypto Anarchy Principle) to be more than they can accept. - This is OK (not that you need my OK!). The house of Cypherpunks has many rooms. All are welcome. I hope. >> There are forums and mailing lists which are suitable for those who have >> learning difficulties (reference?), for those who need an emotionally sensitive >> environment (be sure to check if you need professional medical or >> psychological support), and for those who are beginniners in the field of >> technology discussed on this mailing list. Wow. How fucking elitist can you be? Sent from secure GhostMail. Easy and free encrypted email, chat and cloud storage, free sign up here: https://www.ghostmail.com

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Re: request for comment re &quot;contributor-covenant.org&quot;
by shakeitoff＠ghostmail.com 05 Feb '16

05 Feb '16

>> Cypherpunks defines government as “a home for bullies masquerading as a >> collective defense.” Interestingly, that is how I would describe your above >> approach. > These two sentences are approaching incoherent. Would you like to try > again? It is probably not constructive for me to respond to > incoherence - there is perhaps some truth or pain or seeking which has > not been expressed clearly, which I would hope you feel confident > about expressing, or re- attempting to express - such is in our > collective interests. The main worry is when “gleeful roasting” slips into bullying and irreversible harm. It's easy for a collective group to shout someone out for the wrong reasons. Censorship is not the answer to this. But having plain, honest, thoughtful conversations might be. >> Look around. Do the people around you look like you? Think like you? Come >> from the same background as you? > >> This is a problem. > So say you. > Making you assertion is presently an island waiting for supporters - > nothing more than a political position in search of part members. This > is not the place for such superficiality. I personally seek deeper > conversation. If you create an environment that is conducive to only one socioeconomic class, you lose individuals who are strong technologists, but whom don’t fit a certain race/gender/economic profile. It is a loss for the community when strong technologists leave because they do not fit the socioeconomic culture of the majority. Especially when considering what this group is fundamentally trying to resist. >From my own personal experience- when a group is diverse, one’s own race/gender/economic background matters less and fades into the background. This is the ideal- to not even have to talk/think about socioeconomic issues, and focus on common issues- on how to reverse the end of privacy, on writing code, on ensuring strong cryptography. > Do you assert that you would like a particular communication space to > exist, which does not currently exist, but which is somehow similar to > cypherpunks mailing list, but perhaps a little different? No, there is nothing begrudging. I’m here because I want to be useful to ensure that privacy and personal liberty and privacy continue to exist. And to learn. This is the ask: don’t let this be a space where someone has to struggle between alignment to the cypherpunks ideology (writing code, ensuring privacy and liberty, preserving cryptography) and alienation because of one’s socioeconomic background. Also, let us not forget who the real enemy is. Thank you. Sent from secure GhostMail. Easy and free encrypted email, chat and cloud storage, free sign up here: https://www.ghostmail.com

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Fwd: [tor-talk] Tor 0.2.8.1-alpha is released.
by coderman 05 Feb '16

05 Feb '16

good stuff in: Major features (security, Linux), and Major features (directory system), for those in challenging environments... :P best regards, > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Nick Mathewson <nickm(a)torproject.org> > Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2016 18:24:03 -0500 > Subject: [tor-talk] Tor 0.2.8.1-alpha is released. > > Tor 0.2.8.1-alpha is the first alpha release in its series. It > includes numerous small features and bugfixes against previous Tor > versions, and numerous small infrastructure improvements. The most > notable features are a set of improvements to the directory subsystem. > > You can download the source from the usual place on the website. > Packages should be available over the next several days. > > PLEASE NOTE: This is an alpha release. Expect a lot of bugs. Only > run this release if you're willing to find bugs and report them. :) > > Changes in version 0.2.8.1-alpha - 2016-02-04 > Tor 0.2.8.1-alpha is the first alpha release in its series. It > includes numerous small features and bugfixes against previous Tor > versions, and numerous small infrastructure improvements. The most > notable features are a set of improvements to the directory subsystem. > > o Major features (security, Linux): > - When Tor starts as root on Linux and is told to switch user ID, it > can now retain the capability to bind to low ports. By default, > Tor will do this only when it's switching user ID and some low > ports have been configured. You can change this behavior with the > new option KeepBindCapabilities. Closes ticket 8195. > > o Major features (directory system): > - When bootstrapping multiple consensus downloads at a time, use the > first one that starts downloading, and close the rest. This > reduces failures when authorities or fallback directories are slow > or down. Together with the code for feature 15775, this feature > should reduces failures due to fallback churn. Implements ticket > 4483. Patch by "teor". Implements IPv4 portions of proposal 210 by > "mikeperry" and "teor". > - Include a trial list of default fallback directories, based on an > opt-in survey of suitable relays. Doing this should make clients > bootstrap more quickly and reliably, and reduce the load on the > directory authorities. Closes ticket 15775. Patch by "teor". > Candidates identified using an OnionOO script by "weasel", "teor", > "gsathya", and "karsten". > - Previously only relays that explicitly opened a directory port > (DirPort) accepted directory requests from clients. Now all > relays, with and without a DirPort, accept and serve tunneled > directory requests that they receive through their ORPort. You can > disable this behavior using the new DirCache option. Closes > ticket 12538. > > o Major key updates: > - Update the V3 identity key for the dannenberg directory authority: > it was changed on 18 November 2015. Closes task 17906. Patch > by "teor". > > o Minor features (security, clock): > - Warn when the system clock appears to move back in time (when the > state file was last written in the future). Tor doesn't know that > consensuses have expired if the clock is in the past. Patch by > "teor". Implements ticket 17188. > > o Minor features (security, exit policies): > - ExitPolicyRejectPrivate now rejects more private addresses by > default. Specifically, it now rejects the relay's outbound bind > addresses (if configured), and the relay's configured port > addresses (such as ORPort and DirPort). Fixes bug 17027; bugfix on > 0.2.0.11-alpha. Patch by "teor". > > o Minor features (security, memory erasure): > - Set the unused entries in a smartlist to NULL. This helped catch > a (harmless) bug, and shouldn't affect performance too much. > Implements ticket 17026. > - Use SecureMemoryWipe() function to securely clean memory on > Windows. Previously we'd use OpenSSL's OPENSSL_cleanse() function. > Implements feature 17986. > - Use explicit_bzero or memset_s when present. Previously, we'd use > OpenSSL's OPENSSL_cleanse() function. Closes ticket 7419; patches > from <logan(a)hackers.mu> and <selven(a)hackers.mu>. > - Make memwipe() do nothing when passed a NULL pointer or buffer of > zero size. Check size argument to memwipe() for underflow. Fixes > bug 18089; bugfix on 0.2.3.25 and 0.2.4.6-alpha. Reported by "gk", > patch by "teor". > > o Minor features (security, RNG): > - Adjust Tor's use of OpenSSL's RNG APIs so that they absolutely, > positively are not allowed to fail. Previously we depended on > internal details of OpenSSL's behavior. Closes ticket 17686. > - Never use the system entropy output directly for anything besides > seeding the PRNG. When we want to generate important keys, instead > of using system entropy directly, we now hash it with the PRNG > stream. This may help resist certain attacks based on broken OS > entropy implementations. Closes part of ticket 17694. > - Use modern system calls (like getentropy() or getrandom()) to > generate strong entropy on platforms that have them. Closes > ticket 13696. > > o Minor features (accounting): > - Added two modes to the AccountingRule option: One for limiting > only the number of bytes sent ("AccountingRule out"), and one for > limiting only the number of bytes received ("AccountingRule in"). > Closes ticket 15989; patch from "unixninja92". > > o Minor features (build): > - Since our build process now uses "make distcheck", we no longer > force "make dist" to depend on "make check". Closes ticket 17893; > patch from "cypherpunks." > - Tor now builds successfully with the recent OpenSSL 1.1 > development branch, and with the latest LibreSSL. Closes tickets > 17549, 17921, and 17984. > > o Minor features (controller): > - Adds the FallbackDir entries to 'GETINFO config/defaults'. Closes > tickets 16774 and 17817. Patch by George Tankersley. > - New 'GETINFO hs/service/desc/id/' command to retrieve a hidden > service descriptor from a service's local hidden service > descriptor cache. Closes ticket 14846. > - Add 'GETINFO exit-policy/reject-private/[default,relay]', so > controllers can examine the the reject rules added by > ExitPolicyRejectPrivate. This makes it easier for stem to display > exit policies. > > o Minor features (crypto): > - Add SHA512 support to crypto.c. Closes ticket 17663; patch from > George Tankersley. > - Add SHA3 and SHAKE support to crypto.c. Closes ticket 17783. > - When allocating a digest state object, allocate no more space than > we actually need. Previously, we would allocate as much space as > the state for the largest algorithm would need. This change saves > up to 672 bytes per circuit. Closes ticket 17796. > - Improve performance when hashing non-multiple of 8 sized buffers, > based on Andrew Moon's public domain SipHash-2-4 implementation. > Fixes bug 17544; bugfix on 0.2.5.3-alpha. > > o Minor features (directory downloads): > - Wait for busy authorities and fallback directories to become non- > busy when bootstrapping. (A similar change was made in 6c443e987d > for directory caches chosen from the consensus.) Closes ticket > 17864; patch by "teor". > - Add UseDefaultFallbackDirs, which enables any hard-coded fallback > directory mirrors. The default is 1; set it to 0 to disable > fallbacks. Implements ticket 17576. Patch by "teor". > > o Minor features (geoip): > - Update geoip and geoip6 to the January 5 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 > Country database. > > o Minor features (IPv6): > - Add an argument 'ipv6=address:orport' to the DirAuthority and > FallbackDir torrc options, to specify an IPv6 address for an > authority or fallback directory. Add hard-coded ipv6 addresses for > directory authorities that have them. Closes ticket 17327; patch > from Nick Mathewson and "teor". > - Add address policy assume_action support for IPv6 addresses. > - Limit IPv6 mask bits to 128. > - Warn when comparing against an AF_UNSPEC address in a policy, it's > almost always a bug. Closes ticket 17863; patch by "teor". > - Allow users to configure directory authorities and fallback > directory servers with IPv6 addresses and ORPorts. Resolves > ticket 6027. > - routerset_parse now accepts IPv6 literal addresses. Fixes bug > 17060; bugfix on 0.2.1.3-alpha. Patch by "teor". > - Make tor_ersatz_socketpair work on IPv6-only systems. Fixes bug > 17638; bugfix on 0.0.2pre8. Patch by "teor". > > o Minor features (logging): > - When logging to syslog, allow a tag to be added to the syslog > identity (the string prepended to every log message). The tag can > be configured with SyslogIdentityTag and defaults to none. Setting > it to "foo" will cause logs to be tagged as "Tor-foo". Closes > ticket 17194. > > o Minor features (portability): > - Use timingsafe_memcmp() where available. Closes ticket 17944; > patch from <logan(a)hackers.mu>. > > o Minor features (relay, address discovery): > - Add a family argument to get_interface_addresses_raw() and > subfunctions to make network interface address interogation more > efficient. Now Tor can specifically ask for IPv4, IPv6 or both > types of interfaces from the operating system. Resolves > ticket 17950. > - When get_interface_address6_list(.,AF_UNSPEC,.) is called and > fails to enumerate interface addresses using the platform-specific > API, have it rely on the UDP socket fallback technique to try and > find out what IP addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6) our machine has. > Resolves ticket 17951. > > o Minor features (replay cache): > - The replay cache now uses SHA256 instead of SHA1. Implements > feature 8961. Patch by "teor", issue reported by "rransom". > > o Minor features (unix file permissions): > - Defer creation of Unix sockets until after setuid. This avoids > needing CAP_CHOWN and CAP_FOWNER when using systemd's > CapabilityBoundingSet, or chown and fowner when using SELinux. > Implements part of ticket 17562. Patch from Jamie Nguyen. > - If any directory created by Tor is marked as group readable, the > filesystem group is allowed to be either the default GID or the > root user. Allowing root to read the DataDirectory prevents the > need for CAP_READ_SEARCH when using systemd's > CapabilityBoundingSet, or dac_read_search when using SELinux. > Implements part of ticket 17562. Patch from Jamie Nguyen. > - Introduce a new DataDirectoryGroupReadable option. If it is set to > 1, the DataDirectory will be made readable by the default GID. > Implements part of ticket 17562. Patch from Jamie Nguyen. > > o Minor bugfixes (accounting): > - The max bandwidth when using 'AccountRule sum' is now correctly > logged. Fixes bug 18024; bugfix on 0.2.6.1-alpha. Patch > from "unixninja92". > > o Minor bugfixes (code correctness): > - When closing an entry connection, generate a warning if we should > have sent an end cell for it but we haven't. Fixes bug 17876; > bugfix on 0.2.3.2-alpha. > - Assert that allocated memory held by the reputation code is freed > according to its internal counters. Fixes bug 17753; bugfix > on tor-0.1.1.1-alpha. > - Assert when the TLS contexts fail to initialize. Fixes bug 17683; > bugfix on 0.0.6. > > o Minor bugfixes (compilation): > - Mark all object files that include micro-revision.i as depending > on it, so as to make parallel builds more reliable. Fixes bug > 17826; bugfix on 0.2.5.1-alpha. > - Don't try to use the pthread_condattr_setclock() function unless > it actually exists. Fixes compilation on NetBSD-6.x. Fixes bug > 17819; bugfix on 0.2.6.3-alpha. > - Fix backtrace compilation on FreeBSD. Fixes bug 17827; bugfix > on tor-0.2.5.2-alpha. > - Fix compilation of sandbox.c with musl-libc. Fixes bug 17347; > bugfix on 0.2.5.1-alpha. Patch from 'jamestk'. > - Fix search for libevent libraries on OpenBSD (and other systems > that install libevent 1 and libevent 2 in parallel). Fixes bug > 16651; bugfix on 0.1.0.7-rc. Patch from "rubiate". > - Isolate environment variables meant for tests from the rest of the > build system. Fixes bug 17818; bugfix on tor-0.2.7.3-rc. > - Replace usage of 'INLINE' with 'inline'. Fixes bug 17804; bugfix > on tor-0.0.2pre8. > - Remove config.log only from make distclean, not from make clean. > Fixes bug 17924; bugfix on 0.2.4.1-alpha. > > o Minor bugfixes (crypto): > - Check the return value of HMAC() and assert on failure. Fixes bug > 17658; bugfix on 0.2.3.6-alpha. Patch by "teor". > > o Minor bugfixes (fallback directories): > - Mark fallbacks as "too busy" when they return a 503 response, > rather than just marking authorities. Fixes bug 17572; bugfix on > 0.2.4.7-alpha. Patch by "teor". > > o Minor bugfixes (IPv6): > - Update the limits in max_dl_per_request for IPv6 address length. > Fixes bug 17573; bugfix on 0.2.1.5-alpha. > > o Minor bugfixes (linux seccomp2 sandbox): > - Fix a crash when using offline master ed25519 keys with the Linux > seccomp2 sandbox enabled. Fixes bug 17675; bugfix on 0.2.7.3-alpha. > > o Minor bugfixes (logging): > - In log messages that include a function name, use __FUNCTION__ > instead of __PRETTY_FUNCTION__. In GCC, these are synonymous, but > with clang __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ has extra information we don't > need. Fixes bug 16563; bugfix on 0.0.2pre8. Fix by Tom van > der Woerdt. > - Remove needless quotes from a log message about unparseable > addresses. Fixes bug 17843; bugfix on 0.2.3.3-alpha. > > o Minor bugfixes (portability): > - Remove an #endif from configure.ac so that we correctly detect the > presence of in6_addr.s6_addr32. Fixes bug 17923; bugfix > on 0.2.0.13-alpha. > > o Minor bugfixes (relays): > - Check that both the ORPort and DirPort (if present) are reachable > before publishing a relay descriptor. Otherwise, relays publish a > descriptor with DirPort 0 when the DirPort reachability test takes > longer than the ORPort reachability test. Fixes bug 18050; bugfix > on 0.1.0.1-rc. Reported by "starlight", patch by "teor". > > o Minor bugfixes (relays, hidden services): > - Refuse connection requests to private OR addresses unless > ExtendAllowPrivateAddresses is set. Previously, tor would connect, > then refuse to send any cells to a private address. Fixes bugs > 17674 and 8976; bugfix on 0.2.3.21-rc. Patch by "teor". > > o Minor bugfixes (safe logging): > - When logging a malformed hostname received through socks4, scrub > it if SafeLogging says we should. Fixes bug 17419; bugfix > on 0.1.1.16-rc. > > o Minor bugfixes (statistics code): > - Consistently check for overflow in round_*_to_next_multiple_of > functions, and add unit tests with additional and maximal values. > Fixes part of bug 13192; bugfix on 0.2.2.1-alpha. > - Handle edge cases in the laplace functions: avoid division by > zero, avoid taking the log of zero, and silence clang type > conversion warnings using round and trunc. Add unit tests for edge > cases with maximal values. Fixes part of bug 13192; bugfix > on 0.2.6.2-alpha. > > o Minor bugfixes (testing): > - The test for log_heartbeat was incorrectly failing in timezones > with non-integer offsets. Instead of comparing the end of the time > string against a constant, compare it to the output of > format_local_iso_time when given the correct input. Fixes bug > 18039; bugfix on 0.2.5.4-alpha. > - Make unit tests pass on IPv6-only systems, and systems without > localhost addresses (like some FreeBSD jails). Fixes bug 17632; > bugfix on 0.2.7.3-rc. Patch by "teor". > - Fix a memory leak in the ntor test. Fixes bug 17778; bugfix > on 0.2.4.8-alpha. > - Check the full results of SHA256 and SHA512 digests in the unit > tests. Bugfix on 0.2.2.4-alpha. Patch by "teor". > > o Code simplification and refactoring: > - Move logging of redundant policy entries in > policies_parse_exit_policy_internal into its own function. Closes > ticket 17608; patch from "juce". > - Extract the more complicated parts of circuit_mark_for_close() > into a new function that we run periodically before circuits are > freed. This change removes more than half of the functions > currently in the "blob". Closes ticket 17218. > - Clean up a little duplicated code in > crypto_expand_key_material_TAP(). Closes ticket 17587; patch > from "pfrankw". > - Decouple the list of streams waiting to be attached to circuits > from the overall connection list. This change makes it possible to > attach streams quickly while simplifying Tor's callgraph and > avoiding O(N) scans of the entire connection list. Closes > ticket 17590. > - When a direct directory request fails immediately on launch, > instead of relaunching that request from inside the code that > launches it, instead mark the connection for teardown. This change > simplifies Tor's callback and prevents the directory-request > launching code from invoking itself recursively. Closes > ticket 17589 > - Remove code for configuring OpenSSL dynamic locks; OpenSSL doesn't > use them. Closes ticket 17926. > > o Documentation: > - Add a description of the correct use of the '--keygen' command- > line option. Closes ticket 17583; based on text by 's7r'. > - Document the minimum HeartbeatPeriod value. Closes ticket 15638. > - Explain actual minima for BandwidthRate. Closes ticket 16382. > - Fix a minor formatting typo in the manpage. Closes ticket 17791. > - Mention torspec URL in the manpage and point the reader to it > whenever we mention a document that belongs in torspce. Fixes > issue 17392. > > o Removed features: > - Remove client-side support for connecting to Tor relays running > versions of Tor before 0.2.3.6-alpha. These relays didn't support > the v3 TLS handshake protocol, and are no longer allowed on the > Tor network. Implements the client side of ticket 11150. Based on > patches by Tom van der Woerdt. > > o Testing: > - Add unit tests to check for common RNG failure modes, such as > returning all zeroes, identical values, or incrementing values > (OpenSSL's rand_predictable feature). Patch by "teor". > - Log more information when the backtrace tests fail. Closes ticket > 17892. Patch from "cypherpunks." > - Always test both ed25519 backends, so that we can be sure that our > batch-open replacement code works. Part of ticket 16794. > - Cover dns_resolve_impl() in dns.c with unit tests. Implements a > portion of ticket 16831. > - More unit tests for compat_libevent.c, procmon.c, tortls.c, > util_format.c, directory.c, and options_validate.c. Closes tickets > 17075, 17082, 17084, 17003, and 17076 respectively. Patches from > Ola Bini. > - Unit tests for directory_handle_command_get. Closes ticket 17004. > Patch from Reinaldo de Souza Jr. >

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handling hot potatohhhs [was: Re: The Intercept steps up after catching a reporter faking data and sources]
by coderman 04 Feb '16

04 Feb '16

On 2/4/16, Cari Machet <carimachet(a)gmail.com> wrote: > ... > she stated at ccc that they get a lot of complaints about the slowness of > the information coming to the public regarding the snowden docs and glenn > said they have asked eff to take on some of the task but eff declined so > maybe they are doing better at at least trying to get others to work on it > still there is a reason that wikileaks is open ... i mean that decision > wasnt just out of nothing remember when media thought Cryptome was about to drop the cache? :P if you consider disseminating this collection trivial i think you underestimate the friction involved... best regards,

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Fwd: New High School Principal's speech to students.
by Zenaan Harkness 03 Feb '16

03 Feb '16

My kinda speech, Zenaan --- New high school principal A Speech Every Australian High School Principal Should Give. To the students and faculty of our high school: I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people. I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in Australia have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country. First, this school will no longer honour race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Endeavour or on slave ships. The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity -- your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is Australia. This is an Australian public school, and Australian public schools were created to make better Australians. If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity, race and non-Australian nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of Australia, one of its three central values -- epluribus Unum, "from many, one." And this school will be guided by Australia's values. This includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness. Your clubs will be based on interests and passions, not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism -- an unhealthy preoccupation with the self -- while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. So we will have clubs that transport you to the wonders and glories of art, music, astronomy, languages you do not already speak, carpentry and more. If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interested in are those based on ethnic, racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you. Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united Australia's citizens for over 200 years, and it will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has always come to be one country. And if you leave this school without excellent English language skills, I would be remiss in my duty to ensure that you will be prepared to successfully compete in the Australian job market. We will learn other languages here -- it is deplorable that most Australians only speak English -- but if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English,this is not your school. Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavour, everything in this school will reflect learning's elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for Horse Racing events than for church or school. These people have their priorities backward. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school. Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school's property -- whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can't speak without using the f -word, you can't speak. By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission, plus epithets such as "Abbo," even when used by one black student to address another black, or "bitch," even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene. Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way -- the way people attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago -- by earning it. One immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight. Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will be devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue.. There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual or not Christian. We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately fortunate -- to be alive and to be an Australian. Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you.

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"all that nasty thing"
by coderman 03 Feb '16

03 Feb '16

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/02/barrett-brown-the-rule-of-law-enforceme… The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Prison The Rule of Law Enforcement Barrett Brown Feb. 2 2016, 3:02 p.m. AFTER HAVING SPENT the prior six months in a fruitless cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation and counter-counter-retaliation with the administration of the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Worth, where I managed to do about half of my time in the hole before finally getting kicked out altogether, I was delighted to arrive here at FCI Three Rivers, a medium security prison subject to occasional outbreaks of gang warfare that also happens to be quite a lot of fun. And though one’s first few days at a new prison are always given over largely to errands and social obligations, I did manage to get in some much-needed reading time when someone lent me a copy of Five Families, a history of the American mafia by the veteran New York Times crime reporter Selwyn Raab. I’ve never had much interest in organized crime of the non-governmental sort, but ever since 2009 when I read through the bulk of Thomas Friedman’s past columns in the course of researching a book on the subject of incompetence, I’ve been fascinated by the extent to which a fellow can be a bit of a dummy, with questionable writing abilities and a penchant for making demonstrably erroneous attacks on others, and still find regular employment with the nation’s most prestigious newspaper (though in fairness to the Times, they did eventually get rid of William Kristol). I’m afraid I gave up on reading Five Families straight through after about the halfway mark, by which point it had become clear that Raab, contrary to all decency, was going to continue using the phrase “law-enforcement” thusly, with the unwarranted hyphen, something that would have been more tolerable did the term not necessarily appear every few pages due to the nature of the subject matter, often in the company of such other improprieties as “civil-rights,” “public-relations,” “stolen-car rings,” or “loan-shark,” and to such an extent that one could be forgiven for suspecting that Raab himself, for all his tough talk on crime, is in fact some sort of illicit hyphen smuggler. Luckily, this is the sort of book from which one can extract the most telling instances of Gray Lady-caliber foolishness just by skimming around. At some point Raab seems to decide that the writers of The Sopranos must be punished for humanizing the mafia in the course of writing a drama about human beings who are in the mafia. And so, more in sadness than in anger, but more in confusion than either, he set out to debunk the show’s fictional plotline by way of his own fictional journalistic expertise: “Genuine capos and wiseguys would never emulate Tony’s behavior. … No top-tier mobster would last long if he behaved like Tony Soprano, who defies basic Mafioso caution by exposing himself as a ripe target, to be easily mowed down by rivals. He drives without a bodyguard; sips espresso in daylight at a sidewalk café.” This comes just a few chapters after we’re told the following about a real-life top-tier mobster: “Shunning bodyguards and bullet-proof limousines, the sixty-six-year-old godfather met with his Mafia associates in restaurants and travelled about Manhattan in taxis like any ordinary businessman.” To his credit, Raab did manage to refrain from rendering this last bit as “ordinary-businessman,” which is just extraordinary, so we’ll give him another try: “Sex and psychiatry are prominent in The Sopranos’ story line. Confiding in a psychiatrist, however, would be a radioactive mistake for a boss or capo, who can never display symptoms of weakness or mental instability.” Naturally Raab has already forgotten having written the following about mafia boss Frank Costello: “Striving for inner peace while hovering between criminal affiliates and respected society, Costello tried psychoanalysis.” Even had the author not been so sporting as to provide us with comically perfect counterexamples by which to disprove his various inane objections, one could have also pointed out that Tony Soprano’s decision to see a psychiatrist does in fact prove to be a “mistake” insomuch as that it directly leads to a rupture in his organization culminating in a botched assassination attempt in the very first season, so this objection wouldn’t have made any sense even had it gotten past that crucial directly-contradicted-by-your-own-fucking-book hurdle that seems to be giving Raab so much trouble. Now take a moment to reflect on the fact that this is the guy the New York Times assigned to report on one of the nation’s most complex and insidious criminal conspiracies — this plodding hyphen addict who cannot seem to follow a television show or even his own manuscript. One supposes that there is some alternate universe in which this might be considered a problem and where Ross Douthat manages a furniture store and everyone knows his place. barrettbrown-11 BUT THERE’S MORE to prison life than just sitting around despising the New York Times. A week after arrival at Three Rivers, we new inmates were summoned to an “Admissions and Orientation” seminar in which the various department heads each speak for a few minutes about institutional policy. I’d attended one of these back at Fort Worth; usually the highlight is a short video clip of Bureau of Prisons Director Charles Samuels, who gives a little talk. No one knows what the talk is about, as whoever’s nephew was put in charge of producing the video has talked Samuels into pausing every couple of sentences to shift position and look into the other camera, just like the newscasters, something that the fellow can manage only with the most hilarious awkwardness, and so it proves impossible to follow what he’s actually saying — which is a shame, as it’s almost certainly something very non-formulaic and true. Today, however, the chief attraction was to be our warden, Norbal Vazquez, a longtime BOP functionary from Puerto Rico who is proverbial for his deranged monologues as well as for being regarded with great contempt by staff and inmates alike. Here are some actual quotes from his exquisitely demented half-hour orientation talk, during which he waddled back and forth, wagging his finger in admonishment when appropriate and sometimes when not: On his own qualifications for the job: “I am here because I earned it!” On the assistant wardens upon whom lesser wardens depend: “I do not need them!” On his inspiring biography: “I was a case manager before, and I was an OUTSTANDING one!” [wags finger] On the status of we benighted inmates, sitting in darkness: “You are all my children!” On who controls the prison: “Probably in some of your minds, is inmates! But you are wrong!” On, er, violators: “I have no mercy for violators!” On medical care: “You have a bullet in your leg and you want the bureau to heal you! Ha! Ha ha!” On the insufficiency of our meals: “Don’t come complain to me about your meals. Because there are children with nothing!” On gang warfare: “If you show force, I am going to show force!” On homemade alcohol: “If you are drinking all that nasty thing, shame on you! When your liver fails, I don’t care!” On inmates who are placed in the SHU and transferred to violent maximum security prisons because they’ve been caught with harmless contraband like synthetic marijuana: “They cry like babies! I have no mercy!” The only disappointing thing about the presentation was that he didn’t end by exhibiting his medals and declaring himself President for Life; indeed, I almost cried when someone told me he was retiring a few weeks hence. And “all that nasty thing” is my new favorite hooch-related meme, edging out “PRISON MADE INTHOXICANT” from a few columns back. All in all, it was an informative speech in spite of itself, even aside from the fellow’s suspicious insistence on his own competence and self-reliance and entirely meritocratic ascension to the top spot. There was quite a bit of talk, for instance, about how the gangs aren’t in control of the prison, something that obviously wouldn’t need so much triumphant emphasis were such a state of affairs not at least a possibility. barrettbrown-21 IN FACT, THE GANGS really don’t have control over the prison. But then neither does the administration, if by “control” we mean the ability to make uncontested decisions over what happens within a given space, in which case control is always a matter of degree. The federal and state governments of the United States, for instance, exercise some degree of overlapping control over their territory, but not to such an extent that the various law-enforcement agencies — er, law enforcement agencies — arrest any but a small minority of residents who violate the law. This is just as well, since the law requires that the tens of millions of Americans who use drugs or gamble or involve themselves in prostitution be imprisoned — and that’s not even counting federal law, which, as convincingly estimated by civil liberties attorney Harvey Silvergate in his book Three Felonies a Day, the average American unwittingly violates every day. And thus it is that the U.S. can continue to exist above the level of an unprecedented gulag state only to the extent that its laws are not actually enforced — an extraordinary and fundamental fact of American life that one might hope in vain to see rise to the level of an election issue, but which is at least worth keeping in mind when it comes to the debate over whether or not we should keep granting the state ever more powerful methods of surveillance until it becomes the All-Seeing God Against Whose Laws We All Have Sinned. (Personally I’d vote “no,” but then I’m a felon and can’t vote anyway.) As is the case with the country at large, the rules within each federal prison are such that a large portion of everyday activity actually violates those rules — and in both cases, 99 percent of the violations go unpunished, while anyone who proves inconvenient to the powers that be can be singled out for retaliation. Technically it’s against the rules to give anything to another inmate, for instance, or to sell or trade or lend for that matter, but of course this is done all day without a second thought, often in plain view of the guards, not a single one of whom would consider objecting. There are other rules that are almost universally disregarded but can be invoked at whim; there is also a catch-all violation, “Anything Unauthorized,” on hand as a last resort. But rabble-rousers can usually be dispensed with via more specific regulations such as those barring the signing of petitions or holding of demonstrations. (I myself was thrown in the hole for months due to my supposed leadership role in one such demonstration against an abusive guard who’d just threatened an elderly man.) Part of the justification behind those two regulations in particular is that there exists a means by which inmates can have their grievances addressed: the administrative remedy process. Naturally the BOP routinely conspires to prevent inmates from completing that process; the surreal lengths to which it’s gone to keep me from pursuing my own retaliation complaint, a process I’ve documented in this column over the course of the last nine months, are actually quite commonly deployed against inmates deemed to have a good chance of winning in court. Presumably this is why the Freedom of Information Act request that The Intercept filed with the BOP some months ago to obtain records of the administrative remedy process at FCI Fort Worth was denied with no explanation, even though the documents in question are specifically designated as being FOIA accessible. Any comprehensive examination of those records would reveal a systematic and highly effective effort by BOP officials to prevent inmates from bringing instances of major policy violations and even outright criminal activity by the bureau to the attention of the courts. The American people do not control their own prisons. The reality is that control is shared by way of a sort of makeshift federalism that varies in particulars from prison to prison but in which real power is always divided among the various gangs, the staff, and local and regional administrators in an arrangement that’s best described as a cross between the old Swiss canton system and China during the Warring States period, which I’ll be the first to acknowledge is not especially helpful. Suffice to say that it will take me the remainder of my sentence to provide a real sense of this remarkable state-within-a-state and its inimitable politics — the politics of the literally disenfranchised, who live their lives in the very guts of government without being able to rely on its protections, and so are forced to provide their own. Really, it’s a state-within-a-state-within-a-state. Complicating matters further is the great extent to which prisons can differ, with the most pronounced of these divisions being that between the state and federal systems. Broadly, we federals tend to look down upon our regional cousins as “not quite our sort, old boy,” although I’m probably the only one who puts it in exactly those terms. The state prisons tend to house the small-time dealers, whereas the feds are more often home to the guys who supplied them. The state is halfway filled with such actual criminals as thieves, rapists, and murderers, whereas the feds are made up largely of illegal immigrants and drug entrepreneurs — people who have neither hurt anyone nor deprived them of their property, but instead made the mistake of taking all of this “free market” talk seriously. The character of the federal prisons, then, will usually differ from those of the states. But then they’ll also differ among themselves, sometimes quite a bit, and not just along other readily obvious divisions such as those between minimum, low, medium, and maximum security designations, either. A few years ago the medium at Beaumont, Texas, to which I just narrowly avoided being sent myself, was considerably more violent than many of the maximums (also known as pens or, more technically, USPs). Back at the FCI Fort Worth, there was a marked degree of difference in how certain things were done even between the several 300-man units into which inmates were divided. And since the local administrators can disregard national policy more or less at will, as has been documented in this column repeatedly for two years, de facto policy will naturally vary from institution to institution as well. The result of all of this is that each prison is its own unique snowflake, fluttering about on gusts of cultural drift and BOP lawlessness. barrettbrown-31 THE VITAL STATISTICS of my stomping grounds here at Three Rivers, then, are as follows. The prison is home to a bit more than 1,000 inmates, of whom about 60 percent are Mexican nationals, another 20 percent are U.S. Hispanics, 10 percent are black, 5 percent are Latin American, and 5 percent are white (the ofay percentage of 15 percent I cited last time appears to have been out of date). About half of the Mexicans “run with” (institutional slang for “are affiliated with”) the Paisas, a relatively amorphous prison gang that draws its ranks almost exclusively from Mexican nationals; a smaller percentage of U.S. Hispanics run with Tango Blast, a more organized gang with a much cooler name; while blacks and whites for purposes of prison riots and dining arrangements both act mostly as race-based units. As usual, there are all manner of qualifiers and exceptions plus a smattering of smaller groupings: The Muslims will usually constitute their own little umma, there are a couple of whites who run with Tango, and so on. The most amusing of these aberrations involved the fellow with whom I shared a cell before he transferred to a low a few weeks back. Aaron LeBaron was born into an ultra-fundamentalist Mormon cult led by his father, who had moved the wives and kids to Mexico after some members of his congregation started to question whether or not all of the voices he was hearing were actually from God. Aaron eventually inherited the family theocracy as well as the family hit list and the family international stolen car ring. In the end he was captured and sentenced to 45 years. Today Aaron is an agnostic and longtime Skeptic Magazine subscriber who was very excited to learn that I’d written for that magazine as well as for Skeptical Inquirer. (Come to think of it, he was the only person I’ve ever met who found either one the least bit impressive, and I’ve been working them into introductory conversations for years.) At any rate, having been raised in Mexico and speaking perfect Spanish, this gangly, bespectacled, white, Mormon-looking fellow had been accepted as one of the Paisas, with whom he sat every day to eat and watch television. Scientists cannot measure the extent to which I’m going to dominate every dinner party conversation for the rest of my life. For a medium, Three Rivers isn’t particularly violent. The last major gang war, between the Tangos and the Paisas, was nearly a year ago; afterward the compound went on lockdown for about two weeks, itself a fairly typical gang intelligence investigation/cool-down period. In the three months since I’ve arrived, I’ve only had to “take a knee” once (inmates here are supposed to put at least one knee to the ground when officers run by screaming “Get the fuck down!” or some variation thereof as they proceed to the location of a conflict). And we’ve only been locked down in the aftermath of a fight on one occasion, for just a few hours. This is just as well, as I’m thereby able to concentrate on the trickle of information coming in from the wicked world beyond the fence. Lately I’ve been getting garbled reports of hoverboards, as well as some sort of new fascist movement that could conceivably take control of the White House this year, though I find it difficult to believe that the boards actually float like the ones from the movie. Meanwhile, I’m halfway through the newish first volume of Niall Ferguson’s biography of Henry Kissinger, which we shall examine in some detail next time. For now I will simply leave off with the following actual sentences from Ferguson’s introduction: “In this context, it is a strange irony of the Kissinger literature that so many of the critiques of Kissinger’s mode of operation have a subtle undertone of anti-Semitism. … This prompts the question: might the ferocity of the criticism that Kissinger has attracted perhaps have something to do with the fact that he, like the Rothschilds, is Jewish? This is not to imply that his critics are anti-Semites.” Well, the hyphens are all in their proper places, anyway. Quote of the Day “When the mob gains the day it ceases to be any longer the mob. It is then called the nation.” — Napoleon

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