EXPIRED: TheAmnSurveillanceState - PulitzerPrizeWinnerBartonGellman

.
Click here to view possible topics for future meetings. Participants of each monthly meeting vote for the topic of the next monthly meeting.

If you would like to suggest a topic, it is requested as a courtesy that your suggestion be posted here at least 24 hours in advance so that others will have time to give it proper consideration.

EXPIRATION. We have always had a rule that a Possible Topic remains active so long as it receives at least one vote every six meetings. However, if a possible-topic proposal contains a wealth of information that is worth preserving but has not received a vote for six consecutive meetings, it is retained but listed as “Expired."

**********************
SHORT-FUSE NOTICE

*****
EXPLANATION

Occasionally, a Proposed Topic for Future Meetings has a SHORT-TIME FUSE because a governmental unit is soliciting PUBLIC COMMENTS for a limited time period with a SPECIFIED DEADLINE.

Exhibit A would be the 8/5/2016 Proposed Topic entitled “Clone Rights -- Involuntary Soldiers, Sex Slaves, Human Lab Rats, Etc.”

We had already focused on this topic for our 4/9/2008 meeting more than 8 years ago when the PBS Newshour interviewed a Yale U. Biology Professor who had already created a “Chimaera” with 25% Human DNA and 75% Chimp DNA (Chimps are the animals that share the most DNA with humans).

The Yale U. Biology Professor stated that he was then (2008) in the process of creating a “Chimaera” with 50% Human DNA and 50% Chimp DNA, and that he planned to create in the near future (2008 et seq.) a “Chimaera” with 75% Human DNA and 25% Chimp DNA.

As our 4/9/2008 meeting materials posted on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org disclose, Gwen Ifill who conducted the interview, was oblivious to the issue of the Nazi’s definition of a Jew based on the percentage of Jewish heritage and the Ante-Bellum American South’s definition of African-American based on the percentage of Sub-Saharan-African heritage.

But, even more appallingly, Gwen Ifill failed to ask the obvious question = What happens if the 50%-50% “Chimaera” then already being created happens to exhibit as DOMINANT TRAITS 100% Human DNA and as RECESSIVE TRAITS 100% Chimp DNA!!! Which, of course, would mean that Yale U. was treating as a lab rat a “Chimaera” that is 100% Human!!!

Unfortunately, the 8/5/2016 Proposed Topic was prompted by a Proposal from the National Institute of Health (NIH) which appeared in The Federal Register of 8/5/2016 and which had a 9/6/2016 deadline for public comments!!!

So our 9/14/2016 meeting, which was the first for which our focus had not already been determined as of 8/5/2016 under our normal rules, was too late.

So the reason for inaugurating this Short-Fuse Notice Section is to provide a Special Heads Up that a Proposed Topic has a Public-Comment Deadline that will occur before the first regular meeting date at which the topic can be discussed -- so that any of our readers who want to comply with the Public-Comment Deadline can contact the Proposer of the Topic in order to confer with anyone else who may be considering comments by the deadline.

*****
PENDING SHORT-FUSE PROPOSALS

1. Re “Clone Rights -- Involuntary Soldiers, Sex Slaves, Human Lab Rats, Etc.” (proposed 8/5/2016), although the 9/6/2016 public-comment deadline of the National Institute of Health (NIH) has passed, this Topic Proposal is still active. PLEASE NOTE ATTACHED TO THIS PROPOSAL THE 1/29/2017 UPDATE ENTITLED0 “HUMAN-PIG CHIMERAS -- DECENT BEHAVIOR DESPITE OPEN BARN DOOR.”

2. Re “Destroying Great Salt Lake To Grow Low-Profit Hay For China” (proposed 9/27/2016), there is a 10/24/2016 public-comment deadline that will occur before our first possible regular meeting (11/16/2016) at which this Proposed Topic could be considered.
Post Reply
johnkarls
Posts: 2034
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

EXPIRED: TheAmnSurveillanceState - PulitzerPrizeWinnerBartonGellman

Post by johnkarls »

.
I propose that we that we read “Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State by three-time Pullitzer Prize Winner Barton Gellman (Penguin Press 5/19/2020 – 448 pages – $23.49 + shipping or $15.99 Kindle from Amazon.com).


**********
AMAZON DESCRIPTION (usually from the book’s fly cover)

"Engrossing. . . . Gellman [is] a thorough, exacting reporter . . . a marvelous narrator for this particular story, as he nimbly guides us through complex technical arcana and some stubborn ethical questions. . . . Dark Mirror would be simply pleasurable to read if the story it told didn’t also happen to be frighteningly real.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

From the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the New York Times bestseller Angler, the definitive master narrative of Edward Snowden and the modern surveillance state, based on unique access to Snowden and groundbreaking reportage around the world.

Edward Snowden touched off a global debate in 2013 when he gave Barton Gellman, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald each a vast and explosive archive of highly classified files revealing the extent of the American government’s access to our every communication. They shared the Pulitzer Prize that year for public service. For Gellman, who never stopped reporting, that was only the beginning. He jumped off from what Snowden gave him to track the reach and methodology of the U.S. surveillance state and bring it to light with astonishing new clarity. Along the way, he interrogated Snowden’s own history and found important ways in which myth and reality do not line up. Gellman treats Snowden with respect, but this is no hagiographic account, and Dark Mirror sets the record straight in ways that are both fascinating and important.

Dark Mirror is the story that Gellman could not tell before, a gripping inside narrative of investigative reporting as it happened and a deep dive into the machinery of the surveillance state. Gellman recounts the puzzles, dilemmas and tumultuous events behind the scenes of his work – in top secret intelligence facilities, in Moscow hotel rooms, in huddles with Post lawyers and editors, in Silicon Valley executive suites, and in encrypted messages from anonymous accounts. Within the book is a compelling portrait of national security journalism under pressure from legal threats, government investigations, and foreign intelligence agencies intent on stealing Gellman’s files. Throughout Dark Mirror, Gellman wages an escalating battle against unknown adversaries who force him to mimic their tradecraft in self-defense.

With the vivid and insightful style that is the author’s trademark, Dark Mirror is a true-life spy tale about the surveillance-industrial revolution and its discontents. Along the way, with the benefit of fresh reporting, it tells the full story of a government leak unrivaled in drama since All the President’s Men.


**********
AUTHOR BIO (from the Harvard Club of NYC - please see the next section on his 7/21/2020 presentation)

Barton Gellman is an American journalist and bestselling author known for his reports on the September 11 attacks, on Dick Cheney’s vice presidency and on the global surveillance disclosure. Beginning in June 2013 he led The Washington Post’s coverage of the U.S. National Security Agency, based on top secret documents provided to him by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowdon. He is the author, most recently, of Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State and Angler: the Cheney Vice Presidency.

His awards include the Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy for documentary filmmaking, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Gellman is based at the Century Foundation, where he is a senior fellow, and also holds an appointment as Visiting Lecturer and Author in Residence at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. From 2015–2017, Gellman was also a fellow at the Center for Information technology at Princeton.

He earned a BA from Princeton and a masters degree from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.


**********
NYC HARVARD CLUB ZOOM INTERVIEW OF BARTON GELLMAN – TUE JULY 21 @ 10 AM MDT

If you would like to participate and are not a member of the NYC Harvard Club, I can register you for the event.

johnkarls
Posts: 2034
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Administrative Post

Post by johnkarls »

.
This is an administrative post to maintain active (vs. expired) proposals in the reverse chronological order in which they were proposed.

Post Reply

Return to “Section 3 – Possible Topics for Future Meetings”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests