Tag Archives: War

Yottabytes and the National Security State

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The current New York Review of Books has an article by James Bamford, “Who’s in Big Brother’s Database” that reviews the new book by Mathew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency . I have gotten in line at my local library to read this book and will make further comments after that.

Meanwhile, the Bamford article mentions the construction boom at NSA (National Security Agency) with a doubling of its headquarters and million sq. feet of data storage in the Utah desert costing some $2 billion. This to store the data from all of NSA’s spying that by 2015 will be spoken of in terms of yottabytes.

Now, before you think that Bamford is mainlining old Star Wars characters, a yotta- is the largest large number prefix officially recognized in the scientific lexicon. At our house we are approaching 1/2 Terabyte (1012) in our total digital stores, mostly photos. Really large corporate databases are measured in Petabytes (1015). A Yotta is 1024.

Are you feeling safer?

Do you really think that any email sent or telephone conversation you have had since 2002 or 2003 is not logged in the vast secret Security State Apparatus??

I guess that a National Security State (Empire) that has had over 800 military bases throughout the world (see an earlier posting on this topic) to assure our influence elsewhere can not resist the opportunity the state of so-called war we have been in since 2001 to penetrate into every American’s life.


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Stumbling on a Piece of American History and Americana

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Karen and I were off on an errand to Radio Shack yesterday about noontime. In the parking lot was an armada of motorcycles. There were lots of big round middle-aged and older men (predominantly) dressed in motorcycle regalia huddled around one person who was speaking to them. We ventured over and asked a woman at the back of the crowd, “What’s this all about?”. She informed us that this was a Patriot Guard accompanying the remains of an unknown civil war veteran to Saratoga for burial.

Below, you can see a couple of photos  I made at the event as they were organizing for a prompt noon departure from Hudson.

For more details here is an article from the Saratogian.

Excerpted from the Saratogian article of 9/16/9:

By PAUL POST

SARATOGA SPRINGS — April Weygand couldn’t explain what drew her to view the flag-draped coffin of an unknown Civil War soldier.

Like dozens of others who turned out Wednesday, the Wilton resident just wanted to pay her respects.

The Union soldier’s remains will be buried today with full military honors at Gerald B.H. Solomon-Saratoga National Cemetery, exactly 147 years after his death at the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.

……..

A Military Forces Honor Guard made the 862-mile round trip to Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Md., to retrieve the soldier, arriving in Saratoga Springs with a full police escort and more than 50 Patriot Guard motorcycle riders.

……

A pine coffin, typical of the Civil War era, was covered with an American flag and lay in state for public viewing at the New York Military Museum on Lake Avenue. Civil War re-enactors portraying 125th New York Regiment comprised the official Union honor guard.

……

The soldier’s remains will leave the museum at 9:20 a.m. today en route to the cemetery for 10 a.m. ceremonies led by Major General Joseph Taluto, adjutant general for New York National Guard. The soldier will be buried with artifacts found with his remains, including several uniform buttons and a “U.S.” waste belt plate.

He’ll be the first unknown soldier and the first Civil War soldier buried at Saratoga National Cemetery. For the first time in nearly a century and a half, he’ll no longer be alone, however, as he joins the 8,622 veterans already buried there from World War I to the War on Terror.

The soldier’s remains were discovered last October by a hiker at Antietam, generating nationwide interest, especially among Civil War enthusiasts. Uniform buttons identify him as being from New York, and skeletal data places him between 17 and 19 years old. Otherwise, there is little known information about him.

……

Patriot Guard Riders09162009-meeting09162009-casketPatriotRiders-09152009.flv.mp4

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Armies and Orchids – a new poem by Linda Larson

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Armies and Orchids

The little white posts
Stuck in the soil
Markers naming the orchids
At the flower show

Mimic acres of white crosses
Sturdy and upright
Over bones as fragile as
Ruby’s Dragonfly.

Orchids, deceptive,
Feed only on air.
A rich man’s hobby
Nonetheless, crosses

Bedecked, celebrating holidays
With bright, cheerful flags waving
Hello from those consumed
In battle, at War Meister’s

Command, Nightfire,
Simple Pleasures, Shoot or be shot.
Origami cranes,
Piled high at Hiroshima

Truman’s trade off in lives,
The Emperor’s Saffron Delicacy,
Pacific fang,
Its unspeakable retort.

Babies caught in the
Tiger’s Jaw of history, spat out
In its grinding wheel as
Fossils of one century

Name a blood-spattered
Specimen after Rasputin
Sorcerer’s Kiss, and I
When my ship comes in

As one day it must
Will name a red as deep
As pockets left by Hellfire missiles
For Bush’s war, Soldiers’ Dust.

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