wikileaks

When Donald Trump met Dr. Oz: A huckster bromance

oracknows — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 03:31:37 +0000

When Donald Trump met Dr. Oz: A huckster bromance

When I first heard that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President, was scheduled to appear on The Dr. Oz Show, my first thought was, basically, “Of course he is. What took him so long?” After all, it’s a crank pairing made in heaven. Given that, I considered it my skeptical blogging duty at least to watch the show, even if I never actually blogged about it. So I dutifully set my DVR to record it, and, after I got home from work, did my evening bike ride and ate dinner, I settled down in front of the television to see if this appearance would be as bad as I predicted in my mind.

I’m not sure if it was as bad as I had feared, but it certainly was bizarre. Surprisingly (to me), it was also actually mostly boring. Worse, although at the beginning of the first segment Oz cautioned Trump not to attack Hillary Clinton because he wanted the show to be about Trump, Oz also basically gave Trump a segment in which his daughter Ivanka appeared to shamelessly pimp Trump's recently announced childcare initiative. The selling was so blatant that Ivanka Trump's segment might as well have been a Donald Trump campaign infomercial. It was so bad that it left me with the question: Why is it that, while everyone seems to detest Trumps sons almost as much as him, they give Ivanka Trump a pass? In any case, I can’t help but wonder if the segment with Ivanka Trump promoting his latest campaign promise was the price that Trump demanded in return for agreeing to appear on Oz's show. I bet it was. The segment was just that blatant.

Be that as it may, I do agree with Julia Belluz. Trump’s appearance on Dr. Oz’s show was very odd and very surreal. Surprisingly, it was also rather dull. Of course, perhaps I should explain why I think Trump and Oz were basically made for each other. Trump, as you know, was always flamboyant and good at attracting media attention, a skill he honed to its current level of sharpness in reality TV as the star of The Apprentice. It’s as show that I admit to having watched and actually liked, at least the first two or three seasons. After that, I rapidly lost interest, and have never watched its spinoff Celebrity Apprentice. Trump also never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like. The one that I’ve criticized him the most for is, of course, his belief that vaccines cause autism, a belief he’s been very consistent about at least since 2007.

Enter Dr. Oz.

Dr. Oz is a near-perfect match. Back in the 1990s, Dr. Oz was a rising star in the world of academic surgery, a young cardiothoracic surgeon who published a lot and in good journals. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Oz discovered reiki. Soon, he was becoming famous as the surgeon who let reiki masters into the operating room to ply their woo on the patients as he operated on their hearts. Eventually, he caught Oprah Winfrey’s attention, and it wasn’t long before he was doing segments on her show, becoming “America’s Doctor” (a name that he trademarked). Back then, he hadn’t dived ad deepling into pure woo, mostly giving sensible if somewhat trendy advice on diet and exercise. Then he got his own show, and from there it was all downhill, as I’ve documented many times, to the point of labeling him America’s Quack, which he is. Examples to support my characterization abound, featuring Mike Adams on his show, having antivaccine icon Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on his show to promote his last book, running an unethical and bogus “clinical trial” of the weight loss supplement green coffee bean extract, and promoting homeopathy. That’s not even counting the times he had “Long Island Medium” Teresa Caputo on his show (plus John Edward, too!), and promoted a faith healer. Along the way, he also credulously featured anti-GMO fear mongering and basically every form of bogus weight loss supplements you can think of. He was even hauled before a Senate committee on the marketing of ineffective weight loss supplements and ended up being on the receiving end of a tongue lashing by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO).

None of this seems to matter. Like Trump, Oz is all about the money. Like Trump, he’s also become very skillful at sliming his enemies, as he did in 2014 when a group of doctors, some of whom were associated with the American Council on Science And Health (ACSH) wrote a letter to Oz’s dean at Columbia University basically demanding that he be fired because of his activities on his TV show. It was an astonishingly clueless and incompetent play, and Oz struck back, effectively turning the tables and labeling his critics as being in the thrall of big pharma.

Yes, Oz is a lot like Trump, and I haven’t even discussed everything I’ve written about him. Before last season, Oz, sensing that the pressure was on, promised to clean up his act and stop promoting pseudoscience. He must have done so, at least to some degree, because I haven’t done a post about him in exactly one year. Or maybe I lost interest. Then came Trump.

The video for Trump’s appearance is not yet up on Dr. Oz’s website. I’ll add links when it is. In the meantime, you can refer to a transcript of the interview. The first segment is pretty dull, with Oz conducting a “review of systems” on Trump (which in Oz’s hands was really a combination of a review of systems, a family history, and a medical history). We learn that Trump has hay fever, that his PSA is good, and that he’s on a statin. We also learn that both his parents lived long lives (into their 90s). Also, apparently Trump considers his gesticulations while speaking to crowds to be a form of exercise.

It was the second segment where the real stunt occurs. As Belluz describes it:

The key moment came when "America’s doctor" asked Trump: "If your health is as strong as it seems ... why not share your medical records?"

The 70-year-old Republican presidential candidate looked at the audience and said, "Well, I have really no problem doing it. I have it right here. Should I do it? I don’t care. Should I do it?"

Trump then pulled two papers out of his breast pocket and handed them to Oz. At this point, we, the audience, are meant to believe that these are real medical documents, and that Oz is shocked the presidential frontrunner is revealing the state of his personal health.

It was a moment every bit as staged as anything on “reality” television and allowed Trump to play to the crowd. Oz, professional TV personality that he now is, played along, acting surprised and looking serious as he examined the two pieces of paper:

Oz calls the two papers "comprehensive" — we’re meant to see this gesture as one of transparency, and to think the TV doctor is the trustworthy filter through which medical information can be relayed to the public. But, of course, The Dr. Oz Show has a history of deviating from reality and medical science.

What follows is even more surreal: Oz conducts a made-for-TV physical of Trump. No actual exams, no hands laid on the patient, no verification of the patient’s data.

One of these papers was a letter, and one was a report. We learn that Donald Trump is a bit overweight, being 6’3” and weighing 236 lbs.; that his routine lab values are normal; that his cholesterol levels are fine; and other assorted bits of medical history. In response, Oz dutifully asked him softball questions, like asking him, if his health is so good, why not release the records?

Basically, Dr. Oz became Donald Trump’s health spin doctor that day, laying it on pretty thick, even by Dr. Oz’s standards, proclaiming:

Blood sugar, 99. And C-reactive protein also low. Your liver function, your thyroid functional is all normal. You had a colonoscopy performed July 10, 2013, which was normal with no polyps. (Oddly enough, a look at Trump's Twitter feed shows that he was Tweeting all day that day.) Calcium score and your heart, 2013, also was low at 98. Oh my goodness. EKG chest x-ray on April 14 was normal. A normal echocardiogram was done two years ago. And your testosterone’s 441, which is actually -- it's good. It’s good.

You're only on the statin drug you mentioned. If a patient of mine had these records, I’d be really happy. And I’d send them on their way.

Trump returned the love, saying:

I would tell you – You know, my wife is a big fan of your show, and I would absolutely say because I view this as in a way going to see my doctor. Just a little bit public. That's all.

Gag me with a spoon. (Sorry. I felt as though I went through a time warp to 30 years ago.)

Throughout the rest of the interview, Oz basically gave Trump every opportunity to brag about his health, the longevity of his parents and, by extension and implication, how he expects to live a long time too. Trump informed Oz that he feels as good now as he did when he was 30. And, despite Oz’s request that Trump refrain from attacks on Hillary Clinton, Oz said nothing when Trump said, “I think when you're running for president of the United States, or maybe any other country, in all fairness, but when you're running for president, I think you have an obligation to be healthy. I just don't think you can do the work if you're not healthy. I don't think you can represent the country properly if you're not a healthy person.” Elsewhere, in response to a question on health issues, Trump brought up immigration, basically blaming them for the opioid addiction crisis.

That’s not to say that there wasn’t some inadvertent hilarity during the interview. (We are talking about Donald Trump, after all.) For example:

OZ: So what type of temperament is required for the person who becomes president of the United States?

TRUMP: Unbelievable strong and smart temperament, and I think it's my grandest asset. I think temperament is my single greatest asset.

OZ: Why do so many people question your temperament?

TRUMP: They don't question – it’s Madison Avenue. Madison Avenue went to Hillary Clinton and they said -- and when I say Madison Avenue, I’m talking about the advertising people, the people that make up the ads. And they said, let's see, and they put 15 things on a board. ‘Oh, temperament. Let's go after temperament.’ The people that know me -- I win. I know how to win. You can't win unless you have a great temperament. I know people that can't win. I know people that are very talented at sports, and they never win.

Yes, you read that right. Trump has the greatest temperament ever, and it’s all Hillary’s fault that there have been “questions” about his health. Never mind that Trump allies have been sowing conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s health for several months now. Just yesterday, I saw the most hilarious one yet over on TruthKings by a guy claiming to be a medical school professor—yeah, right, I bet she’s an adjunct instructor or something—entitled “Hillary Clinton has 1 Year to Live,” says Medical School Professor. The claim? That Clinton has severe subcortical vascular dementia and is likely to die in a year. I showed the article to a neurologist friend of mine, and the response was that it was “brain dead stupid.” Let’s just put it this way. Just like the case with Parkinson’s disease, if Clinton truly had advanced subcortical vascular dementia, she couldn’t hide it.

Basically, Dr. Oz is every bit as much of a carnival barker as Donald Trump is, and in this instance he helped Trump not only brag about his own health but to insinuate that Clinton is not healthy enough to be President while also allowing Ivanka Trump to air what was basically a campaign commercial for Trump’s childcare proposal. The two were clearly made for each other. It was placebo transparancy, making a mockery of transparency norms. No wonder they have such a beautiful bromance brewing.

Oz said that Clinton was also invited to be on his show and that the Clinton campaign is “considering” the offer. Call me skeptical, but somehow I don’t think it would be a good idea on her part to appear. If she does, though, she should demand the same deal Trump got, complete with a full segment in which she can sell whatever proposal she wants to using whomever she wants to bring in to do it. Fair's fair, after all.

oracknows Thu, 09/15/2016 - 23:31

Tags

Antivaccine nonsense

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Politics

Popular Culture

Pseudoscience

Quackery

Skepticism/Critical Thinking

complementary and alternative medicine

Categories

Trump ran two casinos at a loss. How do casinos run at a loss. It is ovious these two events lifted him out of the prospects of bankrupcy, the tax department missed out badly. When Trump runs the country to bankrupcy there is no place to cheat to save the USA. I think the emphasis on his disarsters and his string of dishonesties are not being addressed. God help the world if Americans vote for Trump. He will become the richest man in the world through selling out his country for his own buisiness interest. He learned the deception from his forefathers who lied to the Americans to get business they posed as swiss origens rather than honesty they were German. Trump has grown up with lies manipulation pitting his and his family interests first

Saved me the trouble of watching this love fest, just as well since my mop is at the cleaners and I would have barfed on the floor. Oh the torture Orac endures so we don't have to.

Nothing in that transcript on vaccines, immunizations or autism.

I guess Dr. Oz could work up enough spine to ask Trump about his positions on those. Then again, since Senator McCaskill flogged Oz severely in 2014 (as you reported), Oz seems like the cowardly lion.

Trump is 6'3"!? I thought he was more like 5'5"

And yet, audience members (“average” people) had rather glowing things to say. Trump’s comment that he “feels 30” seems to suffice for medial records to these people. The fact that noone but Oz has seen these two pages or that they were issued by the same doctor who wrote the first goofy testimonial-substituted-for-medical-report doesn’t trouble them. The dumbing down of a significant portion of the population is now complete.

Note: My grandson is at college and tells me he’s not making a lot of friends as he is having trouble finding anyone to engage in substantive conversation--giggling and sports talk seem to prevail. A video was shown at orientation that showed about 1% of students even knowing how much debt they have or the interest rate on that debt. The University (top rated in my state) wasn’t even embarrassed about this, but rather presented it as somewhat charming. We were shown endless video of the various food courts, but not a single lab or classroom was shown, although the library was pointed to on a tour of said food courts. On a brighter note, grandson is impressed with class content.

Trump once again confirms my opinion that the man is so vain, he probably thinks the old Carly Simon song is about him.

The fact that noone but Oz has seen these two pages or that they were issued by the same doctor who wrote the first goofy testimonial-substituted-for-medical-report doesn’t trouble them.

For that matter, we only have Oz's and Trump's word for it that those pieces of paper were medical records, let alone genuine Trump medical records. I wouldn't trust either of them to tell the truth.

Finally, I have to comment on Orac's caption to the photo on top:

I got a great real estate deal for ya, doc. Just check out that inspection report and sign on the dotted line.

I suspect the real estate deal in question involves a bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Onnie
Tokyo
September 16, 2016

Trump is 6’3″!? I thought he was more like 5’5″

He's 6'2"....had to get that extra inch too.

I wonder if there was any political screening of the audience. I don't see self selection since people on both sides may have an interest.

You expect people to believe that "Dr." Oz is a real physician? If he cannot hit the wardrobe department for some scrubs or a white lab coat, then he's obviously a fake.

How do casinos run at a loss.

Maybe because they are attached to hotels?

How do casinos run at a loss.

Load them up with debt, such that the revenue isn't enough to service said debt. Then, when you declare bankruptcy (at least under US law), you wipe out that debt. It's standard business practice in American real estate development.

Trump takes that to extremes by also routinely stiffing his contractors. There is a reason so few people will do business with Donald Trump anymore.

Was there any discussion of Trump's views re: Muslims?

You'd think these might be of at least passing interest for Oz.

Although as Orac mentioned, it's all about the money for Mehmet.

Perhaps he and the Donald are working on a new dietary supplement scam "MLM opportunity".

Do be so hard on Ivanka! She's got a rare mutation that gave her an extra vertebra in her neck.

What's an EKG chest X Ray?

Some new combo advancement in diagnostics that I'm not aware of?

One of these papers was a letter, and one was a report.

The labs from my last routine checkup were a hell of a lot longer than a single page.

The labs from my last routine checkup were a hell of a lot longer than a single page.

Maybe Trump's physician included only "positive" results.

I wonder if there was any political screening of the audience.

Unlikely. The self-selection for this kind of show favors folks who have little interest in politics, or 'reality' as we might understand the word, instead devoting attention to the theatrics of celebrity. Furthermore, as Oz fans, they'll be likely to follow his lead. The applause for something he features is really applause for him.

Except for the boring factor Orac mentioned, Oz and Trump appear to have staged this perfectly: Trump says he won't reveal anything; then when Oz gives him a friendly 'why not?' he's taken by the trustworthiness of America's Doctor and hands over the goods; at which point Oz reads and then exclaims, "Oh my goodness... It's good. It's good."; America's Doctor has ended the speculation and quieted the controversy; all is well in the land of Oz; the audience applauds.

Also, apparently Trump considers his gesticulations while speaking to crowds to be a form of exercise.

They are, as Trump would say, yuuge gesticulations. Not to mention classy. The absolute best gesticulations in the world.

Maybe Trump’s physician included only “positive” results.

Positive for what? Because if Trump (let alone Dr. Oz or the physician who allegedly performed Trump's physical) really thinks he's the picture of perfect health, I'd like some of whatever he's been smoking.

Much ado about not much. He's been under the care of his same doc for decades.

Why is it that, while everyone seems to detest Trumps sons almost as much as him, they give Ivanka Trump a pass?

Given some of the things he's said about her, pity.

Positive for what? Because if Trump (let alone Dr. Oz or the physician who allegedly performed Trump’s physical) really thinks he’s the picture of perfect health, I’d like some of whatever he’s been smoking.

It's a joke. I'm just riffing on the silly letter Trump's physician wrote which proclaimed that Trump's chems were "only positive".

Clearly those pages were the scripts telling Oz exactly what to say and do

Given some of the things he’s said about her, pity.

Not just the things he's said, which are bad enough. Specifically, Donald is on record as admitting that if Ivanka weren't his daughter, he'd date her.

But there is more to it than that. I have seen a photo, claimed to have been taken in the 1990s, of Donald in an inappropriately sexual pose with the then-teenaged Ivanka. And I am told (I didn't watch it myself) that she recoiled at the RNC when he tried to pat her on the bottom.

Nevertheless, she is getting off easier than she should. She's not dumb; so far this campaign she has displayed more intelligence than Donald Jr. and Eric (or as some wags call them, Uday and Qusay) combined. She should know better.

SM@22: So was I. When it comes to medical examinations, "positive test results" has another meaning, one that IME is more common than the one Trump and his physician intended.

she recoiled at the RNC when he tried to pat her on the bottom.

Lurid.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/dr-oz-show-edited-out-trumps-creepy-rem…

http://media.thecelebrityauction.co/picture/c/76/TFgAGRNLBRYLDRcXGQYTAB…

The Oz missed a golden opportunity to ask the Rump for a genetic sample to determine if the Rump is an ALF.

And what is up with mentioning his testosterone level? They even pointed out on NPR that there is rarely ever a reason to actually do that.

Trump trying to show he is not a girly-man?

What a pathetically contrived health revelation politically designed to win votes from Hilary through fitness one-upmanship.

Also, apparently Trump considers his gesticulations while speaking to crowds to be a form of exercise.

So did Nixon. I hear rumors that Trump does ten "I am not a crook" double-V deltoid salutes a day.

You can’t win unless you have a great temperament. I know people that can’t win. I know people that are very talented at sports, and they never win.

Wow! Now, sports figures don't even have to play. They merely need to show temperament. That'll go over well at the Super Bowl!
The World Series is about temperament, not about who can throw how fast or who can hit a ball!
The Olympics are all about temperament too, why, there's an Olympic Gold Medal in Temperament.

It's also interesting that he can tweet while undergoing a colonoscopy...

And of course, illegal aliens are now prescribing narcotics at record levels, causing people to turn to heroin or something.
Does that mean it'd be cheaper for the lawn guy down the street to write me an RX for hydrocodone than for me to pay my primary's copay?*

*Considering how many flaming hoops I and doctor have to jump through just to get an MRI to prove a diagnosis of a herniated disc, that lawn guy would be more cost effective. Pity that isn't how things work here on the planet Earth. Maybe on Bizarro World, but not here.

Still, if gesticulating is an exercise, I've always been in supreme physical form. Being of Sicilian-American heritage, I "talk with my hands" a lot. Beware when I start talking and am butchering a piece of meat for dinner - unless one wishes to get in some unintentional fencing practice. ;)

If he's 6' 3" and 236 pounds, his BMI is 29.5 which is about as close to obese as you can get and still be overweight. To be fair, his normal numbers for cholesterol and blood sugar probably reduce his risk of health problems but.

With the number of pages he had on his physical report, tests must have been on only a few of of his best stats. Dr Oz only perpetuates Trumps lies. I never really watched Dr. Oz and definitely never the apprentice Okay, maybe 15 minutes of one episode, but not ever again.

Also, apparently Trump considers his gesticulations while speaking to crowds to be a form of exercise.

He no doubt does several trapezius-strengthening Heil Hitlers per day, possibly with a 7 oz Rolex for added weight.

#30 Wzrd1

OT
Being of Sicilian-American heritage, I “talk with my hands” a lot. Beware when I start talking and am butchering a piece of meat for dinner – unless one wishes to get in some unintentional fencing practice

Now that you mention it, I don't think I have ever known a professional chef who “talks with their hands”. I had never thought about this before.

Gil: I thought you were cool with incest, since you incessantly cheer for Trump, and then lie, just like your hero.

Eric Lund: Nevertheless, she is getting off easier than she should. She’s not dumb; so far this campaign she has displayed more intelligence than Donald Jr. and Eric (or as some wags call them, Uday and Qusay) combined. She should know better.

I'd disagree about the dumb; she's more intelligent than her brothers, but so are octopi. I do agree that she should know better. If she had any sense or self-respect, she'd cut molester-daddy loose and never, ever talk to him or let him near the grandkids.

jkrideau: Professional chefs know that's a good way to lose their hands, though a few may be inclined to talk with knives.

Rachel Maddow asked NBC medical correspondent Dr. Natalie Azar about the testosterone:

MADDOW: And it`s gratuitous or not gratuitous to throw in your testosterone level in a public document like this?
AZAR: It`s interesting. And for him, I will say that`s a good number to have, because it`s cardio-protective. It`s a check mark in his favor. And it`s almost time to move on, you know?
MADDOW: It definitely is.

since you incessantly cheer for Trump

Oh Trump, you're so fine
You're so fine, you blow my mind,
Hey Trump, hey Trump
Ra, ra, ra!

What is your damage, little girl?

A few things I've heard**..

- The Orange One's cholesterol numbers could be low because he takes meds!!!
- saying 6'3" rather than 6'2" ( another quoted height for him) puts him in 'overweight" BMI vs 'obese'
- some controversy about weight 230+ vs 260+
- he got the testosterone number because he WANTED it
- some news dude said there is so much crap about him to report on, they just go form one thing to the next- it's endless ( hint: FOCUS!)

** heh

@ PGP:

Right. Se should know better. If she dreamt up the childcare plan - and she has a business degree from an elite school- shouldn't she know it only benefits higher income people?

-btw-

I am contemplating whether we are actually watching the final decline of civilisation up close and personal as revealed via the 24hr news cycle.

Perhaps Ragnarok?

Can voters really be so f@cking stupid?
And have no long term memory ( about birtherism)

He has a frigging dyed blonde combover.

Reporters are looking into the shady operations of his businesses, foundation, campaign and NOTHING sticks

He does the reverse of what he says ( e.g. has his clothing line made in China, / hires illegal people)

Do some believe his reign would be FREE entertainment?

DW: If she dreamt up the childcare plan – and she has a business degree from an elite school- shouldn’t she know it only benefits higher income people?
I think she's so sheltered she doesn't know that lower and middle-class people exist. Her servants and employees are just moving shadows to her.

Jerkface: MY DAMAGE? I have a functioning brain, unlike yourself, you, lying, drug-addled, incest-supporting sexist, hippy-dippy pig. I've run out of patience with you and your lies, and supporting your parents (for you are certainly a product of incest) is the last straw.
You are a prime example of a generation that is a waste of space. You're a Republican, who for some reason, choses to act like a walking DARE advertisement. For the last time, get off this board and go back to Reddit, or whatever MRA or libertarian hellhole you came from.

You are a prime example of a generation that is a waste of space.

Oh, my; What generation are you imagining I belong to? You forgot that I think age of consent laws are stupid.

And have no long term memory ( about birtherism)

Ahh, yes. It's all coming back to me now:

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of "shameful offensive fear-mongering" by circulating a photo as an attempted smear.

http://www.politico.com/story/2008/02/obama-slams-smear-photo-008667

Jerkface: You're a boomer, obviously or did you forget your age? Also, that whole Clinton thing was fact-checked, seven ways to Sunday, and guess what? It wasn't her. It was your dumbass friends who started that birther thing, with Trumpie's full and active support. So get your child-diddling fried-egg lying rear out of here already.

You’re a boomer

Really? I've never worked with artillary. How old are they?

a good number to have, because it`s cardio-protective.

I guess the cardioprotective quality of testosterone explains why the male life span is so much longer.

You forgot that I think age of consent laws are stupid.

Well that's a Gilbert keeper. My apologies to Narad of course.

That was a past 'supposition' of PgP when commenting on my support of Ron Paul.

Well that’s a Gilbert keeper. My apologies to Narad of course.

For allowing him to ooze out of the killfile? I'll get over it.

Well, you can say a lot of things about Donald Trump; but at least he know that vaccines are toxic as sh¡t.

For that, he gets my vote.

It's even funnier when you consider that Oz is a Turkish Muslim.

More well known is that Trump is a (former?) Democrat and contributed multiple times to .... Bill and Hillary Clinton. He also said she'd be a good president. Notably, Mrs Clinton has not returned the favor. P'haps DT should ask for his money back.

Sadly, Nun of the Above (an actual candidate one year in San Francisco) is not an the ballot. But you can write him/her in ;-).

@Denice #40

I see your Ragnarok and raise u one SMOD

.....it'll be the best, the classiest meteor, the most metaphorical meteor ...

But you can write him/her in

Well, in 41 states, only seven of which don't immediately shіtcan them unless the putative candidate has made some effort in advance.

I remember last year, there was a joke. Amy Poehler and Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live "campaigned" under the slogan "[Strong Women] get [things] done". I can't put the actual slogan otherwise it'll get moderated.
Looking at Trump and Clinton, I'm beginning to wish they were serious.

Also, that whole Clinton thing was fact-checked, seven ways to Sunday, and guess what? It wasn’t her.

Ahh. I see, PgP #44:

Clinton’s short-term 2008 campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, admitted that a campaign staffer circulated what became known as the “Birther” theory that Obama wasn’t born in the USA...

Doyle said it was a “rogue staffer” who sent out an e-mail and “was fired pretty damn quick.”... There was a volunteer coordinator, I believe, in late 2007, I believe, in December, one of our volunteer coordinators in one of the counties in Iowa — I don’t recall whether they were an actual paid staffer, but they did forward an email that promoted the conspiracy.”...

President Obama also bears some responsibility by allowing his literary agent back in 1991 to claim Obama was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia” which was printed inside a promotional booklet about the young author and future president that circulated for years.

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/hillary-insider-admits-starting-birther…

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/16/hillary-clinton-camp…

Trump had long fanned the flames of this conspiracy theory, known as ‘birtherism’, and spent much of spring 2011 garnering media attention

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/sep/16/donald-trump-bara…

James Asher, the former Washington bureau chief for the news agency McClatchy, tweeted that longtime Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal was spreading the conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya while he was a senior Clinton campaign advisor in 2008, long before Trump ever parroted the claim...

But Blumenthal also dabbled spreading much less reliable reports, such as conjecture about Obama's "communist mentor" Frank Marshall Davis. Further, Blumenthal's reputation for dishonesty and underhanded tactics is well-established. It is generally accepted that he lied to the media and publicly smeared Monica Lewinsky and other Bill Clinton accusers when he worked in the White House.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/report-clinton-confidant-sidney-blumentha…

Blumenthal denied that he'd spread the rumor in an email to the Boston Globe. But later in the day, McClatchy itself made it clear that the charge has merit. In fact the chain sent a reporter to Kenya at Blumenthal's urging, to look into what he had to say "and that reporter determined that the allegation was false."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/does-clinton-have-a-blumenthal-birthe…

that whole Clinton thing was fact-checked, seven ways to Sunday

Apparently through Clinton's smooth-blue anti-seizure glasses darkly.

Clinton: "I've been briefed about the bombings in New York and New Jersey and the attack in Minnesota..."

Reporter: "Secretary, do you have any reaction to the fact that Donald Trump immediately took the stage tonight, calling the explosion a 'bomb'?"

https://news.grabien.com/story.php?id=518

She looks and sounds tired/zonked out; I wonder how badly she's been 'floxxed' from the levofloxacin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8TR61QFpoA

@ Spectator:

Hahaha!

On second thought- perhaps the Donald IS the SMOD?

But seriously, folks;
I have been watching liberal/ moderate television politicos wring their hands and (try to) knit their Botoxed brows whilst this general situation continues and listened to the rapturous stylings of his ( Alas!) female campaign leader, lately visiting Orac's fave, Bill Maher...

I can only say:
Oh Jesus/ Lord G-d of Israel!
( which are rather telling expressions of exasperation for an atheist)

the fact that the pressure cooker bomb found at the second location did not go off suggests it failed to explode.

http://circa.com/world/security-threats/new-york-law-enforcement-was-al…

It might also suggest that it was mearly full of Quinoa.

Jerkface: Shut up. Why don't you check this place out : http://www.politifact.com/subjects/obama-birth-certificate/

and then go away forever. You can't even do libertarianism right, though you;ve got the hatred of women down pat; you're supposed to have a pile of guns and sleep on them every night. Also, Breitbart isn't a reputable site. It's allied with infowars, and most of the staffers are paid by the Trump campaign.

Gilbert @42 "You forgot that I think age of consent laws are stupid."

Go. Now.
You are the worst of the worse and lower by far than Trump.
That is a monstrous thing to say. Begone.

My sleep caliber is .303.

Breitbart isn’t a reputable site. It’s allied with infowars, and most of the staffers are paid by the Trump campaign.

Ohh. I see you got that email

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has sent out a fundraising email arguing the website Breitbart News has no “right to exist,” and suggests that if elected, the website will be shut down entirely.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/18/hillary-campaign-vows-to-destroy-oppo…

I fail to see how they are 'allied' with Infowars -- Though he did siphon off the Breitbart chairman:

Mr. Trump’s decision to make Stephen K. Bannon, chairman of the Breitbart News website, his campaign’s chief executive was a defiant rejection of efforts by longtime Republican hands to wean him from the bombast and racially charged speech that helped propel him to the nomination

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/us/politics/donald-trump-stephen-bann…

The only alliance between them and Infowars is a common threat to being shut down; Which the dems have been sweaty palm-balming for quite some time.

It's a vast alt-right conspiracy. By the way, it was her confidant, Sidney Blumenthal, who first coined the phrase 'vast right-wing conspiracy' of Clinton critics in the mid '90s.

https://twitter.com/BreitbartNews/status/768897046124302336/photo/1

Infowars addresses the fundraising email:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8W7kRopvO8

Once again, JustaTech #62; That was how PgP painted me for embrasing Ron Paul -- I was needling her for it; I wish I could remember where that comment was.

Gilbert @65: Given the other things you've said here you can understand why I'm not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. PGP says outrageous things, but in this thread *you* said it. And there are some subject you really shouldn't joke around about, and child rape is one of them.

And what the f*%& all do consent laws have to do with libertarians?

And what the f*%& all do consent laws have to do with libertarians?

I know, right? Ask PgP.

in fact, I think the laws, as they stand, are rather stupid, much as you think age-of-consent laws are stupid and oppressive- though unlike you, stoners hurt no one but themselves.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/02/22/no-ddt-wont-save-us-from-t…

She just threw that out there with her multi-chroma smear-brush.

I seem to remember a previous reference concerning libertarians, but I can't find it.

In general, making comments on the Internet should be treated like talking with airport security: Always assume your sarcastic comments will be taken at face value.

And here is the first 'needling':

That Gilbert is a scoundrel, Politicalguineapig.

It was 1996 when my father, a cop, cited him for driving on a section of interstate they had closed to practice “unconventional ticketing tactics”. Well he blurted out in court that he was going to “pimp out your son to pay for this!”

He did just that; He pimped out my douchebag brother and he pimped me out as well. I learned…stuff…about myself that I had not ever even dreamed of before; The least of which, age of consent laws are stupid. It’s been a love/hate relationship between us ever since.

After Joey manned up and quit peeing on people, they sort of bonded as they’re both weed feinds. Daddy didn’t look at me ‘that way’ anymore, like it was my fault or something that I got pimped. My father accidentally blew off his pecker in the mens courthouse restroom and subsequently O.D.’d on Tylenol as he was adamant against any kinds of mind altering drugs; especially if it would cause one to be in a state of relaxation or relieve pain — He spent his whole career depriving others of such; He was no hypocrite.

Love him and hate him, he gives me stuff, ya know?

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/04/07/all-drugs-are-poisons-and-…

Justatech: And what the f*%& all do consent laws have to do with libertarians?

They don't like them and find them oppressive, like manners, basic hygiene, and not being dickheads.

Jerkass: Another lie. You were pretending to be at least two people on that thread, including smearing yourself, or writing out a personal fantasy, I'm not sure, as you apparently forgot your brain that day. I was just trying to make you leave.
And once again, learn what facts are, and try to get yours from somewhere that doesn't think David Icke is a credible source.

Why would anyone shut down infowars? It does a fantastic job at being a black hole of stupid.

As far as high/ low testosterone goes, testosterone is a brain poison, so wouldn't a low number be better?

though you;ve got the hatred of women down pat

If you were the last woman on earth, I'd be as queer as a football bat.

Gilbert, homophobic put-downs are not really helping your position here.
In case we haven't covered it recently: The first rule of holes - when you're in a hole, stop digging.

homophobic put-downs are not really helping your position here

How is that a 'put-down'? She's led me to embrasing the idea.

They don’t like them and find them oppressive, like manners, basic hygiene, and not being dickheads.

The fact remains that she said it first and defends it with her reply to you; I elaborated on the long litany of 'put-downs' in #41 by pointing out she forgot the most outrageous one.

I get it, JustaTech; Your story is you were touched where you retroactivly did not want to be touched -- remembering the 8'th boyfriend who tapped your phone and caught you being lascivious with #9 or daddy?

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Jerkface: So far, you are providing ample proof that libertarians are generally awful people. And you're continuing to support pedophilia. Why don't you go join your fellows on reddit already?

Dear G-d, do yall not remember when Gilbertimmeh was seeking attention because his father had put a hit out on him and something something black helicopters?

Narad: I do, and I regret giving him sort of a pass because I thought he was mentally ill, if also a stupid and deeply unpleasant person. Now I know better, he is a stupid and unpleasant person, and any brain damage he has is his own d*mn fault.

"That Gilbert is a scoundrel, Politicalguineapig."

He made that look like pgp originated that whole spiel. That's incredibly dishonest, nay evil, other forums I'm on would perma ban any idiot pulling something like that...

Jay: That’s incredibly dishonest, nay evil,

Well, that's the default of both libertarians and Trumpeteers. You forgot to mention stupid, as he included the link..to something he wrote himself.

He made that look like pgp originated that whole spiel.
Once again, she did -- or did you just miss the link #68 or forgot that february 24 comes before April 8?

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/02/22/no-ddt-wont-save-us-from-t…

It's also news to me that, according to PgP, I'm now *continuing* to support pedophilia.
==========================

Yes, I included that link, PgP. But not before including your previous (and initial) slurr.

in fact, I think the laws, as they stand, are rather stupid, much as you think age-of-consent laws are stupid and oppressive- though unlike you, stoners hurt no one but themselves.

-- Politicalguineapig, Feb 24, 2016

"Jerkass: Another lie." -- Well, a 'twisting' on your part. I'm not sure you know what a 'lie' is as much as you hurl it at me without just cause.

re various comments over the past few days on this thread by PGP regarding Gilbert

I hope that Orac's minions can now understand why I love her so much despite her comments that I do not love

Ancient Walter Family Motto
'Something is better than nothing'

Gilbert @#63

Ohh. I see you got that email

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has sent out a fundraising email arguing the website Breitbart News has no “right to exist,” and suggests that if elected, the website will be shut down entirely.

That's a lie. Here's what the E-mail said.

I don't always like what they have to say, but I respect their role and right to exist.

Breitbart is something different. They make Fox News look like a Democratic Party pamphlet. They're a different breed altogether -- not just conservative but radical, bigoted, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic conspiracy paddlers...

I mean, I post something most unflattering to Trump and PgP slaps an 'incest' label on me.

""Gil: I thought you were cool with incest, since you incessantly cheer for Trump, and then lie, just like your hero.

"" you, lying, drug-addled, incest-supporting sexist, hippy-dippy pig. I’ve run out of patience with you and your lies, and supporting your parents [I assume she means 'boomers'] (for you are certainly a product of incest)

Meh. Incest; It's a family affair. Some people are just immutably acerbic, I guess.

It is implied, SteveJ.

I don’t always like what they have to say, but I respect their role and right to exist.

Breitbart is something different.

since you incessantly cheer for Trump

I challenge you to cite one instance where I have 'cheered for trump' (not counting the sarcastic snipe at #37)

In fact, I think he is a loathsome creature who blames it all on the drugs:

“drugs are a very, very big factor in what you’re watching on television at night”, referring to riots against police abuses in Charlotte, North Carolina, the night before.

He denied having said this to a reporter who asked him about it in Philadelphia. He added, as if in support of his original statement: “Drugs are a big problem all over the country. They’re flowing in like never before. Drugs are a big, big problem.”

“I think stop and frisk, in New York City, it was so incredible, the way it worked. Now, we had a very good mayor. But New York City was incredible the way it worked.”

As already shown, I disagree with the article on this point:

There is no evidence that Clinton or her campaign had anything to do with the false rumors that Barack Obama was not born in the United States

(see #57)

Did you see the dermatologist about your raging leprosy yet?

I do, and I regret giving him sort of a pass because I thought he was mentally ill

I was never afraid of black helicopters, but I do vaguely recall being freaked out this past winter by my webcam, because it was a version of the One Eye that I was being observed by, so I covered it with duct tape. (The FBI has followed suit, I see.)

This wasn't an Illuminati thing, but rather had something to do with squid and octopi being p!ssed at us because we lock them up and observe them. It all led back to the One Eyed Kraken or something; too many tales told to a young lass by drunken Norwegian uncles, maybe.

At least my terrifying, mania-and-sleep-deprivation psychosis was kind of interesting. The "satanic mind-control group from Thailand" was kind of a low point, and one of the things that led to me being involuntarily admitted to St. Joe's. (They were very nice there, though at the time I resented greatly being locked in the seclusion room and injected with Ativan several times because I was throwing fits about, well, being observed.)

@Gilbert (87),

I see you got around to mentioning it on the 14th on the Hillarz thrwad.

But since comment 11 at least offered an excuse for Trump and your one word "lurid" in 26 could be taken as either direct or ironic, please forgive us if we misunderstood.

I dont know if it matters since Citizens United, but under the old rules, a PAC could spend wharever on attack ads and didn't count for the other candidate's spending limit.

So if you mainly post anti-Clinton comments, it's a fair assunption that you support her opponent.

I ratger would have guessed you would support the candidate who runs a medical marijuana business. His mountain climbing skills certainly win him the fitness award.

@Gilbert (87),

I see you got around to mentioning it on the 14th on the Hillarz thrwad.

But since comment 11 at least offered an excuse for Trump and your one word "lurid" in 26 could be taken as either direct or ironic, please forgive us if we misunderstood.

I dont know if it matters since Citizens United, but under the old rules, a PAC could spend wharever on attack ads and didn't count for the other candidate's spending limit.

So if you mainly post anti-Clinton comments, it's a fair assunption that you support her opponent.

I ratger would have guessed you would support the candidate who runs a medical marijuana business. His mountain climbing skills certainly win him the fitness award..

Fartface: Well, in 76, you certainly act like you think pedophilia is no big deal and in that comment from 2015, you seemed to think it was a POSITIVE experience that everyone should go through,so, I'm going to continue to think you're a skeezy person who hangs with skeezy people and whoever you vote for is scum or at the least, dumber than a dozen sheds of bricks. By the way, for your information, I'd never write anything like that comment from Timmeh (you), aside from its content, I wrote more coherent sentences as a first grader, while you didn't seem to grasp grammar, commas,or basic verb usage. And you still aren't very coherent and seem to be stuck at twelve, where making fart noises is considered conversation.
Also, I've never, ever, ever used a different nym than the one I do now, whereas you seemed to change names every day for a while. So please, for the love of god, go fart somewhere else, or go get high. At least then you'd be someone else's problem, teenage skeezeball.

JP: Just out of curiosity, why Thailand? Russia or China I could understand, but Thailand seems random.

JP: Just out of curiosity, why Thailand? Russia or China I could understand, but Thailand seems random.

I don't know why Thailand, and it is pretty random; crazy works that way, I guess. I do have a friend who spends a lot of time there and whom I guess I suspected of being in on the whole thing (long story, also my friends are saints) so there's that.

drunken Norwegian uncles

One of these words is redundant.

Gilbert @#86
"Breitbart is something different." starts a new paragraph. It's different because it's openly bigoted, unlike other mainstream conservative media.

I rather would have guessed you would support the candidate who runs a medical marijuana business.

I'm not too fired up about Johnson, squirrelelite. His running mate, Bill Weld, is sort of a 'neocon' who is friends with HRC at that. There is even some talk that he should drop out and endorse Hillary.

thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/297074-bill-weld-should-leave-libertarian-ticket-and

With Johnson supporting mandatory vaccinations, a carbon tax, and TPP, I'm not sure he wouldn't siphon equal votes away from Hillary as he will from Trump.

Maybe I'm naive, but migrants and immigrants (even undocumented) are not a big issue for me -- I more worry about having to have permission to leave a country. Johnson's veiws on migrants and immigrants don't disturbe me.

I'll probably not be voting but Hillary is the 'devil you know' and I definately do not want. I can only hope that, If it is a Trump, his rhetoric on stop-and-frisk and certain fascistic tendancies can be tamed by his finding a respect for the rights of States. And I wonder if he counts cannabis as a component of the 'drugs' he says it's all about. He's seriously backward with his 'drug talk'. Maybe it's good for big Pharma but it's a serious issue with the new kid, kratom and its pain relieving without depressing respiration as well as staving off opiate withdrawal.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/09/06/right-to-try-goes-federal-…

I'm uncomfortable with Infowars' continuous fawning over Trump; So it's with chunks of salt on how I regard this piece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW5gQo43ay4

My vision of the border with Mexico is that a truck from the United States going into Mexico and a truck coming from Mexico into the United States will pass each other at the border going 60 miles an hour. Yes, we should have open borders.

http://www.ontheissues.org/2012/Gary_Johnson_Immigration.htm

I think I agree wholeheartedly; The boarder agents at permenant checkpoints 100 miles from the boarder are an oppressive travisty.

I wrote more coherent sentences as a first grader, while you didn’t seem to grasp grammar, commas,or basic verb usage.

Really, PgP? While I don't usually countenance 'grammar nazis' who can't see the meaning for the words, I now welcome your cogent critique when I mess up -- Help me to do better.

p.s. ""you certainly act like you think pedophilia is no big deal and in that comment from 2015, you seemed to think it was a POSITIVE experience that everyone should go through,so, I’m going to continue...**

I am at a loss to know what you are talking about. Can you point me towards the comment or give a PgP-filtered synopsis of it? I would be most appreciative.

** I *thought* that a phrase bounded in comments like that was only valid when the sentence is whole with the commented part removed. Did I fail somewhere?

commented == coma, oops.

Well, Narad thinks species of consent laws are stupid.

Gil: I thought you were cool with incest, since you incessantly cheer for Trump, and then lie, just like your hero.

It's kludgy, PgP. You sprinkle commas out as if from a pepper shaker. Allow me to adjust it for you:

Gil: I thought you were cool with incest since you incessantly cheer for Trump and then lie, just like your hero.

^^That reads much more fluently; See how that works?

Well, Narad thinks species of consent laws are stupid.

Way ahead of you, Fucklesworth.

I see the sock puppet is back again.

""Well, Narad thinks species of consent laws are stupid.

Imagine the toung on that think twice as long as the snout -- It would certainly toss Narad's salad out the back door with those claws so he couldn't get away.

{Don't worry, Narad won't see this or if he accidentally does he'll just brag about his 'killfile' some more}

I don't think Thailand is random at all. Different foreign countries have different collections of cultural connotations here in the US, in addition to whatever we may associate with them from personal experience, like someone we know who's from there. A paranoid delusion isn't going to imagine a satanic mind control group running super secret crytptic panoptic surveillance out of an orgainzed/oligarchic/authoritarian country like Russia or China, where the state actually keeps tight watch on its citizens, and/or has cyber-spys. It would have to be someplace more anarchic and mysterious. Thailand has that, and it's exotic, and ancient (satanic cults always have ancient roots, yes?) and a reputation for immoral skeeviness and danger, with sex tourism and what-not.

Only God Forgives is set in Thailand. Check it out, if you think you'd like a movie where David Lynch meets Park Chan-wook, the villain is The Worst Mom In The History of Cinema, and Ryan Gosling is on camera without saying much of anything for most of the film. Extremely weird... JP, I'd actually be curious to know which vision of Thailand is weirder, yours or Nick Refn's.

@Gilbert,

I finally looked at a little of your latest video post and found it a bit ironic.

So whoever is spouting off there doesn't like Gary Johnson because he looked at the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and decided they weren't as bad as he had thoughtb4 years ago.

Sounds like an intelligent, reasoning individual.

Since I don't think even the EU has borders like you describe, it's highly unlikely to happen between the US and either Canada or Mexico.

Yea, baby, yea! Johnson gets my vote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXhR41lsEJY

In other (non) news...

Dear old Mikey boy goes full tilt wackaloon in his endorsement of the Orange One. ( Natural News)

Elect him or the World Ends

In other (non) news…

John Stone's difficult-to-follow tale of being censored (again) by PubMed Commons is also of passing note. I suspect that he simply posted the same thing three times in the space of 10 minutes and had them auto-nuked, but he asserts that it was due to some undefined complaint.

The icing on the cake is that he also pretends that mentioning Brugha at AoA could somehow summon his presence.

Are you the same Narad that has been trolling the pet forums looking for an aardvark?

I've figured out the answer to the age old mystery of where your socks go in the dryer.

They come through a wormhole to here and become sock puppets.

Did 99 resurface as 109 ?

So. Trump was caught talking nasty towards women.

Barak: " Gotta have them ribs and p*ssy too!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKYmiWiNqOw

New Wikileaks release peeks behind the scenes of America's quack

oracknows — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 06:00:35 +0000

New Wikileaks release peeks behind the scenes of America's quack

It would appear that some people got the impression that, just because I questioned whether a recent publicity stunt in which ten doctors and researchers, led by a well-known pro-GMO activist working for the Hoover Institution, Dr. Henry Miller, sent a letter to the dean at Columbia University in essence asking him to fire Oz for his promotion of quackery and, pointedly, anti-GMO fear mongering on his show was a good idea, somehow I'm going easy on Dr. Oz. Not at all. Miller and his compatriots at the Hoover Institution and the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) made what I see as a spectacular blunder, and it's because I detest Oz and want to see effective methods brought to bear to counter his quackery that Hoover's antics—and, yes, that is the perfect word to describe what he did—irritate me so much.

That's why another story yesterday caught my eye. At first, I was wondering whether I should address it because it seems so much like a "dog bites man" story, telling us nothing that we don't already know about our old friend Mehmet Oz. On the other hand, it's the way that it tells us about how The Dr. Oz Show operates that makes it worth a notice. The information comes to us, initially, in the form of a story by Julia Belluz again, New WikiLeaks documents reveal the inner workings of the Dr. Oz Show:

Dr. Mehmet Oz often appears on his popular show to promote new health products and devices. Most viewers are likely under the impression that he's doing this because he's closely considered their merits and decided the products are widely beneficial.
But newly leaked emails suggest that business considerations — not health or science — can be a driving factor in which products Oz decides to promote.

Last week, WikiLeaks released a series of emails sent between Dr. Oz, his staff, and executives at Sony (one of his show's producers)Show. They shed some light on how Dr. Oz's daily talk show works behind the scenes.

See what I mean about this being a "dog bites man" story? Of course Oz is driven by business considerations. It's syndicated, commercialized TV; by definition commercial considerations are, if not paramount, very, very important. The question is whether commercial considerations overruled science. Of course, The Dr. Oz Show being The Dr. Oz Show, I suspect we already know what the answer to that question is. The only real question is how much did commercial considerations rule? Of course, what hadn't occurred to me is that there might be damning e-mails in the big Wikileaks release of Sony e-mails relevant to Dr. Oz, mainly because, although I knew Sony was one of the producers of Oz's show, I just didn't connect the dots.

In any case, Belluz gives one example showing that Oz is a driving force in pushing for deals:

In a January 2014 email, for instance, Dr. Oz reaches out to Michael Lynton, the CEO of Sony Entertainment, about his interest in wearable fitness and health tracking devices.

"I have been carefully following the wearable device market and am pretty close to consummating a longer term relationship, but just saw the piece below quoting Kaz Hirai [the president and CEO of Sony] and realized that Sony is moving into the space as well," Oz writes in an email. "We should leverage the Sony-driven success of our TV show into other arenas where Sony thrives, like health hardware."

Here is the complete text of the e-mail. Oz follows up, asking, "If you agree, how do you suggest we proceed? Could you jump start the process with an appropriate introduction to someone involved with the 'Core' initiative?" So what we have here, is Dr. Oz, first reaching out through his people, then jumping in the conversation himself, about in essence making a deal to have his show shill for Sony wearable devices, all in the name of "synergy." I also can't help but note from Oz's mentioning that he's "close to consummating a longer term relationship" that Oz is almost certainly going to Sony to see if he can get a better deal.

Perhaps the series of e-mails of most interest to me, though, more for curiosity than anything, was the series of e-mails discussing Dr. Oz's appearance in front of Senator Claire McCaskill's committee over his promotion of dubious dietary supplements as "miracles" and "fat burners" that—or so it is implied—let people lose weight without diet or exercise. As you might recall from when I wrote about it, at first I was concerned that Oz would be lobbed a bunch of softballs but then was satisfied that McCaskill (D-MO), wily old prosecutor that she was, basically mopped up the floor with Oz, embarrassing the hell out of him. At the time, I noted my suspicion that Dr. Oz didn't see this coming because of his hubris. It turns out that that was more or less what happened.

For instance, in one e-mail, Denise Beaudoin, the legal and business affairs counsel to The Dr. Oz Show, notes:

And while the goal of the committee's investigation is to protect the consumer against false claims and fraudulent advertising and all the extenuating billing problems AND they told us they think we have done more work on this than the FTC, we should still anticipate that someone on the committee, and likely some members of the media, will be critical of the show airing segments about these types of supplements in the 1st place. So while we are in a strong position and can appear as a great consumer advocate, it would be ill advised to believe this hearing or the news cycle that follows will be 100% free of criticism of Oz or the show. It's also worth noting for the record, that Harpo's counsel is not in favor of Oz' participating, especially when he's not legally obligated to do so. They do not see the value of getting involved unless compelled by subpoena because there's always the potential for downside (no matter how slight). Sony's counsel has yet to weigh in. For what it's worth, I think the cost of not appearing could be more problematic for us because we have been so vocal about the problem on the show and we've gone so far as to ask our audience to get involved by reporting fraud to OzWatch, signing an online petition and writing letters to their state attorney general. We know this issue hurts our brand and we haven't the real resources to combat the problem on our own. It will take legislative change to give us, the FTC or the FDA any real ability to go after the perpetrators, and that could happen as a result of this hearing.

Further down the e-mail chain, Keith Weaver, executive vice president for worldwide government affairs at Sony, notes:

Given his frustration, which was recently exampled on television where he visited a manufacturer of one of the products and asked them to stop using his name, Dr. Oz and the producers of the show would like to testify. Dr. Oz has not entered into a paid sponsorship arrangement to date, but would like to explore doing so in the future. We have apprised the appropriate parties of the risks associated with the future plans, as well as specific criticisms of Dr. Oz’s role in the national conversation about health that could emerge in the hearing or in subsequent coverage. All things considered, Dr. Oz is very comfortable addressing these topics and would like to proceed.

As Sony Pictures Television only distributes the DR. OZ show (it’s produced by an affiliate of HARPO entitled ZoCo), my understanding is that we have less control over how he chooses to respond. And, while an invitation is not a subpoena, it would be awkward for him to not respond favorably to this request.

Of course, I wrote about Dr. Oz's highly cynical and ridiculous segment in which he "busted" a company using his words to endorse their product as though he were 60 MINUTES cornering a scammer. Yes, it was Oz portraying himself as a protector of the consumer, which to me was hilarious. And here we have discussions of what I always suspected to be the real reason why Oz was going after scammers using his name: He was planning on entering into commercial arrangements with companies offering health-related products and services and didn't want his brand tarnished. Of course that's what it was; you'd have to be incredibly naive to believe it was out of a pure desire to protect the public. Rather, it was to eliminate potential competitors and those who tarnish the Oz brand and potentially lower the amount of money Oz could ultimately make.

Particularly amusingly, as the e-mail exchange suggests, specifically the rest of the e-mail from Beaudoin, McCaskill did snooker Oz and his staff, inviting Oz to testify in front of her panel based on his then recent efforts to shut down supplement manufacturers using his name to sell their product. Then she sandbagged Oz. Clearly, I was wrong to be concerned in the days leading up to the hearing.

Not surprisingly, Oz's staff is very concerned with Oz's public face, in particular the perception that he peddles snake oil, so much so that when Dr. Oz was scheduled to do a speaking engagement for pay at Caesar's Palace, in response to a request from Oz's agent Sandy Kliman that Sony use Oz's Facebook page to publicize the event and "drive ticket sales," Sheraton Kalouria, chief marketing officer at Sony Pictures Television, wrote:

We feel we should not give the media who looks at Oz like snake oil salesman right now any fodder to further this perception.

He's [Sandy Kliman] been told no. Is going to call me tomorrow to ask we reconsider.

Ouch. That one's going to leave a mark.

Make no mistake about it. Dr. Oz has devolved from a brilliant and promising young academic surgeon 25 years ago into what he is today: America's quack. Even the leadership at Sony seems to realize this.

oracknows Tue, 04/21/2015 - 02:00

Your link [complete text of the email] is broken. Can you please put the link up? Thank you.

It’s also worth noting for the record, that Harpo’s counsel is not in favor of Oz’ participating, especially when he’s not legally obligated to do so. They do not see the value of getting involved unless compelled by subpoena because there’s always the potential for downside (no matter how slight).

So Dr. Oz turns out to be another hubristic fool who ignored the advice of his well-paid legal counsel to STFU. (Harpo, for those who are unaware, is the name of Oprah's production company.) One of the things he should be paying his lawyers for is to warn him that something may not, from a legalistic point of view, be a good idea.

He’s been told no. Is going to call me tomorrow to ask we reconsider.

Even worse, he seems not to have learned from his mistake.

BTW, don't be too hard on yourself about fearing that the McCaskill committee would only be throwing softballs at Dr. Oz. Based on what we knew at the time, it was a reasonable fear which only proved baseless in hindsight--as a doctor, you know that you have to be prepared for worst-case scenarios. His counsel, by the same token, was right to fear that somebody on the committee would try to provide Dr. Oz with enough rope to hang himself. It's their job to worry about such things, and Ms. Beaudoin would have been correct to point out the possibility even if it hadn't happened.

I find that Science Blogs has a problem loading, and I have to refresh several times to view any content. I was hoping that it was going to be looked at already but I guess not.

Grace you can read all the emails here
https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/?q=Dr.+Oz&mfrom=&mto=&title=&notitle=…

This is spectacular.
I imagine that many of Oz' most ardent followers buy into the alt med 'government-industry-media collusion' meme but here he courts big business whilst evading investigation by both the government and the media.

I've always been certain that one powerful way to de-activate woo-based mesmerism over an audience is to illustrate explicitly how much they, the critics of Big Business, are truly the same. Avenues toward this goal include:
showing their earnings, mansions**, connections to other businesses and markup on their branded products***

Oz may present himself as a champion of the People and their protector but he, like many others he disparages, is after money.

** g---gle "Dr Oz's house in Cliffside Park" for photos
*** if a product can be sold at a reduction of 75% fairly regularly, it can't have cost very much

Eric

I agree with the sentiment but Oz is no fool as Orac has shown.

Even as a presenter he is very successful. I would argue that Oprah is no fool either.

He now causes harm where he could have done good for sure. The latest reports of increased risk of cancer associated with high use of supplements shows this.

The latest reports of increased risk of cancer associated with high use of supplements shows this.

Let us narrow it down a bit, Fergus #6. A majority of the multivitamin supplements contain folic acid. Your statement only highlights the distasteful practice of introducing it into every flour and cerel grain since 1998, often when it is not required to do so. I guess, it is a marketing ploy for the consumer to see large amounts of folic acid on a product -- The reality is that it is probably an addative to be avoided, like too much sodium.

Isn't the reality that 1943 petroleum-derived *folic acid* is much more bioavailable than natural folates? Is it not that even unmetabolized folic acid downregulates absorption of levomefolic acid? Is it not that many in the populace are not able to convert folic acid because of being old or lacking the necessary genetics to do so? Is it not *scientific* that unmetabolized folic acid in one's system is believed to be carcinogenic?
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=unmetabolized+folic+acid&hl=en&as_s…

In the past, I've pointed out that it may be veiwed as selectively absorbing Cheetos as a child. Then the child is not hungry at dinner. I also equate this mandated ubiquitousness of the chemical to be Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron; Only it is the Life Expectancy and Quality General instead of the Handicapper General -- That those with poor nutrition generally expect a higher quality of life and longevity with the supplement but those with good nutrition have those values derated.
http://www.finallyequal.com/

With widespread consumption of processed foods and ubiquitous inclusion into just about everything* else, I'm convinced we're getting too much with all that entails.

*I note that a particular house brand of instant oatmeal contains a whopping 20% Folate (as folic acid); The house organic brand lists 2% folic acid (but does not show it included in the ingredients as this is the real folate) -- There is serious conflation and confusion on the two terms, especially on wikipedia.

These emails look to have been stolen (leaked is the same). Were these emails part of the giant hack against Sony that resulted in the closing of its movie about N. Korea? If not, what other source? I question the ethics of making use of material obtained in this way. If the emails were part of the public record, for example as evidence in a court case, then that would be a different matter.

the giant hack against Sony that resulted in the closing of its movie about N. Korea?

The 'Sony Hack' was an 'inside job' by a disgruntled employee but thx for continuing the superior cyber deception and promotion of that government approved and media-inflated decepticon; The sawed-off, George-Bush-like little yellow pointy head, Mr. Ill, Citizen #8.

Were these emails part of the giant hack against Sony that resulted in the closing of its movie about N. Korea?

Apparently; the press release is here.

Off-topic alert for this weekend: RFK Jr. is going to be on Bill Maher's show. Get ready for lots of anti-vaccine fun.

@Tim #7:

You are full of paranoid shit.

The FSA says that 13 million people in the UK do not eat enough folic acid, including many pregnant women - not least because half of pregnancies are unplanned. Research has shown that adding folic acid to bread via white and brown wheat flour would help cut neural tube defects in foetuses. Those defects are spina bifida, which causes paralysis; hydrocephalus, which leads to learning disabilities and sight problems; and anencephaly, which causes miscarriage or the baby's death soon after birth because its brain has failed to develop. Between 700 and 900 pregnancies each year in the UK are affected by neural tube defects. Most affected pregnancies end in a termination, but around 200 severely disabled babies are born as a result of the these defects each year.

@Rich Woods, you have got Tim's modus operandi fully described in six words.

@Denice Walter - If only. I don't know how many times its been pointed out to the woo faithful that their gods are no better than the Big Pharma they decry. They turn an obliviously blind eye to the naturopath selling them the vitamins at the front counter (really expensive vitamins), to the docs like Burzynski with their multi-million dollar mansions, to Dr. Oz and his show and his multi-million dollar mansion. It is willful blindness. They will castigate people working for the CDC who are government employees, not fantastically well paid (I know you won't find any with a mansion) as shills raking in corporate bucks (and again I am left to wonder why my check keeps getting lost in the mail) while the woos are demonstrably cashing in and getting a pass. I am not sure they can be educated about it. If they don't get the distinction that the MD isn't selling them drugs at the front counter but the naturopath is selling them supplements and put the 2 and 2 together. Or maybe they think every doctor has a giant mansion. If that is the case maybe it would help to educate them but again, I doubt it.

O.K. Rich Woods #12. Think of the children. No, really; Why don't you?

“Considering the increasing amount of folic acid consumed during pregnancy through fortified foods, multivitamin pills and supplements, the search for a safe upper dose of folic acid is urgently needed”.

Taking too much folic acid while pregnant may put daughters at risk of diabetes and obesityhttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150210083651.htm

Not to mention cancer and cognitive deficiency.. But, I think you already knew that. I wonder why there is such small headroom between RDA and upper tolerable intake for folic acid but it there is not one for the natural forms of folate?

The UL for folate refers to only synthetic folate, as no health risks have been associated with high intake of folate from food sources...

...70–80% of the population have detectable levels of unmetabolized folic acid in their blood and high intakes can accelerate the growth of preneoplasmic lesions...

...In October 2006, the Australian press claimed that U.S. regulations requiring fortification of grain products were being interpreted as disallowing fortification in non-grain products, specifically Vegemite (an Australian yeast extract containing folate). The FDA later said the report was inaccurate, and no ban or other action was being taken against Vegemite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folic_acid

Why the confusion and confiscation over Vegemite and 'fortification'? Spent brewer's yeast is already the very highest in natural folate.

Well, there is no longer Vegemite confusion -- The name belongs to Kraft now, is fortified, and just as yummy and nutritious as all the other GMO crap they pump out.

O.K. Rich Woods #12. Think of the children. No, really; Why don't you?

“Considering the increasing amount of folic acid consumed during pregnancy through fortified foods, multivitamin pills and supplements, the search for a safe upper dose of folic acid is urgently needed”.

Taking too much folic acid while pregnant may put daughters at risk of diabetes and obesity
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150210083651.htm

The UL for folate refers to only synthetic folate, as no health risks have been associated with high intake of folate from food sources...

...70–80% of the population have detectable levels of unmetabolized folic acid in their blood and high intakes can accelerate the growth of preneoplasmic lesions...

...In October 2006, the Australian press claimed that U.S. regulations requiring fortification of grain products were being interpreted as disallowing fortification in non-grain products, specifically Vegemite (an Australian yeast extract containing folate). The FDA later said the report was inaccurate, and no ban or other action was being taken against Vegemite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folic_acid

Why the confusion and confiscation over Vegemite and 'fortification'? Spent brewer's yeast is already the very highest in natural folate.

Well, there is no longer Vegemite confusion -- The name belongs to Kraft now, is fortified, and just as yummy and nutritious as all the other GMO crap they pump out.

@ Kiiri:

Unfortunately, you may be right. In fact, followers may mistake vast wealth for being correct and thus, well-deserved.

But I think we should mention it anyway. It may affect s few of the faithful or those on the fence.

One reason I think that it may have efficacy against woo-meisters is because two I follow make a great ruckus over their charitable endeavors ( Adams and Null). They often counsel for free; they give away products; they assist the poor or homeless; they provide free information. After his Ecuadorian adventure ( his hacienda and ' food forest' were up for sale), Mike has kept photos of his US abode off the 'net and describes it as being quite unattractive.

So they want to appear successful but they also try to show that it means so little to them that they give much of it away.
-btw- Mike has a charity that gives
' educational' material to school children. Null has at least two charities registered around the US. A nutrition 'institute' and a veterans' charity ( NY, NY; Mineola, Texas).

They also communicate how hard they work.

I don't know if this have ever been pondered, but isn't Scrubs more accurate to medicine than the Dr Oz show?

I know, right. Mind blown.

just as yummy and nutritious as all the other GMO crap they pump out.

I think I just understood something which was puzzling m in any debate about GM food, i.e. the apparent lack of connection between the opponents' arguments and reality.

They use "GMO" to mean "any processed food I don't like".
Okay. Got it.
That's why they see GMO or chemicals where there isn't any.
Got it.

More seriously, I'm fed up with the hypocrisy of the anti-GMO crowd who complaint about non-existent chemicals (again, defining chemicals as "plant-produced stuff I don't like") while at the same time looking for their next pipe of pot or their organic wine - both full of real neurotoxins.

Actually, pot hasn't conclusively been found to be neurotoxic, and I don't think it will be, but alcohol definitely is.

Pot, especially when over-used, can, however, contribute to a certain... paranoia.

Tim.

Folic acid supplementation of bread products was a public health measure, not a marketing ploy.

Adding folic acid to grain products has reduced the incidence of neural tube defects and anencephaly by 26%:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5317a3.htm

Explain to me again how that is a bad thing?

Dr Oz is small potatoes compared to Monsanto.......
Monsanto: Corporate Rap Sheet
www.corp-research.org/monsanto

Fergus #6 brought it to mind, Captian_a #20;

The latest reports of increased risk of cancer associated with high use of supplements shows this.

I've pointed out that folic acid is not a natural folate and that overingestion of it may be bad and point out that it is not straightforward to avoid the additive-- How is this different from overingestion of certain Centrums?

Incidentally, I *think* they know longer give pregnant women folic acid but folate since ~2010. Maybe it is only because it is much more expensive.

It is puzzling why it is so ubiquitous where it does not need be -- One might conclude that it is now seen as a marketing ploy riding on the coattails of all the saved baby spines. Regardless, invocation of the terrible malady certainly seems the easy fallback position for so many who glibly poo-poo objection or concern.

1998. Nineteen hundred and ninety eight. Folic acid, Roundup, reduction of thymerisol... I wonder if the two former ones hid a decline from the latter one?

an aside, UV exposure found to lower folate...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140321095240.htm

I'd recommend laying off the folic acid and grab the prescription Deplin™ as that is all that will be available after Merck & Cie wins another lawsuit.

The nutritional ingredient at issue in this litigation is a dietary ingredient called Folate, which is a B vitamin that helps the body make new cells. Folate is considered a critical supplement for prenatal health, and low folate intake is associated with various vascular, ocular, neurological and skeletal disorders, and may pose a serious risk to individuals with diabetes. While folate does not occur naturally in large quantities it can be found in leafy green vegetables, whole grains, citrus fruits, and organ meats. Tetrahydrofolates are the predominant naturally occurring forms of folate, and in particular, the tetrahydrofolate 5–methyltetrahydrofolic acid (abbreviated as “5–MTHF”) is one of the predominant naturally occurring folate forms

Merc was the first company to manufacture a pure and stable diastereoisomer of L–5–MTHF, a 6S Isomer Product, as a commercial source. Merck’s development of Metafolin was the culmination of decades of research and the investment of tens of millions of dollars. Metafolin is one of Merck’s most important products.

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1673961.html

Ha! There are those out amongst the tubes that decry Big Pharma *real* folate as nothing more than an expensify folic acid conspiracy.

concerns have been raised about the potentially untoward effects of unmetabolized synthetic folic acid with regard to cancer, depression, and cognitive impairment. With all these concerns, early data suggest supplementation with l-methylfolate rather than folic acid may mitigate these risks.

http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3218540/

But... But.. The guvmint is putting fluoride in our water for mind control! And folic acid to kill the weak! And don't get me started about how they are forcing GMOs down our throats! Chemicals! Ahh huh!

Folic acid supplementation of bread products was a public health measure, not a marketing ploy.

I'm reminded of the MDC mamma who gave her kid a goiter by insisting on magic Druid salt.

I remember learning about anencephaly just after finishing my first year of grad school, when I was house-sitting for my friend Olga and read in some book that was laying out about "babies born without brains." I had never known that that was something that could happen, so I looked it up on the interwebs. All I can say is that if a little folic acid can prevent such things from occurring, that's great.

Dr Oz is small potatoes compared to Monsanto-
Monsanto: Corporate Rap Sheet
www.corp-research.org/monsanto

Dr Oz is small potatoes compared to Monsanto-
Monsanto: Corporate Rap Sheet

Color me shocked to find that whitewashing Schmeiser is right where one would expect it to be.

Cherry-picker

#24 How much are you paid and by whom?

Oh look, the village f*cking idiot's back.

ken@23
Non sequitur. Whether or not Monsanto is as evil as you think it is has zero bearing on a discussion about Dr. Oz.

@26
And wasting no time with the shill gambit here, huh ken? Ironic how that's your go to ad hominem against science advocates given that this very article demonstrates just how bad the problem is on the alt side.

Cherry-picker

I take it from this remark that you concede that poor, poor Percy is every bit the fraud that every level of the Canadian court system found him to be.

I don't need to shore up my ego by joining in witch hunts and scapegoating. I think you are all (Narad, JP, PgP )- though highly intelligent in the IQ sense- abusive and narcissistic. I've watched Dr Oz and I think you are all exaggerating as to his effects on the public. The amount of prescription drug abuse is an epidemic according to the CDC. How many overdoses and suicides? That's more important than Dr. Oz's TV show. You are all big fails in emotional intelligence. I'm 72, in the best of health- (not all genetic) and know "snake oil" and "snakes"
I linked the above about Monsanto- read the history of PCBs finally declared carcinogenic by the EPA which Monsanto refused to stop producing.

Toxic Secret
Alabama Town Was Never Warned Of Contamination
www.cbsnews.com/news/toxic-secret-07-11-2002/

ken@30

I don’t need to shore up my ego by joining in witch hunts and scapegoating.

...
ken@26

#24 How much are you paid and by whom?

Hmmm...

I think you are all (Narad, JP, PgP )- though highly intelligent in the IQ sense- abusive and narcissistic. ... You are all big fails in emotional intelligence.

Me? Narcissistic? No more than the average person, I don't think, and probably less. Actually, I'm one of the nicer people you could ever come across - I even suffer fools relatively gladly, as long as they aren't also a**holes. Speaking of emotional intelligence, I could link to a couple of pretty spectacular fails in that department on your part. Would you like that? I mean, it kind of feels like rubbing a dog's nose in its own sh*t - sort of cruel, considering the creature's limited intelligence, and probably not all that effective. I figure it might just alert you to the nature of your own droppings here, though, although at this point that's starting to seem unlikely.

Incidentally, if you find the milieu here so "abusive," cupcake, why do you keep coming back?

Actually, now that I think about it, that's not so much witch hunting or scapegoating as it is good old ad homineming. Seal clubbing maybe?

ken@30

The amount of prescription drug abuse is an epidemic according to the CDC. How many overdoses and suicides? That’s more important than Dr. Oz’s TV show.

Non sequitur.

You are all big fails in emotional intelligence.

No you.
I’m 72, in the best of health- (not all genetic) and know “snake oil” and “snakes”
Non sequitur. Interesting though. You don't often see antivaxxers who lived through VPD epidemics.

I linked the above about Monsanto- read the history of PCBs finally declared carcinogenic by the EPA which Monsanto refused to stop producing.

Nooooon sequituuur. Seriously. What point are you trying to make? Chemicals and Monsanto are bad so Dr. Oz isn't? I suppose trying to tease out a coherent train of thought from your comments is an exercise in futility but an interesting one (in moderation) nonetheless.

The amount of prescription drug abuse is an epidemic according to the CDC. How many overdoses and suicides? That’s more important than Dr. Oz’s TV show.

Non sequitur.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with AoA's (IIRC) "Benedetta," who blames drug abuse on vaccines.

The point - Orac is wasting his time and will be ineffective in the many points he is trying to make to an audience other than one already biased. It's the same old, same old commentators who love the comraderie of displaying their superior intelligence and snarky repartee. I read the blog to learn new info. I'm a sucessful artist attempting to regain what's left of my left (brain) Here's a real opening for you- JP -can't you be more original in your name calling?
You are so "cute' JP.

Enjoy your GMOs- especially the Bacillus thuringiensis corn.
brought to you by "YOUR HEALTH FIRST" corp Monsanto.

ken's self-lauding of his emotional intelligence reminds me that a deconstruction of the whole concept of EI might be overdue. And in fact the W_pedia entry is pretty good with questioning of its objective basis.
A cynic might believe that it was invented as a sort of consolation prize for those who don't make it in the IQ department.

Enjoy your GMOs- especially the Bacillus thuringiensis corn.

Oh, I swee [sic]: it's time to make everybody else provide the deranged NO IT'S COMPLETELY DIFFERENT rant.

I read the blog to learn new info.

You keep telling yourself that, Ken.

Fergus @6:

The latest reports of increased risk of cancer associated with high use of supplements shows this.

Trouble is that each study finds something different... one trial implicates carotenes in lung cancer. Another trial implicates folic acid in colon cancer. A Swedish group implicated folic acid in breast cancer. But if none of these findings can be replicated from one study to the next, then it's all junk science.
The news media and aggregation sites are sounding off about "a new meta-analysis", but it turns out to be a feckin' press release from the U of Col publicising a talk that Byers gave to the AACR, in which he simply re-hashed all the previous, unreplicable findings. Meaningless click-bait.

a deconstruction of the whole concept of EI might be overdue

It provided Coleman with a decent career, so not a total waste.

The amount of prescription drug abuse is an epidemic according to the CDC. How many overdoses and suicides? That’s more important than Dr. Oz’s TV show.

The point – Orac is wasting his time and will be ineffective in the many points he is trying to make to an audience other than one already biased.

If only there were some way of "blogging" whereby ken could promote these higher-priority issues to a wider audience, instead of simply bruiting them about in a confined, hostile milieu.

Here’s a real opening for you- JP -can’t you be more original in your name calling?
You are so “cute’ JP.

Ooh, can I get in? I'm thinking along the lines of "Ken: It's what's for dinner."

HDB : your deconstruction of the U of Col reports is highly appreciated.

@ken

Need we all remind you what the title of the blog is?
And how you are so deserving of such?

your deconstruction of the U of Col reports

They might have something useful for all I know, but there is no published paper, only the press release for Byers' talk.

@ ken

Enjoy your GMOs- especially the Bacillus thuringiensis corn.

After every storm, you are breathing Bacillus thuringiensis by the mouthful, you d!mwit (because the rain made aerosols out of the dirt). It's a very common dirt bacterium.

Unless you are the hidden daughter of Peter Parker and the Wasp woman, the Bt toxin cannot do anything to you. Its target is insects' guts.
Plus, as Narad pointed out, the Bt toxin has been used by the wheelbarrow in organic farming for more than a decade. So please reconcile this.

#49 Heli -You obviously did not read the link which explains perfectly well how it is different.
www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/40-2001/1058-bt-in-organic-farming-and-g…-
Also FYI -Koch Industries and Monsanto Team up to End Your Right to Know
www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press-releases/3042/koch-industries-and-mon…

@ ken

Fine. Go sue Monsanto.

Actually, no.

I read the GMwatch article.
Explain to me how spreading the bacterium extract on cultures and letting the excess decompose is not the same as putting it everywhere in the environment in sublethal doses.

Also, it is normally possible to address protein production in specific parts of the plant. That's what was done with the Golden rice: vit A production, which normally is restricted to the rice stem, has been tweaked to be expressed in the rice grains as well.
Again, sue Monsanto if they did a sloppy job of it.

Don't look at me, I'm an academic.

With your shenanigans, you luddite lot only managed to strengthen Monsanto's monopoly on GMOs.
After having their fields destroyed one time too many, small companies and academics labs in my country and everywhere else just shut down or went onto something else than GMOs. Less concurrence and motivation to do good jobs for the big 6 Ag businesses.

Happy to be a Monsanto shill, ken?

@46 herr doktor bimler

I tend to agree with you about the state of prescribing and the quality of evidence for that prescribing. However we are talking about Dr Oz.

All your points can be directed at him in spades, in as much as there is often no evidence for his claims, as opposed to maybe poor evidence for some "medical" prescribing. Ken is right when he says Orac struggles to change anything using just a blog, he does not have the coverage of Dr Oz backed up by Oprah. He speaks to millions and therefore if even a small percentage believe him they could be harmed by his hyperbole.

Tim,

It is puzzling why it is so ubiquitous where it does not need be — One might conclude that it is now seen as a marketing ploy riding on the coattails of all the saved baby spines. Regardless, invocation of the terrible malady certainly seems the easy fallback position for so many who glibly poo-poo objection or concern.

I know the impact of severe spina bifida from personal experience; it's devastating. Why would we want more of this just to assuage your ill-educated and paranoid anxieties? You remind me of antivaxxers who complain that vaccines are promoted by warning people of the effects of VPDs.

@46 herr doktor bimler
I tend to agree with you about the state of prescribing and the quality of evidence for that prescribing. However we are talking about Dr Oz.

Pardon? Maybe someone else mentioned prescribing.

Sorry it was Ken.

And the line of attack that Dr. Oz plans to take has been revealed:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/04/dr-oz-stands-up-for-right-…

No surprises, actually. Oz is going to invoke freedom of speech and academic freedom to keep "fighting for you," vowing he will "not be silenced." He'll also attack Dr. Miller and the ACSH as Monsanto shills, which isn't too hard to do, given that the ACSH is arguably an industry shill.

for #43

Coincidentally:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015/apr/21/calm-down…

Ka-ching! The money quote: " We know this issue hurts our brand..."

"This issue" being "fraud," and "our brand" being none other than the Wizard named Oz. That quote needs to go viral.

A Wikileaks dump is an absolute goldmine, especially because the very fact that it came through Wikileaks immediately has instant high credibility with a decent plurality of the American public, especially those who are politically active. And I say this as someone who does not like Wikileaks or Mr. Assange, and believes they have done considerable harm to national security (and don't get me started on Mr. Snowden).

So do take full advantage of the Wikileaks dump while it's still fresh, and you will get traction in places that translate to votes.

Whether the Sony material was "stolen" is irrelevant to the question of whether it will be useful in making activists more aware of Oz' "activities." If it works and you're not committing a crime to refer to it and quote it, just do it.

From ORAC's link.Must see TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU#t=126

And folic acid to kill the weak!

TIMMY! #24, It seems there are some of those in Timville who need reminding that the folic acid serves more to weaken the strong. They seem pretty hip on the rest of their ideology.

All I can say is that if a little folic acid can prevent such things from occurring, that’s great.

There ya go, JP #26. Naa, I know you would not have been so glib if you had seen my post first; I guess Orac was to busy approving 'ken' all night. I do almost think 'he' is an automated timeslot fill fallguy kinda like an infomercial when the blinky light box help has left the studio.

Man, I guess there is no getting off 'automatic moderate' around here.

Krebiozen #58 -- That is, at least, less glib. Sorry, man.

#62 #43 I'm a woman. Interesting article but I never thought women were more emotionally intelligent. Loved being in class with boys in high school-they were sooo smart and interesting. Living in NY I am amazed that women spend $600+ for Manolo Blahnik shoes.

it’s time to make everybody else provide the deranged NO IT’S COMPLETELY DIFFERENT rant.

O.K., Narad #44. Would you concede that it is/would be completely different in the unlikely likely event that our bodies start to incorporate those proteins coded to squirt out the toxin??

In the unlikely event that the plane should loose all four engines simultaneously, we are most likely going to crash into the ground like a f**k'n dart.</blockquote. -- Billy Connolly

Well, ken #67,
Some personna I admired once described a 'dike' as a woman in comfortable shoes.

IDK, it could have been Keith Bell.

Would you concede that it is/would be completely different in the likely event that our bodies start to incorporate those proteins coded to squirt out the toxin??

We should also consider the likely event of developing spinnerets and wall-climbing skills after being bitten by radioactive spiders and incorporating the proteins coded to squirt out silk.

Well, herr doktor bimler #70,
I do miss my fingernails and teeth, for what it is worth.

The point – Orac is wasting his time and will be ineffective in the many points he is trying to make to an audience other than one already biased.

The point - this is Orac's blog and he can post what he damn well pleases! Don't like it? Tough luck!

tiM
April 22, 2015

The changing pseudonyms ("Tim," "TIm," "Timmeh," and now "tiM") are a nuisance, BTW.

I do miss my fingernails and teeth, for what it is worth.

Always check your matter transmitter for house-flies before use.

Ohh, hindsight is so 20-20, herr doktor bimler.

Incidentally, have you ever heard the phrase "I'm so nervous, I'm jumping out of my skin"??
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150421205546.htm

Would you concede that it is/would be completely different in the likely event that our bodies start to incorporate those proteins coded to squirt out the toxin??

We should also consider the likely event of developing spinnerets and wall-climbing skills after being bitten by radioactive spiders and incorporating the proteins coded to squirt out silk.

Killing weeds on contact might be the lamest superpower ever.

Killing weeds on contact might be the lamest superpower ever.

But a veritable boon for the super gardener.

But... The BT toxin melts insect guts; It occurs to me that it is more a power for a supervillain who hates entomologists -- And their precious little pollinators to.

If absorbing and incorporating those proteins coded to squirt out the toxin was so easy, my body would be generating its own alkaloids by now.

Killing weeds on contact might be the lamest superpower ever.

But a veritable boon for the super gardener.

But would such power vanquish the Giant Hogweed?

Answer: possibly, if the gardener strikes by night. They are defenseless. They must have the sun to photosensitize their venom. Still they're invincible - still they're immune to all our herbicidal battering!

I mostly only hate lepidopterologists. Mostly.

Unlike many pesticides, the Bt-corn has been shown to have no effect on many "nontarget" organisms -- pollinators such as honeybees or beneficial predators of pests like ladybugs. But the Bt-modified corn produces pollen containing crystalline endotoxin from the bacterium genes. When this corn pollen is dispersed by the wind, it lands on other plants, including milkweed, the exclusive food of monarch caterpillars and commonly found around cornfields.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1999/04/toxic-pollen-bt-corn-can-ki…

#80: I may have to pull it out of my stack of dusty LPs and give it another listen. 44 years passes so quickly. Actually I became aware of it years later, but still. I'd link to the album cover but some might be offended by the image.

Oh dear

stoat — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:33:56 +0000

Oh dear

There is a Wikileaks fiasco going about. Der Spiegel has what looks like a plausible story. If you read the Wikileaks version after that, the latter looks rather incomplete and self-serving. The Grauniad also says "not us guv" which isn't quite true: if they hadn't been dumb enough to publish the password, all would have been well. But assuming DS has this right, fundamentally this is a Wikileaks foul up.

h/t Bruce (not Steve) Schneier.

[Update: no-one has dented the DS story as far as I can see. So I think that, as told, this remains fundamentally a WL foul up. However (whilst I think the Grauniad were correct to believe that the password they'd got was now irrelevant) they (a) should not have published it, just on general sanity grounds (b) they should not have published it because they could not be confident that they hadn't ended up with a backup of the file themselves, somewhere]

stoat Thu, 09/01/2011 - 09:33

Tags

The Oh Dear made me think that RP Jr had done something silly again.

[Sorry. I did consider giving it a more descriptive title -W]

The Grauniad claim about a "temporary password" really doesn't excuse ever publishing that password - obviously, if a password-protected or encrypted file exists, a copy could be made, and that copy's password won't change even if the master copy's password does. And why do you need to publish the real password? How was the book better by having a real password instead of a fake password? In fact, it would have been sufficient to just say something along the lines of "Assange placed the file on a server and wrote down the password on a slip of paper -- but not the entire password. To make it work, one had to complete the list of characters with a certain word. Can you remember it? Assange asked. Of course, responded Leigh", just like the Der Spiegel article.

[I'm not so sure. Obviously, yes, it would have been better, as things turned out, not to publish the password. But the Grauniad *were* told it was temporary, and they believed that. It is fairly clear from the description of them having to be told how to install PGP that they didn't really understand things, so took it at face value. The real true underlying problem was that same file escaping. Clearly, Assange should not have just re-used the same encrypted file for local storage - he should he reencrypted it. Apart from anything else, had he done so it would have been possible to tell exactly whose copy escaped with certainty -W]

(Well, I suppose a clever person could add a time-stamp into the file so that the file couldn't be opened outside of a given time window, but that's easy enough to subvert, too...)

[Not possible -W]

(of course, a clever person would also not have let a copy of the file get loose... but that's hard, when you've already given it to half a dozen news organizations)

[As far as can be told, the release wasn't a consequence of giving it to various news orgs, but an internal Wikileaks/Assange error -W]

The Guardian sniffily says:
"Avoiding the re-use of passwords and avoiding republishing temporary files are both considered basic security procedures among online security experts."
I imagine not publishing a password in a book is also basic.

Assange lamented the Grauniad's spelling accuracy in this case.

[The Grauniad is clearly trying to avoid blame, which is wise, because after all Real People might die because of this, or more prosaically Real People might sue. But I think they are correct. Certainly the Wikileaks statement, which attempts to throw all blame on the G, is entirely self-serving -W]

*sigh*
Remember, if you had literally 300 million dollars or something similar burning a hole in your pocket which you wanted to use to shut up Wikileaks, don't you think you could find some *pretty* good ways to do it?

What you fail to realize in accusing wikileaks in fouling up is that they have very limited resources. Given the realities on the ground, you should realize that there is no way in hell that you or anyone you know could have done any better if your life depended on it. Literally.

[I disagree. Assuming Der Spiegel is correct in its description of events, this is essentially a Wikileaks foulup. Just because you like what they do is not a good reason for defending their errors -W]

It isn't Wikileaks' fault that these documents were not properly secured by the US government. Criticisms of Wikileaks are aimed at diverting attention away from the lapses in competence by the US government.

[Errm, clearly it wasn't Wikileaks fault that they were stolen initially. But there is no evidence anyone else got these files direct from the Govt, nor did the US govt deliberately put them onto the internet - that is due to Wikileaks. Disliking US Govt security is no reason to shift the blame for the ultimate release -W]

The public release of the unredacted documents only means that now everybody knows that everybody knows the contents of those documents. Previously, all we knew was that the US government had lost control of them, without knowing who had access to them.

If Assange gained access to these documents in the first place, that indicates that almost anybody else could also have gained access to them, especially those organisations with a large budget, a strong motivation, and long-standing history of subverting US citizens in order to gain access to classified documents: Russia, Israel, China.

Lapses in security are more dangerous when they are secret. Now those exposed by these cables *know* they have been exposed whereas previously their exposure was only something they could guess at.

*deeper sigh*
1. The encrypted information was intentionally published by Wikileaks. *It was not an accident*. They published the file, it says right there in both places. This is the way it is supposed to go: publish the encrypted material so everyone has a copy, it easier and faster to transfer the password than the file (which is not a trivial concern even with modern high bandwith, you can write in on paper, remember it, tell it by mouth, it takes less time to share or destroy if the gov comes knocking on your door), and secondly the encryption will eventually be broken so we can be sure that many years down the road people will have access to it, even if something happens to the password or to wikileaks.
2. Obviously this scheme depends on nobody *publishing the password*. That's called operational security. People with the password have to be on your side, it always comes down to trust of people in the end in any security system. Always. It is not possible to have security if you cannot trust the people involved. That is why they signed an agreement, so everybody understood and knew. I garauntee that Assange made it clear that the password is not to be published. Information always leaks out, it gets copied by windows into areas on the harddrive during swapping, scheduled backups that are sometimes unintended, files that are only deleted (which does not destroy the data) or sent to "the recycle bin" instead of destroyed by overwriting. *Everyone* involved in a secure operation knows this. You cannot control the data absolutely, you do what you can as it will help but the main thing is the password/key. You never publish they keys, not ever, not after you think it is okay, never, unless you want other people to have access to the encrypted data. I can garauntee you that the journalist knew or should have known that, and that was an assumption in the security protocols.
3. The bastard greedy turncoat journalist published the damn password to make more money on their book, that is the beginning and the end of the problem here.
4. The informants are *not* really in danger. The US government has *always known* since the first leak essentially what the files were because they knew more or less what was stolen especially after the access logs of Manning were identified and they have had ages to question him, and has at the very least, we can be sure, for the past many months since the password and encrypted file were known, had an exact copy of all cables. Pause to digest. They had what, a year, and at the very least months since the password was released, to search through the files and make sure that all informants were protected/warned. And you can bet that they got the password and recognized it as soon as it was out because they were watching.
Think about that for a second. This is not a surprise to the informants. The pentagon or state dep or whoever is resposible for protecting the informants can very easily protect them, and they have plenty of resources to take precautions too, and faster than in a year as the state dep apparently was doing, and better precautions than just notification.
In other words informants are not in danger unless the government decides to use them as sacrificial lambs to make Wikileaks look bad. Which they may well do, and when they do people like you will fall for it hook line and sinker just like you just swallowed the crap in the first paragraph in the Spiegel article and like you always do.
If that's the way you want to be we will be back in a world without wikileaks or anyone like them in no time. And you will have only yourselves to thank, because the government and other enemies of freedom beat you, fooled you, were smarter than you, better than you, stronger than you, kicked your ass, fucked you over a barrel and left you crying, and you were the dumb commoner that let them, whether you ever realize it or not.

"In a statement the Guardian rejected the accusations from Wikileaks, explaining that the paper had been told the password was temporary and would be deleted within hours."

Bullshit. A password can only be used to control access to a service. You control access to a document with encryption, and there are no temporary decryption keys. Even the Guardian must know the difference, and they knew they had in their hands a decryption key.

[It isn't quite right, but it isn't bullshit. The Guardian were told that the file they downloaded would be available from the server for hours only - and that was correct. The key error is Assange's archiving of the file encrypted with the same password as he gave the Guardian -W]

The Oh Dear made me think that RP Jr had done something silly again.

[Sorry. I did consider giving it a more descriptive title -W]

The immediate juxtaposition of posts titled "Ha ha" and "Oh Dear" is kind of amusing.

@8: From the WikiLeaks version of the story I understood that the published "password" was a PGP passphrase to encrypt files, not an account password. The Guardian shouldn't have published it.

[I think you are correct about that. But it doesn't alter the case -W]

If you look at Der Spiegel's proposed sequence, DDB is the key actor. He walks off with the goods apparently. How did he get the funds to attend Davos to publicise OpenLeaks? Â£20,000 a day or something like that to attend? How did he manage to get security cleared, given his association with WikiLeaks? How long does that process take? Was he invited to Davos? If so, by whom? So many questions not asked.

[Personalities definitely played a part here. JA might perhaps not be an ideal face for WL -W]

Reading the comments at Scheiers blog it becomes clear that the news articles, as I suspected, are inaccurate. The file escaped because it was included in the files for a mirror of the wikileaks server.

Which is a form of backup.

Again, the whole point of encryption in this context is so that if the encrypted file does escape your control, whether it is due to an unexpected backup, because you lost the laptop or CD on the subway, because the servers were raided by the feds or compromised by your enemy, or *whatever* then *that is not a big deal* *because no one else knows the key*.

So yes, it was clearly mainly the guardian/journalist's fault here. Wikileaks made a minor mistake, *which they had made accommodations for through encryption*. The journalist undermined the encryption of the file and on purpose for a quick buck.

[BTW - if you want an offline reply, you should be honest enough to provide a real email address -W]

@9: It does alter the case. Guardian didn't publish the password of their WikiLeaks account, they published the encryption key of the file. For what purpose? To show off? Leigh could have changed one or two of the words without losing credibility.

For a long discussion about the technicalities, see
http://unspecified.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/wikileaks-password-leak-faq/

[The discussion there seems to boil down to "WikiLeaks made an encrypted file public. Guardian made the passphrase public". I agree that is correct. I disagree with the interpretation there, which exhonerate WL. As I've said before: my view is that the blame lies with WL, for publicly distributing a copy of the file encrypted with the same password they gave the Grauniad. This is the heart of the problem, and it is WL's fault. The rest of the stuff there is a long tedious screed of no value -W]

P.S. #9 should have referred to 7, not 8. I tried to add a comment to point the obvious typo, but the spam filter blocked me, because too many comments had been sent from my address. Maybe you should allow two fast ones from the same address to enable quick corrections?

I've Got to...Keep...Control: Dancing the Time Warp to Explain Away Peak Oil

sastyk — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

I've Got to...Keep...Control: Dancing the Time Warp to Explain Away Peak Oil

(Yes, I will eventually explain this ;-))

I don't usually participate in the Huffington Post bashing that goes on at science blogs. Not because I don't often agree with it, but because my colleagues seem to have it covered when it comes to autism/vaccine links and dubious medical studies. Still, Raymond Learsy's column about Wikileaks did catch my attention, and it seems to have all the best qualities of a bad HuffPo piece.

If it's in Wikileaks, it's got to be true. Certainly it was a moment of triumphal satisfaction for the Peak Oil Pranksters. There it was in "cloud" black and white embedded in cables released by WikiLeaks and headlined by the the Guardian, "Saudi Arabia cannot pump enough oil to keep a lid on prices," going on to report that in November 2007 the U.S. Consulate General, subsequent to a meeting in Riyadh with a former Saudi Aramco "oil executive," cabled Washington that reserves of the world's biggest oil exporter were being overstated by nearly 40%. Really?!

Firstly, how competent was this Saudi informant, Sadad al-Husseini, and on what basis was he authorized to speak? His credentials seem legitimate enough, but his message was curious to say the least.

Second, the Saudis have been stubbornly opaque about the extent and size of their reserves. They have steadfastly refused to disclose their reserve estimates, nor have they permitted any independent agency to audit their oil reserves. This, in spite of the vital role Saudi Arabia plays in supplying world markets.

Thirdly, the 300 million barrels of Saudi oil reserves that, according to the Embassy cable had been overstated, are highly suspect to begin with. Without specific confirmation, the Saudis have let the world believe that their reserves range in the area of 260 billion barrels, a figure generally accepted by the field and held as maximalist gospel by the peak oil crusaders, such as the late Matt Simmons. Yet, deducting 300 million from 260 million doesn't make much sense.

Well, that's a bit old pile of frankly, rather sleazy innuendo here. Note that Learsy doesn't actually answer his own questions, even though they are eminently answerable. Who is Sadad al-Husseini, whose credentials seem to be "legitimate enough?" Well, if Learsy actually had answered the question, the whole innuendo wouldn't have worked, since al-Husseini is the retired head of Exploration and Production for Saudi Aramco - ie, the guy who figured out Saudi Arabia's reserves. His credentials don't just "seem legitimate" - they are utterly legitimate, and he knows more about Saudi world reserves than almost anyone in the world.

He's also been saying this stuff quite publically for some time before today - in a 2005 interview with Steve Andrews, my predecessor at Peak Oil Review, in reference to a feature article he wrote in the New York Times Magazine, al-Husseini said:

Given the current outlook in terms of global exploration and development, the rate of investments in the oil value chain, energy prices, and the prevailing legal and political investment climate, I believe oil production will level off at around the 90 - 95 mmbd by 2015. This plateau can be sustained beyond 2020 at continuously higher oil prices and with rapid improvements in overall energy efficiencies throughout the world.

A rapid global refinery expansion program that eventually matches an increasing oil demand rate of 1.5 - 2.0% per year cannot be achieved before 2015 at the earliest and is highly improbable in any case.

Therefore my answer is: under the current circumstances and outlook, oil is likely to peak at a 95 mmbd plateau by 2015 and can then be sustained well beyond 2020 at increasing real oil prices.

What's interesting about this isn't al-Husseini's numbers, which are wholly consistent with al-Husseini's previous comments, it is that the US government seemed to be taking him seriously.

Raymond Learsy apparently sees his speaking out on this issue as "curious to say the least" and goes on to imply that al-Husseini is being disingenuous and was part of a conspiracy to crash the world economy by spiking world oil prices. That's quite a convoluted dance - I wonder if he knows how to Madison?

The question needs be asked, what was the purpose behind Sadad al-Husseini passing along his information to the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia in November of 2007? The perception of shortage and inability to meet demand is one of the bedrocks of the oil producer's pricing propaganda, thereby rationalizing ever-steepening prices and massive profits to the OPEC cartel and their oil industry allies. Passing on self-serving information about oil production constraints to U.S. State Department channels of the oil-addled Bush administration, the Saudis could be confident it would not be analyzed with a critical eye and would serve as an underpinning of what lay ahead. Six months later, oil was to hit $147 a barrel, and we were paying $4/$5 per gallon at the pump, helping crash the economy a few months thereafter.

That's an impressive conspiracy theory (and it will get better later on). Besides being an excellent case of assuming zebras rather than horses, it simply doesn't make a lot of sense. In 2007- 2008, when oil prices spiked reached record highs, if this were the case, one would have expected Saudi Arabia to dramatically increase production - after all, it got what it wanted, right? So it must have been taking full advantage of this, right?

Oh, wait, no - in 2007, Saudi Arabia announced "voluntary" production cuts, So either we have to believe that Saudi Aramco is the first corporation in human history that didn't want to make as much money as it could, or we have to wonder why the Saudis didn't up production in response to high prices and high demand.

What would be a "horses" rather than "zebras" explanation? Well, the most logical one for al-Husseini's long history of speaking out on oil reserves if this - just as when retired military men and women use their retirement to come out and criticize military organizations in ways they could not have while still in service, or where public servants writing their books reveal the real story that the public wasn't permitted to know about our policy decisions, it seems reasonable to see al-Husseini as, in fact, a retired expert in Saudi Reserves speaking out - rather than a secret agent acting for the Saudi government in a Grisham-novel like conspiracy.

That also has the elegance of answering Learsy's second point - the Saudis have, indeed, been stubbornly silent about their reserves, however, what we know about them generally comes from Saudi oil industry insiders - ie, geologists like al-Husseini.

Third point - should we subtract 300 billion from 260 billion - ummm...no...duh? In fact, Learsy talks about why this isn't the case - the Saudis inflated their reserves in 2007 by ummm. a lot - up from historic levels to 716 billion and maybe a trillion. And this wasn't the first time that the Saudis have done this - they doubled their oil reserves in the 1980s as well, based, as far as anyone can tell, by how much oil they'd like to have. In this case, Learsy is using very selective data in reminding us of Saleri's announcement that Saudi Arabia has many times more oil than it thought it did.

Learsy skips over the sudden and rapid backpedalling done by Saudi Aramco executives after that change. It seems odd, at best, that Learsy would cite the idea that technologies could treble or quadruple oil production more or less instantly, and take as credible one person's unauthorized (and rapidly quashed) speak out on this, while inventing an elaborate conspiracy theory for al-Husseini's warnings. Husseini's initial warning seems to have been the observation that the recent 300bn barrel increase announced by his former company was not correct, and that indeed, Saudi production was declining. Indeed, the US embassy seems to have understood Husseini's point clearly in the cables, while Learsy does not seem to have understood it:

Our Mission now questions how much the Saudis can now substantively influence the crude markets over the long term. Clearly they can drive prices up, but we question whether they any longer have the power to drive prices down for a prolonged period. The May announcement of a 300,000 bpd increase in production barely dented price escalation. It appears unlikely Saudi Aramco could muster the million or more barrels which appear to be needed to make a dent in the normally upwards price trajectory. Saudi Aramco's ability to sustain such a production increase for a year or more raises serious questions.

Those inconvenient facts, at the very least contrast with Learsy's conspiracy theory. At best, combining his view of al-Husseini's speak-out and Saleri's, both presumably acting for their government, gets you a picture of a nation that hasn't the faintest idea what it wants to say, not the elaborate and careful manipulations that Learsy wants to see. Most of their public strategies have been heavily focused on making Saudi reserves seem stable and secure, or inflating them, but Learsy's theory is that the Saudis are best served by supporting peak oil, because, after all, that causes unwarranted price rises.

But, of course, it is all about the conspiracy theory - and this is a theory with lots of players. Fatih Birol of the IEA who has been warning of increasing demand and production difficulties for some years to come, we are told, "was employed by OPEC." I've yet to meet a petroleum geologist of any significant stature who has never been employed by an OPEC country. Now it is certainly possible that Birol and al-Husseini are engaged in a vast conspiracy to deflate reserves, along with us evil peak oil people, and thus drive up prices and crash the world economy (Ilargi over at The Automatic Earth is going to kick my ass for leaving that part of the claim alone, but I'm going to do it anyway, but let's just point out that not everyone thinks that oil prices alone collapsed the world economy - and I'd think if the Saudis had that as their goal, they could probably just restrict exports and get the job done faster...but what do I know?).

Finally, there's Learsy's faith in technology. 2007 in his view, is just a whole 'nother world from now - look at all the flying cars! He writes:

That was then, this is now. In the more than three years since, there has been a time warp in the application of new oil drilling technology. Extraordinary strides have been made in drilling for oil and gas. In the United States alone, because of new drilling techniques, shale gas has been accessed, and the gas reserves of the United States have increased five fold over the past five years alone, enough to cover our domestic needs, and making the United States a potential exporter of natural gas. A further example is the growing oil production from shale oil drilling techniques in the Bakken formation of North Dakota and Montana that will be producing millions of barrels/day in the years ahead.

To prove his point that there's been a time warp in the last few years, and to prove this, he cites a New York Times article from 2007 that claimed that there had been a revolution in drilling technologies "in the last decade." I wonder if I can be forgiven for wondering if the kind of Time Warp Learsy is doing involves "the pelvic thrust that really drives you insaaaaaane..." Maybe he's been staying out a little too late at the local Rocky Horror show, because that makes no sense at all.

If four years of radical technological progress have transformed the oil landscape, we should be able to see the results, right? Flying cars for everyone! Well, let's take a quick look at the numbers. Here's a lovely chart by Gregor McDonald:

In making up this chart, McDonald offers four possible interpretations:

As we look at the chart of Saudi Arabia crude oil production, I like to consider the following propositions:

1. This is a chart of the central bank of oil, with lots of spare capacity, that works to dampen oil price increases.

2. This is a chart of the central bank of oil, with lots of spare capacity, that works to perfect oil price increases.

3. This is a chart of what had once been the central bank of oil, as it transitions to a secondary role.

4. This is a chart of an oil producer doing its best, within technical and geological limits, to maximize its profit.

Regardless of which we choose among these possibilities (or others), it's clear that Saudi Arabia has been a very different kind of oil producer than Russia, in the past ten years. I would encourage readers to think about, in particular, the period starting in late 2005 through late 2007 when against a backdrop of steadily increasing prices Saudi Arabia production fell by nearly a million barrels per day.

None of the possible reasonable interpretations is "this is the portrait of an oil producer demonstrating wild new gains in oil production from new technologies." So the question becomes, why is it that the Saudis haven't benefitted from these miraculous new flying-car oil technologies? Perhaps they can't afford to implement them....oh wait, that's probably not the answer. Perhaps they are saving them for a special day in the future when they will want to produce not less, but more oil...hmmm, that doesn't make much sense either. Perhaps these technologies only work in America, where stunning technological improvements have totally change the US oil picture, reversing our declines...oh, wait.

It doesn't look like much of a flying car to me - woot, tiny uptick that in no way reverses overall decline! But wait, aren't we producing billyuns and billyuns of barrels from the Bakken Shale like Learsy suggests? It turns out we aren't. The Bakken production numbers are well, hypothetical as yet, rather like the Saudi production numbers that Saleri announced, and then rapidly retracted. Learsy's assumptions are based on unproven projections - and a lot of convoluted thinking. It appears on the same day that IEA warns of increasing global demand that bolsters its concerns about supply issues, and when BG Group, a major gas developer, warns that the gas "glut" may be a mirage:

The global energy industry faces a "huge supply" challenge to bring online enough new gas to meet demand, according to BG Group's chief executive.

Frank Chapman said the industry would need $2,000bn (Â£1,240bn) of investment to find and develop gas supplies equal to 20 times the current production of Norway to 2020.

The difference between Learsy's vision and the vision of the "peak oil pranksters" as he calls us is that he takes on faith the most optimistic of projections for production - indeed, he takes them on such faith that he actually implies that such projections have already transformed the landscape. This is ummmm...an error at best. What we know is simply this - world liquids production is fairly stable, on a plateau, but only because of that word "liquids" in which things that are not oil have been used to substitute for things that are oil.

Now a case could be made that this substitutability is proof that peak oil doesn't matter (never mind that Learsy's arguments simply aren't coherent enough to even imply such a comparatively subtle case). But we also know that many of these "substitutes" aren't terribly scalable over further declines, all of them have substantial ecological and environmental impacts, and that many of them are only productive at extremely high prices - EVEN if we take as true all the most optimistic projections. There are plenty of people who will give you clear and coherent examples of *why* we ought to take all optimistic projections as serious, but even if we do, we come out with an obvious and clear story - one in which crude oil supplies are declining, in which we are bringing on substitutes as fast as we can but still failing to keep oil prices reasonable and stable, in which price volatility and economic boom and bust cycles tied at least superficially to oil are the norm, and in which we are fairly clearly going to be struggling to keep up with the declines over time.

I find it interesting that Learsy has to create such a bizarre and elaborate conspiracy theory, while impugning al-Husseini's credentials and competence by implication and also magnifying the actual results of technological impacts. Peak oil theorists are sometimes accused of making up conspiracies. In fact, our case is far simpler than the elaborate dances one has to go through to imply that there's simply no problem with oil and energy. If you've got to dance the Time Warp in order to make the facts fit, you probably have a problem with your reasoning.

Sharon

sastyk Thu, 02/10/2011 - 05:00

Tags

Wikileaks

stoat — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 08:43:10 +0000

Wikileaks

David Appell's recent post is excellent, so I'll steal most of it, a quote from Hillary Clinton in January:

During his visit to China in November, President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity. The United States' belief in that truth is what brings me here today.

(the information wants to be free so I'm allowed to steal things :-). Hypocritical scumbag (her, and Obama. Not me, obviously). But then, she is a politician. Incidentally, those complaining that the US is using extra-judicial means to achieve its ends need to be less surprised. Nothing new there.

My part in this has been limited to sending Paypal a nasty email and getting fobbed off and sending a reply about being fobbed off. If they say anything interesting I'll tell you.

Bruce Schneier says the obvious: that leaning on wikileaks is pointless: leaking this kind of stuff (if you have it) nowadays is trivial.

Refs

* LOIC at sourceforge.
* PayPal speaks
* Some Musings On the Bradley Manning Charges
* Maribo: Wikileaks and the CRU e-mail hack

stoat Thu, 12/09/2010 - 03:43

Tags

Uncategorized

clinton

wikileaks

GoRight:

Where have I hinted at the need for a "government-approved list ... of 'legitimate news organizations' deserving of 1st Amendment protections"? I never did.

News organizations are free to discuss the leaked material precisely because of the First Amendment. And last I checked, the First Amendment applies to all Americans. So doesn't it stand to reason tat whatever free speech protections given to news organizations are also given to all the American people?

Or are you claiming that First Amendment rights are only reserved for 'approved' news organizations, and trillion-dollar mega corporations?

So, if there is definitive evidence of arm twisting where is it? I would like to evaluate those things which you seem to have found so convincing.

Why don't you actually spend your time reading the news coverage on the leaked cables, instead of writing 30+ paragraphs to boast about your ignorance to the world?

* * *

Charles Hixson:

If you want me to take seriously about the letter of the law being obeyed, then you've got to convince me that you are just as serious when it's someone powerful being charged by someone who is less powerful. This is clearly, however, not the case.

Right on. Where was Mr. GoRight's indignation over the case of the suspected 'terrorist' who was imprisoned by the CIA for months? Nah, it's nothing, after all the poor victim wasn't even a True Person, unlike Amazon.com.

* * *

While on the subject, I'm somewhat surprised that there's nothing in the leaked cables about the CRU cyber-attack (or at least nothing that's been dug out yet) -- I thought that SwiftHack would at least have some diplomatic significance. Though there's some weirdness about someone trying to phish the US's climate change envoy with a malicious PDF file (blog post by yours truly).

-- frank

Can't understand Visa and all the other boycotts... apparently it is ok for them if I sponsor Ku Klux Klan but not Wikileaks...

Interesting. I haven't actually decided how I feel about all of this so perhaps you can help me to form the proper opinion here.

On the one hand I am certainly sympathetic to the need for a free and open internet and the need to shine a light on the tactics and practices of those who seek to control information to meet their own agendas. After all, I have been trying to do that for years now on Wikipedia as many people know. :)

On the other hand I firmly believe in the rule of law and so if laws have been broken in this case I also feel that those who have broken those laws should be punished to the fullest extent possible within the applicable judicial systems.

So to the extent that the original leaker is guilty of treason or espionage or whatever they should be prosecuted for those crimes and receive the punishments proscribed for the acts that they committed.

Along those same lines to the extent that Wikileaks and Assange are accomplices in those crimes they too should be prosecuted and punished within the limits of the law.

Do you have any problem with people being held accountable for their actions under the law? I should hope not.

[You conflate many different things. I think it would help clarify this by beginning with some basic principles: people are innocent until proven guilty, for example. In this case, wikileaks hasn't even been charged, let alone convicted, so your jumping to a guilty verdict is distinctly premature.

Similarly, I rather doubt that an Australian can be guilty of treason against America.

But certainly, I am entirely happy with people being held accountable for their actions. For example, it would be nice of the US govt could be held accountable for its illegal war in Iraq; but that won't happen-W]

Now, regarding the extra-legal pressure that Wikileaks and Assange have come under since this latest release what evidence is there that the U.S. Government has anything whatsoever to do with that? I haven't seen any. Do I think that they would be above such tactics? No. Especially with Obama and Clinton running the show. But as of yet I have seen no actual evidence of arm twisting of the likes of Amazon, or Paypal, or Visa, or Mastercard.

[You've seen no evidence of arm-twisting? You must have been deliberately looking the other way -W]

These are all private organizations with their own private interests. Neither Wikileaks nor Assange have any "right" to have access to the services provided by these corporations. These companies are under no obligation to provide their services to people that they disagree with (other than to not discriminate based on a number of well defined classes of people based on race, religion, etc as proscibed by law). Being an organization that specializes in the dissemination of illegally obtained information doesn't happen to be one of those classes as far as I know.

[As you say: they are obliged not to discriminate. There may or may not be an explicit clause about not discriminating on the basis of political belief, or however you would describe it; but yes i would certainly like them to be neutral -W]

So why are you upset with Paypal for making the decision to distance themselves from an organization that encourages people to commit criminal acts? (An aside: I am not familiar with what you mean when you say you were "fobbed off" by them. Does this mean they cancelled your account or what?)

[Fobbed off has the standard meaning: rather than answering my questions they gave deliberately meaningless answers -W]

How did you feel about the organizations who hosted the East Anglia emails that were leaked last year? On Wikipedia people were arguing that this information could not be linked to or posted because it was illegally obtained. But somehow the mood is different there with respect to how these diplomatic cables should be handled.

Do you think that there is any difference between these two cases? After the emails were leaked last year did you feel that the people who leaked them were criminals and therefore they should be prosecuted for their actions under the law, or not?

[Yes, I think I can distinguish between leaking private email and leaking government cables. I didn't like the leaking of the CRU email. I thought it was the wrong thing to do: it was deliberately done in order to paint a misleading picture of the state of climate science, in order to deliberately pollute public debate. In this case, I see no evidence of intent to mislead the public. You'll notice, though, that I've carefully avoided saying I agree with what wikileaks are doing.

Snark snipped - W]

Wot? As per the actual leaked info, I thought only the W administration would be involved in such behind the scenes "non-free info" antics (e.g. outing their own operatives). You mean this is business as usual for Dems, too (gasp)??

Isn't it a bore until we get the historical context? Who killed Kennedy anyways?

and what about these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Carlucci (loved him in Lumumba); and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Rayner (one of the best, and one of your own)??

And why are our terror suspects getting out of "camp" and going back to terrorism? Our terrorist rehabilitation program is broken . . .

Thanks for the Schneier link - he makes points that have been on my mind, but I've not been eloquent enough to say. Following the discussion among my friends on FB, I sense that few people seem to actually understand the mechanisms and technologies involved.

I think there is a case to be made that Wikileaks should be more choosy with what they release. But that's only in terms of their own strategy and mission statement, not for the benefit of the world. Wikileaks is just a website, nothing is solved by killing it or Assange. Other identical websites, and then bittorrent are the obvious next steps. No doubt the Pirate Bay would be happy to host the trackers.

More importantly overall, the Internet means that as long as there are leakers, security by obscurity is over.

What paypal has done is pretty evil, claiming illegal behavior where none has been proven (and if the NY Times accepted subscriptions paid by Pay Pal, would Pay Pal kick them off for publishing the material provided by wikileaks? I think not).

I don't know Amazon's terms of service so won't comment there, other than from a marketing perspective, the ease in which they've shrugged off the resulting DOS attacks is probably going to be a good selling point with those thinking of using Amazon's hosting service ...

[:-) -W]

Re: Amazon - apparently Amazon UK are planning to release an eBook of ..... Wikileaks extracts!. If this is just a rumour, 10 out of 10 to the genius who thought it up.

Oops, missed this bit ...

WMC: Similarly, I rather doubt that an Australian can be guilty of treason against America.

Again, you are reading more into my post than was actually stated.

I think if you re-read my original post you will notice that I only explicitly mention Treason and Espionage as potential crimes within the context of the original leaker who is, presumably, an American citizen.

When discussing Wikileaks and/or Assange I used the key phrases "to the extent that" and "within the limits of the law" to distinguish them from the original leaker but perhaps this was insufficient. In any case I certainly agree with you that Treason is not one of the crimes that is applicable to Assange. Espionage may be but that would depend on the nature of the relationship between the original leaker and Assange which we do not yet know.

So I will stand my by original statement that: to the extent that Wikileaks and/or Assange were accomplices in Espionage (or other crimes), they should be held accountable within the limits of the law. Do you agree that if Assange is guilty of Espionage that he should be held accountable for that as determined in a court of law, or should he be given a pass in your opinion?

[I don't see how it is helpful to stretch terms so far. Assange *isn't* guilty of espionage (at least as far as I can see; it is an established legal principle that The Law Is An Ass, so I am quite prepared to find that an American court might find otherwise) so your question is null. But I don't think it is really a question; it is "mood music", an attempt to argue via rhetoric rather than reality -W]

I see you have begun deleting my posts. I don't wish to be a bother. Can we not have a civil conversation on these points?

[You'll have to try harder to avoid snark I fear; you're displaying here the behaviour that eventually exhausted everyone's patience at wikipedia. I suggest that if you have a lot to say - and you do appear to - the correct solution is to post to a blog of your own, and link to it here in a comment -W]

The kid in the Army didn't spy, he made illegal copies of government documents. Since it's the government, he's not even guilty of copyright infringement (in the US, gov docs can't are not covered by copyright law).

Now that copying and distribution of said copies will get him in trouble, quite likely. But maybe not. Ellsberg beat his rap and he actually did physically steal the Pentagon Papers.

Do you agree that if Assange is guilty of Espionage that he should be held accountable for that as determined in a court of law

Nothing to disagree with there, but of course Assange isn't guilty of espionage. At best you might be able to get him for receiving the copies. Why go after him rather than the NY TImes, El Pais, Le Monde and the Guardian, though? Case law in the US makes it quite unlikely that the press will be penalized for doing its job, though (and this includes WikiLeaks).

If Assange is guilty of rape or some other sexual crime, then he should be held accountable for that, too, though it's clear that the Swedes are coming after him in part because of his notoriety. He's not alone in that, though, look at US efforts to get Roman Polanski back here ...

dhogaza: The kid in the Army didn't spy, he made illegal copies of government documents.

These are not mutually exclusive. Whether he spied, or not, depends on the nature of the relationship between him and Assange which is a point I made in the deleted post.

dhogaza: ... he's not even guilty of copyright infringement (in the US, gov docs can't are not covered by copyright law).

Probably true but not conclusively so to the best of my knowledge. What you say is true for the documents prepared by US government employees in the commission of their assigned duties. I don't know if the leaks contain other documents possibly prepared by other non-US nationals. Copyright may apply to such non-US produced documents but right now copyright infringement is the least of anyone's worries, I think.

dhogaza: ... but of course Assange isn't guilty of espionage.

Not yet determined. It depends on his prior relationship, if any, to the actual leaker. It also depends on whether a blanket offer to acquire such illegally obtained documents is specific enough to warrant a charge of espionage.

I rather doubt that it would but I also accept that this is likely a notion that needs to be tested in the courts.

dhogaza: Case law in the US makes it quite unlikely that the press will be penalized for doing its job, though (and this includes WikiLeaks).

This is also a point I made in the now deleted post. I agree that current case law makes it unlikely that legitimate news organizations are unlikely to run afoul of the law for printing the cables. I consider it debatable as to whether Wikileaks constitutes a legitimate news organization which is entitled to the protections in the current case law and I would argue that this needs to be test in court. This is what distinguishes Wikileaks from the likes of The Guardian or The New York Times.

WMC: You've seen no evidence of arm-twisting? You must have been deliberately looking the other way.

Well, not really but I admit I haven't spent a lot of time looking either. A possibility you failed to consider, I think.

So, if there is definitive evidence of arm twisting where is it? I would like to evaluate those things which you seem to have found so convincing.

Surely this government-approved list you long for of "legitimate news organizations" deserving of 1st Amendment protections won't have any problems passing Constitutional muster. On 2nd thought, perhaps it isn't too early for you to get started on a proposed Amendment to fix it, we could restrict coverage of Washington DC to "embedded" journalists! Theyd have to be willing to hold off on any big wiretapping stoories til after the election, of course.

WMC: I didn't like the leaking of the CRU email. I thought it was the wrong thing to do: it was deliberately done in order to paint a misleading picture of the state of climate science, in order to deliberately pollute public debate.

A leak is a leak. It discloses raw data and information. It allows everyone to make up their own minds on topics of import.

In both cases we are given a peek into the inner sanctum of the principle actors involved in something that has a planet-wide impact. So to me they are pretty much comparable in terms of scope and impact.

You seem to have formed an opinion regarding the motivations of the leakers/hackers in the case of the CRU emails. On what are you actually basing that opinion? Have the perpetrators even been identified at this point? I don't recall.

melior: Surely this government-approved list you long for of "legitimate news organizations" deserving of 1st Amendment protections won't have any problems passing Constitutional muster.

Straw man. Where have I hinted at the need for a "government-approved list ... of 'legitimate news organizations' deserving of 1st Amendment protections"? I never did.

My comment was predicated in the notion that widely recognized and acknowledged news organizations enjoy certain protections that individuals do not in this context. The notion is no different from the notion that widely recognized and acknowledged religions enjoy some protections and advantages that we as individuals do not.

For example, I am not free to establish some organization and then claim tax exempt status based solely on the claim that I have somehow created my own personal religion. Similarly, I doubt that I am able to simply create some organization and receive recognition as a news organization under the law based solely on my own personal claims.

Case law no doubt establishes standards for making such determinations. So the question is, does Wikileaks meet those standards, or not? I honestly don't know but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that Wikileaks does not meet those standards whereas The New York Times and The Guardian do. This determination can only be made in a court of law and this is the basis of why I would argue that Wikileaks should be prosecuted whereas someone like The New York Times who unquestionably meets those standards should not.

A collection of reactions to various posts above:

Legal prosecution is only just if the laws being enforced are just.

Something being a law just means that a bunch of powerful people were willing to say it was a good idea. It doesn't mean that it's just. It's frequently more likely the case that a law will by pushed by powerful people if it's unjust than if it's just.

That said, given the existing laws as I know them, Mr. Asange appears to be being unjustly persecuted.

Now as for Amazon, PayPal, etc. ... they are, technically, private entities. But aren't they also "public accommodations"? If they are, then isn't it illegal for them to refuse to provide service to someone without legally defensible reason? I'm not sure about the legalities, or even whether they are clear. It is, however, clear that they depend for their operations on accommodations with the government officials, and that therefore they are pliable via extra-legal means. Means that probably would leave no recorded traces. I've seen no proof that they were "persuaded", but then I wouldn't expect to see such proof even if I were certain that it had happened. So in this case all I can do is make a judgment call. I'm not charging them with a crime, after all. But in my judgment they have shown themselves pliable to someone who doesn't respect civil liberties. As such, I prefer to not do business with them.

If you want me to take seriously about the letter of the law being obeyed, then you've got to convince me that you are just as serious when it's someone powerful being charged by someone who is less powerful. This is clearly, however, not the case.

After the wikileaked documents began to spread, Hillary Clinton said something along the lines of "this is bad for International diplomacy". I think she's right.

Diplomatic resolution of conflict requires trust, which is undermined by this leak.

Also, some information is not meant for public consumption. Pin codes are in that category; security/police information; a list of worldwide targets that are important to the US/global security/economy that may be of interest to terrorists (now on wikileaks) also fits that bill.

Someone somewhere wrote that if the internet/wikileaks existed during the time of the camp David accord, it would not have succeeded. The idea that any and all information, be it government related or not, should be freely available to all seems weirdly fundamentalist to me.

That doesn't mean that there aren't things that are important and relevant for the public to know: The Arab states asking the US secretly to be harder on Iraq, while in public being all cosy with Iraq and critical of the US, is questionable to say the least.

I think whether such a leak is ethically right or wrong depends a.o. on the contents of what's leaked: It has to show greater wrongdoing than the wrong that leaking it represents. And the effects have to be taken into account: Are they positive or negative in the long run? Both are of course highly subjective judgment calls.

And as to your dig to Obama/Clinton: Presumably they referred to the right of people to access the internet freely and without government censorship. That's a whole different cup of tea than claiming that any and all information meant for a few should suddenly be available to the world.

[Ah, Bart, you are too reasonable! But I have to admit I agree with most of what you say. The main point is, perhaps, was all the fuss worth the released info? From what I've seen, it is rather hard to justify that. As people have commented elsewhere, very little that is truely interesting has come out - perhaps the Middle East bit is the closest, but even that is something of a shrug. Climate-wise, I've seen nothing very entertaining.

If anything, this should just be a wake-up call to US security: the means they currently have for restricting access to "Secret" cables is clearly broken.

As to the Clinton dig: weelll, this rather reminds me of the way politicians and police often condemn violence at demonstrations (as they did just recently in London): "we condemn all violence". But no, of course they don't, they are lying: they are happy to use violence themselves when they consider it necessary. So yes: I'm sure Clinton did indeed mean the internet. But what she really meant was that she was happy for information inconvenient to the Chinese government to be free, but that inconvenient to the US govt not so.

Diplomatic resolution of conflict requires trust, which is undermined by this leak - a resonable point, but I think not right. The leaks here clearly do not cover high-level material, which so far remains secure. If "da Man" wakes up and realises he needs to pay a bit more attention to security, wikileaks may even have done him a favour -W]
-W]

Thank you all for the chat. It has been made clear that I am close to wearing out my welcome here so I shall move along. Please carry on.

[What I actually said (via email) was: You're now getting close to the level of answering everyone else's comments and starting to monopolise the conversation. Please don't; it isn't polite -W]

As people have commented elsewhere, very little that is truely interesting has come out - perhaps the Middle East bit is the closest, but even that is something of a shrug.

Hmmm, about 10,000 of the 260,000 cables were classified (a small percentage of those "secret"). Have the cables that have been released thus far include any marked "secret"?

I don't think so, I think it's just the routine daily stuff that's come out, judging from the lack of any real bombshells/smoking guns.

On the other hand, my guess is that the Army has a pretty good handle on the documents that have been downloaded, as they've probably figured out the security holes that let this kid download so many documents in the first place.

So perhaps the reaction is in part due to fear of the contents of some of the more sensitive documents marked "secret". I mean, pointing out that Berlusconi is a party-hearty womanizer is hardly the kind of stuff that merits the severe response we're getting out of the administration. They're worried about other stuff ...

If anything, this should just be a wake-up call to US security: the means they currently have for restricting access to "Secret" cables is clearly broken.

Or any cables, it's not clear that some random private in intelligence analysis should have access to 260,000 such documents regardless of their classification. He's a grunt. He should have access only to those documents (if any) related to his specific job (we've not been told what it is, in detail, AFAIK, but given his rank - or lack of rank, actually - it's got to be piddlyshit clerk-level stuff).

And obviously supervision of this dude was non-existent. Don't they have corporals and sergeants and officers in the Army any more?

I imagine State Department staff are extremely pissed at the Army for its lax control over access to the server(s) used to store sensitive documents.

dhogaza:

The cable covering the cyber-attack attempt on US climate change envoy Todd Stern (which I blogged about Tuesday) is certainly classified "secret". Individual paragraphs are also marked U, SBU, C, S, S//NF, C//NF, etc.

There aren't any cables classified "top secret" though -- reportedly, this is simply because Manning simply doesn't have access to those.

Frank - thanks, I haven't followed this as closely as you, obviously.

There aren't any cables classified "top secret" though -- reportedly, this is simply because Manning simply doesn't have access to those.

Ahh, so he didn't have access to *everything*, how amazing (considering how much he had access to). Hmm, maybe the encryption passphrase for the "secret" ones was just "too many secrets", while the passphrase for "top secret" ones wasn't as obvious! :)

# 15, Charles Hixson, December 9, 2010 8:24 PM

"I prefer to not do business with them."

Perhaps their actions are rooted in a judgment about the number of people likely to make your decision and those likely to make the opposite decision.

The point about leaning on wikileaks is to make it clear that such behaviour is not tolerated and they'll get you somehow. It doesn't matter that leaking it is very easy to do, the important thing is to get anyone who actually stands up and says leaking is good.

dhogaza #18 - the cables also revealed that the UK government are governing us for the benefit of the USA ("A pro-american regime", and that they carefully didn't mention a work around on the ban on cluster bombds on British territory when the legislation was being debated. There's a few other stories, such as duplicity in dealings with SpainL
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/09/wikileaks-cables-huge-impac…

Not a lot that has been released is unknown to those who are professionally or seriously interested, but there's lots of things in there us plebs just didn't know and it is always useful to see how much duplicity is involved in governments around the world.

GoRight -- "A leak is a leak."

And a hack is a hack.

GoRight -- "It discloses raw data and information."

And it releases test code which can be misinterpreted by the meme machine as published code.

GoRight -- "It allows everyone to make up their own minds on topics of import."

Ah, not when there's a large gap in the plot which is being filled in by every aspiring scriptwriter with an axe to grind or an ideology to sell. I fail to see how 0.5% of the data could lead anyone to a satisfactory or even informed judgement.

But you could always open your eyes a little and watch a video:
http://climatecrocks.com/2010/12/08/more-ben-santer/

Praetorian Prefect has some additional coverage of the cyber-attacks over Wikileaks:

http://praetorianprefect.com/archives/2010/12/anonymous-turns-operation…
http://praetorianprefect.com/archives/2010/12/anonymous-releases-very-u…

This is going to be epic.

-- frank

So, if Assange is extradited to Sweden to face prosecution there, and perhaps that will mean Sweden parcels him up to face some sort of trial in the US...

... will the US also honour its treaty with Nigeria and extradite Dick Cheney to face prosecution there?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_extradition_treaties

Yea paypal ignored my email completely

Guthrie:

dhogaza #18 - the cables also revealed that the UK government are governing us for the benefit of the USA...

Not a lot that has been released is unknown to those who are professionally or seriously interested...

Well, even this yank understood that Blair was bending over and dropping his pants for W, so other than details, is your statement a surprise to anyone with half a clue over there in the UK?

but there's lots of things in there us plebs just didn't know and it is always useful to see how much duplicity is involved in governments around the world.

From what I've been reading, there are some fascinating details, but very little news for anyone who's the least bit a political junkie (which I admit to being).

Hadn't seen the bit about spain, I'll check your link ...

There's a few other stories, such as duplicity in dealings with Spain

Hmmm, I'm not seeing duplicity in US dealings with spain there, just straightforward efforts to influence things ...

This sounds like duplicity:

The last was the most complicated because the cables revealed the double speak of government and prosecutors. Our stories showed that they told US diplomats they would try to hinder or even close down the case while telling the family of the dead journalist that they would do everything they could to advance it. This has been difficult for the Socialist government to explain.

but it's on the part of Zapatero's government, not the US. I can't imagine them *openly* doing what they US asked.

Yes, I should have been clearer, duplicity with regards to their voters whilst dealing with the USA. As for the gvt here, it changed slightly from being a centrist gvt full of market worshipping authoritarians to being a right wing nutcase cabal who mostly seem to have inherited money or be very rich. It is the latter who were promising as far back as last year to continue Blairs sterling example of anglo-american friendship.

And as I said, wonks and suchlike probably knew most of the facts already, but lots of normal people didn't, and I'm willing to support a lot of things which help broaden our knowledge of government and corporate behaviour.

> government-approved list ... of
> "legitimate news organizations"

George III had such a list, as I recall.
How did that work out?

Apologies if this has already been mentioned. Over at DeSmogBlog there is a post that combines Wikileaks.fr and the CRU hack.

Material that the French newspaper Le Monde has harvested from Wikileaks documents show that American diplomats were aware as early as the summer of 2009 that hackers were trying to break into climate scientists' computers.....

I am ambivalent about Wikileaks. Some good and some bad. I can't claim to have studied the subject closely, but on the face of things, some of the reported releases would seem to have been better left secret.

Amoeba:

DeSmogBlog's source got the story wrong. The June 2009 crack attempt was aimed at US climate change negotiators. The Guardian has the correct story, along with the original cable itself.

Wikileaks Mythbusting: Yemen Cables

gregladen — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:33:11 +0000

Wikileaks Mythbusting: Yemen Cables

There has been much talk about whether the recent Wikileaks leak of diplomatic cables will be a good thing or a bad thing. I would assume (and that is an assumption ... which is why I used the word assume) that there would be some of both, some forward movement of progressive ideals including honest government and reasonably transparent diplomatic policies that value human rights and the environment, etc., and some damage to ongoing diplomatic processes or exposure of ammunition that can be used for nefarious purposes by nefarious figures and organizations. But, since some of that would have happened anyway (a leak of a cable is not the only way to embolden a terrorist, advance a philosophy, fix or complicate a diplomatic problem or solve an historical riddle) we may be better off not asking about the big and essentially unknowable picture, and focusing on individual cases. So, I'd like to look, in a preliminary way, at a couple of such individual cases

Yemen Cables

NPR news is reporting on two cables that some claim could "embolden Al-Qaida." I'm going to assume (there I go again) that the decreasingly venerable NPR has thrown the phrase "embolden Al-Qaida" into the headline to increase revenues, and try to rephrase the question more accurately: Will two cables regarding Yemen have a net positive or negative effects on a) US international diplomacy; b) US relations in the middle east esp. vis-a-vis Yemen and related countries and c) Al-Qaida's political position on the Arabian Peninsula vis-a-vis the current standing government in the eyes of the inhabitants of the region or other relevant parties?

In fact, we will focus mainly on the third issue, which is the core of the proposition made in the NPR piece, but the other two are to be kept in mind.

For a bit of context, though this should be obvious, Al-Qaida would like to replace the Yemeni government, currently supported by the US and several other moderate or non-Islamic countries, with itself. Also, a widespread criticism of the current government is that it is not all that Islamic (Shariah), and that it is corrupt. Both are true, and this is widely known but simultaneously unacknowledged, as is usually the case with these things.

There are two cables.

Cable 1: This describes a meeting between General David Petraeus and Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The US had just launched two predator drone strikes on local Al-Qaida types, in which co-lateral deaths had occurred. The Yemeni government had previously agreed to claim that such "bombs" are their own, provided by the US government but launched by the Yemeni. I assume (?) that this would allow the acts to be seen less as the activities of the evil Western crusader, strengthen the perception of bellicosity of the Yemeni regime (useful in tribal negotiations, I assume they assumed) yet allow for deniablity when a fragment of the weapon is found stamped "Made in Taiwan" (which would indicate a US weapon).

In the cable it is confirmed (discussed) that the 'bombs' are US owned and US fired, but that the Yemeni government will "... continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours..." The cable records one of President Saleh's aides interrupting with a joke about how Saleh is lying to his own parliament about the air strikes.

As recorded in the NPR article, experts feel that this will not be a surprise to most people within the "inner circle" because it is known that the government of Yemen is corrupt and the relationship between the US and Yemen is either known or assumed. However, spreading this conformation of the relationship and the corruption to the tribal region could hotten up the collars of the local leaders up and down the country's wadis. It would be an Al-Qaida recruiting tool.

Is this a valid complaint? Unlike the real mythbusters, we can't test this idea at this time using any laboratory or even logical methods. However, I would suggest that the claim that this would be a recruiting tool is valid, but that the value of the recruiting tool is limited. It depends on what else is going on. This could be more of an "It's the economy, stupid" situation than anything else, meaning you can talk about philosophy and policy all you want, what is really important is [fill in the blank with the current on the ground important issue].

If the tribal leaders are content to walk the line between being friendly with al-Qaida and the government at the same time, this is not going to move them. If they or their people feel inclined to move more in one direction or another, this cable could be accordingly ignored or used as a focal point. This cable is probably icing on the cake. That means, if you like cake, it's not important, but if you like icing, it is.

What is the positive side of this particular leak? I was struck at the blatant use of misinformation and denial. This seems to be the key "diplomatic" strategy exposed in this case. I suppose I don't have a problem with disinformation as a tool in some case, but for years, since the early Reagan administration, disinformation has been one of the major bludgeons with which US diplomats have shaped (hammer-like) Mideast policy. For instance, it is likely that many terrorist events facilitated and/or paid for by leaders or operatives based east of the Suez were blamed (by the Reagan administration) on Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, in part because it is easy to pin crazy terrorist activities on a crazy-looking guy, in part to move blame away from critically important underground allies such as Syria, and in part because Gaddafi was entirely out of the oil business as far as US interests were concerned, because he decided that Libya would not be an Oil-Barron state.

I strongly suspect that misinformation has been misused, and overused, as a tool. This cable exemplifies a case of it. I don't think this cable demonstrates why misinformed is bad, so I don't think this cable will lead to pressure to reduce the use of that strategy, but it may play a role in identifying it as a problem and ultimately reducing its use.

Cable 2: This cable records a conversation between President Saleh and US counter-terrorism chief, John Brennan, regarding smuggling across the Djibouti border. In the conversation about smuggling of drugs and weapons, whiskey is brought up, and the President jokes about how the illegal whiskey traffic is fine with him as long as it is good whiskey. In theory, this would upset strict adherents to Shariah law, and as noted above the claim that the government is insufficiently Islamic (as in Shariah) is a tool in the al-Qaida toolkit and a source of discontent.

The Yemeni leader's disdain for Shariah law may be relevant in some cases, but as with the first cable, the degree to which it matters that Yemen is run by a whiskey-drinking faker may be vary with context. However, I'm going to call this myth busted at least for the near to medium future, until things change a great deal in Yemen.

Yemen is a collection of small tribal units that are sufficiently disdainful of the overarching government that the religiosity of that government is not especially important. Moreover, key tribal leaders in the Yemeni countryside probably gain significant political and social power because of their own high religious status, and having a state that is not especially holy may enhance their positions. A strict Shariah overlord would be a disadvantage to them.

Among the tribal units there are tribes that specifically watch over key religious sites, or that control pilgrimage routes between such sites. It is strict Islamic law that the pilgrimage should not be interfered with, and that pilgrims need to be cared for, helped along their way, and so on. As a result, certain factors become important: a) the presence of multiple very important pilgrimage sites in the Yemen interior and b) the complications that arise when neighbors may be in a Hobbsian state of "warre" (not necessarily fighting at any given moment but on the edge of unfriendliness, feudal style) in a system where all people, regardless of who is an ally of whom, must be allowed free passage.

As a result of this, the tribes exist in a complex hierarchy of shared responsibility and differential religiosity. Also, the social and political tools to allow enemies to put aside their differences for pragmatic reasons are very much in place and used on a daily basis. The idea that a central government, which has almost nothing to do with anything that ever happens on a day to day basis, has a low level of religiosity is probably unimportant or a mild advantage to the Wadi-based tribal leaders, as long as that government plays its expected role (mediating between hostage takers and oil companies, for instance). In fact, given the link between religion and place in Yemen, since the "government" is an entity unfixed to a holy place or a pilgrimage, or to any historically important religious figure to begin with, it is probably not expected to be especially Shariah. As long as the government does not locally interfere with Shariah, then who cares what it does?

It is probably worth mentioning something about the geography of Yemen. Yemen is a long narrow country with a long coast line. Several roughly parallel large wadis extend from the coast into a raised arid plateau, bifurcating into a network of smaller wadis as they rise into the interior. When rain falls, much of it ends up draining down the wadis, and for thousands of years a system of small dams and canals has gathered and captured this rain for use in limited local agriculture and for keeping stock. Most of the "tribal" people in the region live up and down these wadis, along which are the aforementioned sacred sites. Meanwhile, over the centuries, there has been varying degrees of trade, via cities at the openings of the wadis along the coast, with the outside world. The trade between villages up the wadi and other points in the Middle East, the coast of Africa, and points east in the Indian Ocean has historically been more important than what is going on, say, two or three wadi's away. Possibly connected to this, and certainly important, is the fact that as various external forces have exerted control over this part of the Saudi peninsula, local groups have generally resisted or ignored this control. (I'm basing much of this on the material written by Yemen Scholar Lynn Newton.)

If you read the NPR article, there is at least one unnoticed but important irony. It is noted that the talk about President Saleh's un-Shariah interest in Whiskey will get around because Yemeni men have a daily afternoon ritual of Khat chewing.

"The fact that every day, there is a built-in block of hours during khat chews for people to get together and talk and discuss, means this message will get out there," Boucek said. "I am sure this will be the essential part of discussions for khat chews for the coming weeks."

So, let's sit around and chew the narcotic substance while we complain about somebody who sits around drinking a narcotic substance. I am not surprised that the Irony is lost on Western pundits and reporters, but I'm guessing it will not be lost on the Yemeni Khat chewers, and that irony will likely temper their negative attitude abut Saleh's drink.

Summary:

Myth 1: Exposure of lies about US use of missiles in Yemen will strengthen Al-Qaida. Unconfirmed. The blithe US use of disinformation, which has been a major problem in US-Mideast relations since George Schultz decided it should be our number one policy tool, may become less popular, which will be a good thing. The use of this information as a recruiting tool is highly questionable.

Myth 2: Saleh's whiskey drinking habits will annoy Yemeni people and turn them against the government. Busted. The tribal Yemeni were already well aware of their own religious purity relative to others, including the government, and in fact, this is an important source of their political power.

Apologies to Mythbusters.

gregladen Thu, 12/02/2010 - 05:33

Tags

Skepticism

near eastern politics

Isn't terrorism the direct result of the lies and receipt? Hard to label someone a terrorist if they're espousing the truth now isn't it? Only the us military is stupid enough to think populations are so easily fooled to begin with. Ambivalent at times? Sure, but certainly not this stupid. Sadly "terrorism" is a response and a result of these policies and I thank wikileaks for publishing these

So the Yemeni enjoy a not-so-religious government because they know that such a government will do less harm than another religion in power?

Well, not "another religion" so much ... what I'm suggesting here, subject to revision of course, is that individual important tribal leaders have power because of their own high status in the religious scheme compared to others, as members of patrilines that are charged with specific pilgrimage related responsibilities. As an extreme, imagine a highly religious state coming in and taking over all the holy places, relocating the local chiefs, and sending the equivalent of park rangers to each site to protect the religious, sacred nature of each location.

Isn't terrorism the direct result of the lies and receipt?

The receipt is so you can take the lie back later.

The tendency that we have really to isolate our analysis based on geological and religious and cultural parameter in our consideration of "terror" that is constituent reflection of "Violence".Terror is something that does not persecute systematically,rather proposes annihilation of "dissent' ,most of the times in isolation of individuals and some case on "Group" or "communities'.And this process of "Terror" -that is "unregulated Violence" does take place in absence of "Authority" in human Psyche and In real Human Settings that defies the interactive approach of Cultures or streams in same culture.Given this construct,one wonders what is really wrong in Yemen-a traditional hub of peace and tranquility that boast of having representation from three Abrahamic Religion with Muslim Majority?We think we need serious rethinking how we explore Arab culture and Arabism in the West.Muhammad Zamiluddin Khan'92,HSPH a.k.a.Zamil Khan

Actually Amnesty International published photos of the bomb fragments and they were clearly US, the Yemeni government admitted they had given the US authority and then withdrew it, the Y Parliament made a formal inquiry and found 43 civilians killed at the nearby Bedouin village, mostly women and children, and the Yemeni government issued an apology and perhaps compensation.

The oddest thing about the Patreous cable is that he thinks (and apparently the US embassy thinks) there were only three non-terrorists killed and they were the family of one of the jihaddis, when it was apparent within hours that it was a tragedy. I had photos up on my site the same day.

So, in other words Greg, the distributed nature of religious authority in Yemen is better served by a relatively irreligious government than by a religious government that might try to centralize that authority?

Itzac, that is my hypothesis. Plus, the author of the material to which I refer above commented that the folks living in the Wadi's have a lot of problems to deal with on a day to day basis and the central government, their relationship to other countries including the US, and their fiddling around with Al-Qaida are not very high on their list.

The other idea I find strange in all this business (and many other similar episodes) is the assumption that the locals are completely unaware of all this until it's reported in the Western media... I suspect they know damn well what's going on (people on the sharp end usually do) and it's only those of us in the Imperial heartlands that are being successfully kept in the dark.

Big Brother has arrived, not just here in America but world wide. Why, because CEO's, politicians and even our generals are universally crooks, liars, thieves and often murderers. And they really hate being exposed as such. Perhaps they were not when they came to power, but once in power they all eventually become corrupted. So do not be surprised when your favorite politician demands swift reprisals against wikileaks and its founder. But also donât be surprised when you also are brought to heel by those in power in giant corporations, the government and the military.

Ron, would you care to document the crimes, lies, and thefts of Russ Feingold?

I applaud WikiLeaks and what they are doing on the Internet.
WikiLeaks is exposing the U.S. Government and others for the frauds they are.
The U.S. Government lies, cheats, steals, kills, takes, ruins and on and on.
When it comes to war, the government is just as bad.
The numbers are way off and the truth is hidden.
The military lies and covers up.
Want proof?
Just ask the family of Pat Tillman.
Look at the self interest politicians.
Look at the IRS.
Look at the FBI, the CIA and other government groups that waste your money, bully, spy and worse.
Look at the police, the courts and others who get away with far worse crimes than the people they put away.
The U.S. Government is a load of bs and needs to be brought down.
The people have had enough.
In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, there is a legendary phrase ... "Big Brother is watching you."
That big brother turned out to be big government.
Times are changing.
Now we are watching them and the truth is being told.
Thank God for WikiLeaks.
Instead of trying to shut it down, we the people need to shut down the U.S. Government and all of the others that WikiLeaks has exposed.
It is clear that the truth is something governments, leaders, bankers and many others do not like.
They can shut down Websites, but they can't shut us up.
I am,

GEORGE VREELAND HILL

I'm writing a thesis on Public Trust in WikiLeaks, the Media and the Government and need to know what your opinions are. The online survey is multiple choice and will take approximately 10 minutes to complete. Please follow the link: http://www.kwiksurveys.com/?s=ILLLML_9669e09d. Would be great if you would encourage others to do the survey also.

A very private conversation revealed, just like Wikileaks

gregladen — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 19:11:56 +0000

A very private conversation revealed, just like Wikileaks

The following is an accurate account of a recent conversation in which illegal, and possibly dangerous acts against the Federal and State governments were planned.

"I'm glad you guys could come over for dinner," said our host, as we shared the task of moving dishes and serving plates, silverware and glasses from the dining room table to the kitchen.

"Get out of here, no need to help cleaning up," he continued, shooing the three of us away from the kitchen and into the living room, where we distributed ourselves on various pieces of furniture.

I had known Bill years ago in school, and we only recently got in touch via, you guessed it, Facebook. Bill and I had a mutual friend, as it turns out, Patti, and Patti's friend, Angela and I ended up over a Bill's for a bit of catching up and to meet his wife, Marge. The dinner conversation had been mostly a matter of re-orientation and catching up, but as was clear from the nature of the original invite, there was another reason to get together. Bill was interested in talking politics, and in particular, trying to recruit some help in one of his latest activist ventures.

"We'll do the dishes later," Marge noted as she and Bill joined us in the living room. We were all well fed, the baby was in bed, the dog let out in the yard and back in again (a couple of times) and the cat was content and asleep on the window sill. There wasn't much more to do but to talk.

And the conversation did develop quickly. Bill outlined his recent interests in Native American rights, and got us up to speed on an upcoming internal government conference between BIA folks from Washington and their local counterparts, State DNR and Minnesota Department of State officials, and some county representatives regarding future plans for land use in and near one of the larger reservations up north.

The meeting was important, and it would be held without a single representative from the Native American community. This was the feds and the state planning how to "handle" the Indians in what would be a contentious fight over land use. Bill quickly got to the point: He was a member of a group who intended to disrupt, and thus call attention to, the meeting, using a combination of legal and illegal means. None of the illegal means were meant to be especially violent or harmful, but there would be smoke bombs and a car fire (of a recently commandeered clunker, and the fire would be very controlled ... something about a "res car" on fire as a symbol of repression).

It was certainly interesting to hear the discussion and planning of an actual radical event. It had been years since I had ever been involved in anything like that. Actually, other than storming the State Capitol a couple of times ... those were always unplanned, impromptu events at major anti-war demonstrations ... I had only been involved in the planning of an actual illegal protest once. A group of us formed a "cell" to discuss, and not necessarily enact, illegal actions against those who were regularly attacking abortion clinics in the Boston area. We would have done things like letting all the air out of the tires of their cars while they were in church in the early AM before clinic attacks, or perhaps using impromptu road blocks to stop one or more of their buses from making it to the clinic on time.

Our intention in forming our secret cell was to discuss the possibility of doing this and make a decision as to whether or not to go on with our plans. So we did ... we discussed it, at length, at a meeting in Harvard Square one balmy August night, sitting in plain sight and looking like nothing other than a bunch of hippies hanging around with nothing better to do.

Our meeting broke up after we decided to not carry out any such acts against the anti-choice protesters. We decided that it would be counterproductive if what we would do worked, and doubly counterproductive if it didn't. As the meeting broke up, six newly recruited marines, drunk as skunks, sauntered into the square and started to beat up homeless people. So, in a moment of poignant irony, we walked around the corner to where we knew the police would be stationed, "keeping an eye on things," told them about the out of control Marines, and then we dispersed never to meet again.

And here I was decades later in a room with Bill, Marge, Angela and Patti, discussing the possibility of lighting a car on fire to disrupt a meeting of state and federal officials.

"We'll park the car in the ramp next to the Federal Office Building in Saint Paul one day before, and wipe it down. The smoke bomb and a small Molotov Cocktail will be in the car already, but we'll light it by hand on the day of the meeting."

Interesting. Simple is good, makes it hard for anything to go wrong.

"Marge got a job with the catering service handling the luncheon for the conference."

Wow, an inside job!

"She'll arrange to get me, and a few others, into the meeting. We'll be dressed in Native American garb, and we'll read a proclamation we've written that takes land away from the whites and puts them on a reservation, turns downtown Saint Paul over to the tribes, restricts white hunting rights, yada yada," Bill was saying. "A parody, if you will, of the US treaties and policies against Indians."

Could make good press, I thought, if the press picks it up.

"And we'll pour red-colored water all over the papers in their meeting room, to symbolize the blood that all the treaties have been written in."

A bit of a cliche, I thought, but whatever ...

Bill had a number of other details, including their escape plan. None of the operatives wanted to get caught, there was no plan for jailed radicals, hunger strikes, any of that. Just make a big mess and get the hell out of Dodge.

The conversation went on for a while, and although I could tell by subtle eye contact with Patti and Angela that they thought the whole thing was a bit crazy and had no intention of volunteering to help. Then we talked about other things ... a bit more catching up, some more of politics distant in time and space, and eventually, Wikileaks came up.

"That is so cool," Bill was saying. "Releasing years and years of all the emails between the US embassies and the state department. It will take years to process all that dirty laundry!" He was almost giddy.

"Yeah," I said. "A lot of interesting stuff there. But I don't think Wikileaks should have just released everything, you know?"

"Why not?" replied Bill, giving me a funny look.

"Yeah. For instance, remember me telling you years ago about catching those missionaries who were looting archaeological sites?"

"Oh, yeah, I remember that."

"Well, that involved communications between the US State Department and Embassies in two countries. If I knew at the time that those communications were not private, I'm not so sure I would have been so quick to be, essentially, an FBI informer."

That got his attention. I don't think Bill, who fully enjoyed the fact that the missionaries had gotten nabbed at the border, really ever thought of me as an FBI informer. Mainly because I'm not. Except that one time.

"Also, remember when we arranged to have people investigate that Mass Grave in Central Africa?"

"Oh yeah, cool! Applied anthropology with a political vengeance!" Bill replied, nostalgically.

"Well, those communications are probably in that wikileaks package now," I said. "They'll be overlooked because they are not important now, all small time stuff, but at the time, very private conversations were being held. I remember one email, cc'ed to all parties, in which an FBI agent ... the one who was helping us ... made a fairly strong political remark that I appreciated but that would probably have gotten him assigned to a post in Nome, Alaska."

Bill stared at me, not quite getting it. Then he blurted out, "This whole thing about lives being in danger ... that has been disproved."

"Maybe. But you've got to admit, that there are times when people have private conversations that really should not be released to the public just because they exist."

"No such thing," Bill replied, quickly, and rather thoughtlessly. "Openness is the best policy, no matter what. There may be a few embarrassing moments, but for the most part, more openness is always good. Wikileaks is only doing what everybody else should do."

Angela quickly jumped in, seeing the conversation getting uncomfortably heated, and changed the topic to the latest play at the Bedlam, her favorite anarchist hangout. And, for my part, I was happy to see the subject dropped. Bill and I had similar overall political interests, but very different ways to approach them, and in this case, a vastly different view of what constituted 'freedom of information.' I had a sense that our freedoms, even as government workers or, more importantly, private citizens who are communicating about sensitive issues to government workers, included freedom to speak freely without fear of international publication of our words meant to be heard in private. I even thought that Wikileaks had no choice but to release all of what they had once they had it, but that the people who had stolen the files had done something abysmally wrong.

Finally, the conversation wound down, and unlike the old days when we may have filled up on coffee, or something, to keep going until dawn, yawning goodbyes were being said, when Bill asked, "So, are you interested. In helping with the protest?"

"I'll let you know," I replied.

"Sorry to push, but I'll need to know soon," he urged.

"You'll know tomorrow. So will everyone else."

A questioning look.

"I feel strongly that this conversation needs to be on my blog. Where everyone can read it. Check it tomorrow AM, Bill."

PS: Bill, sorry, I can't help you out with this one.

PPS: The preceding story was ENTIRELY MADE UP. There was no conversation about a radical protest at the "federal office building" in Saint Paul. The only part of this conversation that is even remotely real is this: A bunch of newly recruited Marines did indeed show up late one night in Harvard Square, attacking homeless people (and others). The rest if fiction. Oh, and Wikileaks really did release all that information. Bonus points if you can identify the theme of the names used in this story.

gregladen Sun, 11/28/2010 - 14:11

Tags

Politics

1960s radicals

wikileaks

Size of 91,000 documents

rallain — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:17:30 +0000

Size of 91,000 documents

Here is a quick one. One of the big news stories recently was this regarding WikiLeaks and the release of the Afghan War Diary. There could be tons of things to discuss regarding this - but I am not going to do that. The first thing that struck my mind was "over 91,000 documents". That seems like a lot.

If each one of these documents were printed on one page, how big would the stack of paper be?

I could just estimate this - fermi-problem style. But instead, I thought would use a stack of paper. Here is a pack of 500 sheets of paper.

Opening it, I can measure the thickness:

How thick is this stack? I am going to estimate the stack as 5.2 cm (I should use uncertainty here, but I just want a first estimate). This would put the thickness of one sheet at:

So, what would be the height of 91,000 pages?

Over 9 meters (31 feet) is one serious stack of paper. I would hope you wouldn't have to bind this. How tall would it look? Here is a picture of me standing outside with this stack.

Ok, one more thing. What if I downloaded these things and printed them out? How long would it take?

Take a look at cnet's top 5 printers. How fast do they print? Oddly, cnet doesn't list this for all printers. Ok, after some digging it looks like most have a speed of around 10 pages per minute. The Samsung ML-2525W says it has a print speed of up to 24 pages per minute. It also says it has a capacity of 250 sheets - this could be important also. How long would it take to print out these 250 sheets?

For 91,000 pages, I would need to change the paper tray 91,000/250 = 364 times. How long would it take to change the paper? I think with practice, I could get it around 15 seconds. This would give a total print time (assuming the time spent changing printer toner is small) of:

Homework

How much would this cost in printer toner?
If you used an ink-jet, how long would it take and how much would it cost (with paper)?
If you had to retype this, how long would it take?
How long would it take you to scan through these documents looking for something?

Be sure to turn in your homework on plain paper. If it has three-hole punch paper, I will take off points. If it is not stapled in the upper left corner, I will take off points.

rallain Mon, 08/09/2010 - 09:17

Tags

Wouldn't the weight of the paper compress the stack making it less than 9.5m?
Also, you would have to work in shifts to print it in 2.7 days because you need sleep. I also doubt that a person would be able to concentrate on such a task well, or might be in the bathroom when the paper needs to be changed, so it would be more than 2.7 days.

91,000 pages, assuming 300 words per page, with my my typing speed of 35 wpm:
(91000*300)/(35/60/24)=514.667 days.
772.00 days if I worked at it 16 hrs per day (2 8-hours shifts). 308 40-hour weeks. Just shy of six years. We can talk about the overtime. When did you need this done?

Toner for that Samsung ML-2525W is $61 for 2500 pgs. 91000/2500*61=$2220.40 without sales tax.

A case of paper is 24.99 (5000 sheets) 91000/5000 rounds up to 19 cases. 19*24.99 = $474.81 before sales tax.

total cost:
474.81 (paper)+2220.40 (toner)+149.99 (printer) = $2845.20 plus my wage and overtime (which is negotiable) plus overhead (utilities, office rent, etc.). I am sure I can get free shipping.

I read pretty quickly. I estimate I can scan a page really well in about 10 seconds. (91 000 * 10) / 3 600 = 252.777778 hours. 6.32 weeks at 40 hrs per week.

Aaron, got some free time today? Lol!

"If each one of these documents were printed on one page, how big would the stack of paper be?"

About half the size of the shit piled on my desk and nearby chairs?

Oh, I must be tired. I thought this was my online math class. Now if could just remember what blog I posted my history paper on.

The more pertinent question is, "Could God stack a pile of paper so high that Jesus couldn't read it?"

@Aaron: I doubt that the paper would compress much. Or rather, the ream of paper Dr Allain measured is pre compressed; the sheets were squeezed by several sets of rollers during production and I think the entire stack is squeezed before being wrapped. Once the paper is used it fluffs up a but as air gets between sheets, especially if there are any folds. The 9.5 meter estimate of the height of the pile is most likely an underestimate, since the top part would be looser than measured. Exactly how much looser would depend on exactly how the paper was handled.

Also, the printer speed used in the article is for small personal printers. Larger, high volume printers are much faster. From this 3-year old press release "The new enhanced speed Oce VarioStream 9000 version can print black- only pages at 1,350 per minute -- 60 percent faster than the existing version." Printing only would take a bit more than an hour (67.4 minutes.) I don't know how much paper it can hold, but I expect it's quite a bit, and most likely it's possible to add more without pausing the job.