The campaign to tar Snowden and Greenwald and help the NSA

[JackRiddler]

From the other thread, latest entry:

5 Unnerving Documents Showing Ties Between Greenwald, Omidyar & Booz Allen Hamilton

UPDATE: Greenwald has published this response, which is appreciated. It is certainly a step in the right direction and he is correct that it isn't fair to single him out when Poitras has equal holding of docs. Let's keep the dialogue going.

http://utdocuments.blogspot.com/2014/01 ... first.html

12/29/2013

These are the facts:

1. Omidyar is funding a $250 million dollar new media venture with Glenn Greenwald based on the Snowden documents.

2. Omidyar Network and Booz Allen Hamilton are both partners/investors of InnoCentive.

3. Omidyar Network and a member of the Board of Directors of Booz Allen Hamilton, Philip Odeen, are both major shareholders of Globant. Sal Giambanco, a partner at Omidyar Network, is on the Board of Advisors of Globant. Philip Odeen is on the Board of Directors of Globant.

4. Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, Michael Kent, Pranay Chulet and Patricia Sosrodjojo have all worked in strategic positions at both Omidyar Network and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Here are the questions:

Is this all circumstantial evidence?

Do you even know what evidence means? Evidence of what? These are a string of potentially relevant facts, and I'd say highly relevant ones, if you actually made a case for something. Which is what? That you can see in the future that the new media venture run by Greenwald and funded by Omidyar (First Look Media) will be spinning stories, engaging in omissions, or presenting propaganda on behalf of Omidyar's other interests or the interests of people you are associating with Omidyar in the above list? Congratulations on your clairvoyance! You may end up being right, eventually; and even if this won't be the case, once First Look is operating, it will doubtless be possible every day to argue exactly that, no matter what First Look does. And you'll be there to do it! (First Look could publish stories that lead to the arrests of all of the above mentioned characters for treason, and someone on RI and within the conspiracy merchandising community would still be saying it was a limited hangout or a set-up for hero-worshipping naifs such as myself to fall for.)

Are these connections acceptable or not given the gravity and sensitivity of the global surveillance situation?

What do you even mean? Can you try saying it in English?

Has a revolving door of corporations with government ties regained a degree of control over the documents that were leaked by Snowden?

Coffee-snorter of the day. Who had control of these documents before Snowden?

What are the full intentions of First Post (NewCo, the $250 million dollar new media venture between Greenwald, billionaire Pierre Omidyar and others)?

Great questions. Have you tried asking them?

Is there a conflict of interest between Omidyar Network, Booz Allen Hamilton, Sal Giambanco (Partner of Omidyar Network and Globant), Philip Odeen (Partner of Booz Allen Hamilton and Globant), Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, the NewCo & the National Security community?

Do you read your own writing? "Conflict of interest," meaning an adversarial relationship between Snowden and Greenwald and the new Greenwald venture on the one hand and all these MIC people you list, on the other, would be a good thing, see?

I kind of understand the thesis you're struggling to express, but don't feel particularly charitable to provide editing (and thus guessing) services for you.

What does Edward Snowden think of these connections and the massive profit being generated from his disclosures? Is he upset about it or is he getting a slice of the pie? Ed! Let us know what's going on!

Care to show the books on this "massive profit being generated from his disclosures"? Care to at least make an argument for an eventual business model that might generate such profit, since of course no profit whatsoever has been generated from his disclosures until now?

You are a disgusting slug, by the way. No question.

When will the rest of the documents will be released? Will any be withheld and why?

Did you ever ask this of the NSA?

Where do you draw the line between 'non-publishable' leaked intel and information the public has a right to know?

Did you ever ask this of the NSA?

Why aren't these questions being deeply engaged by mainstream press?

Coffee snorter Number Two.

Could it because a large part of the (always deeply engaged) mainstream press is occupied instead with baying for a drone attack to provide the vaporized blood and guts of the traitorous Snowden and Greenwald, those America-hating, Soviet spies?

Why is most of the alternative press ignoring it?

Produce a survey to support that "the alternative press" (what is this, the era of Ramparts and the Village Voice?) is "ignoring it."

Translation: I see lots of bullshit stories like yours at the moment.

"To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." - Voltaire

Oooh. Generic wisdom. Win!

Okay, next part starts what might have been an article of actual reporting on open-source documents about Booz Allen and others, if it hadn't been preceded by and wrapped further in all this bullshit and innuendo. (Remember, I'm only pointing to all the self-discrediting features and asides in this writing, so don't blame me for their presence. Like Edmonds' expression of prejudice against gays in an article supposedly about Snowden, Greenwald and the NSA documents, such matters are not irrelevant if an author chooses to include them.)

Step back for a minute and look below at this publicly accessible document showing cooperation in "Innocentive" between Booz Allen Hamilton (Snowden's former employer)

Former is the point, isn't it? Was someone who had never been employed within the MIC going to do the job of getting these documents out for you? (Anonymous or other hackers might be able to do that, perhaps, yes. Though ideally you wouldn't even know who had actually done it, in that case, and they might still have MIC connections. But in this case, it is not a hacker but this former insider who acquired the documents and has released some of them.)

and Omidyar Network (Funding Greenwald in a $250 million media venture based around Snowden docs).

Omidyar Network is not Omidyar Group. The venture is not "based around Snowden docs." That is your interpretation, which is based on what? Nothing? Yup: Nothing. Once again, your mental chain of associations is supposed to constitute evidence, or an argument.

Is it not unsettling that we are seeing these two names on the same page in a collaborative context anywhere at all?

You and Hitler. Isn't it unsettling to see these two names together on the same page?

It doesn't help that InnoCentive happens to be a global data mining enterprise. It also doesn't help that In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm, is DIRECTLY next to Omidyar Network on this document.

Could you learn the power of just writing this like a reporter, without the guide to how to think? "Innocentive is a global data mining enterprise. In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA, is listed next to Omidyar Network on p. X of this document..." Try it! You'll be astonished at the power of some of your thinking, shorn of the extra, insecure bullshit and innuendo.

It rings of Operation Mockingbird, the covert CIA program to influence media.

Could be. Could also not be.

Do you have documents like those that came out of the Church Committee and Bernstein's investigation to establish the existence and history of Mockingbird as a central CIA campaign to directly influence and run hundreds of media producers; rather than documents that show one part of a set of business interests doing business elsewhere with another set of business interests, and not yet directly tied to, let alone running, the future Greenwald media venture you are trying to preemptively smear?

Let's also remember that In-Q-Tel has investment ties to many popular social media sites today, most of whom are implicated in the PRISM slides.

Let's. And let's wait and see any production from First Look before we preemptively imagine it as the PR subsidiary of Booz Allen, shall we? Can we do that?

This is not in itself proof of collusion between Omidyar and Booz Allen Hamilton, but it is further evidence of the close ties in human resources and 'talent'. They are playing in the same ballpark, and that is unsettling.

I wish these people revealing secrets from within the MIC could have just walked out of a Buddhist monastery where they had spent the last 30 years without having had any contact whatsoever to the MIC. Then I could trust them! Why can't I have that? Why can't they spring fully-formed from a shell, like Sibel Edmonds, who wasn't an employee of the FBI (except that she was) and who doesn't hang out with any suspicious characters like the Reagan administration official and Pinochet coup cheerleader Paul Craig Roberts?

See how this form of association smearing works? It's easy!

But a lot of this isn't even association. It's more on the level of this: Everywhere I walk in New York City, I see bankers and rich people and cops, often right next to protesters and radicals, sometimes talking to them. It's unsettling me! Help!

The recent series of articles by Boiling Frogs Post are very forthright in requesting specific answers from the mentioned parties about these issues (linked below).

Coffee-snorter number three.

Instead he calls Sibel Edmonds a lunatic

After she spent the first 10 manuscript pages of her rant (give or take) calling him everything imaginable, repeating the same ad hominem insults over and over, especially insofar as these play to prejudices against g-g-gay Jewish lawyers and "committed Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries" (which is Edmonds' presumably illuminating image of what it means that Greenwald delivered a speech to a conference on Socialism).

But you know, as Allen Dulles said, nobody reads. Let's pretend Edmonds didn't do that, and that, out of nowhere, Greenwald suddenly and viciously said something generically nasty about her!

Which is untrue, by the way: she's not a lunatic. With regard to Greenwald, she is a vindictive smear artist with a rational strategy, if not a particularly original or appealing one.

Oh look, above I said Allen Dulles. And Glenn Greenwald! Those names are awfully close to each other on the same page! It unsettles me, shouldn't it unsettle you?

Is it possible for Silicon Valley VC firms with ties to the NSA and CIA to fund honest independent media ventures that support whistleblowers?

Good question! Are there any Silicon Valley VC firms with ties to the etc. etc. doing so? I thought some guy who made a lot of money at such firms, Omidyar, has decided to give it a try by investing said money, now his own money, in a media venture. Bizarrely, like money tends to be, it is fungible. Once invested, it may not even be his money any more, depending on the conditions of the deal. Maybe he's for real (i.e., in this stated intention to do an honest independent media venture). Maybe not. What are the actual conditions under which First Look is going to operate?

Let's not ask that, it's confusing. Just look at this list: Omidyar! Booz! Soros!? Katy Perry. See?! I found a name next to Omidyar's on a list, and I googled it and saw it was next to Genghis Khan's.

And I think someone here thinks it's essential to assassinate the Omidyar-financed Greenwald-run media venture in advance, lest it provide any competition to the kind of quality reporting we see on the blogosphere, such as this wonderful piece.

Time will tell.

Wise. Wise, man. Wow.

By the way, some tips on how to compile a potentially decent list of open-source primary materials for researchers, then fuck it over and discredit it by associating it with certain names on the same page. Just add these to your links list:

rense
Wayne Madsen
infowars.com

Same page, I tell you!

Fnord. Hitler. Greenwald. Edmonds. Hitler!!!

Unsettling.

.

[Searcher08]

My Snide-o-meter blew a fuze from reading that post.
It read just like Edmond's Boiling Frogs original in tone.

[JackRiddler]

My Snide-o-meter blew a fuze from reading that post.
It read just like Edmond's Boiling Frogs original in tone.

Sorry, I should have gone all Jesus-y and turned the other cheek? That blog post is an odious work, on a level with the worst McCarthy would have had to offer, and you've got a problem that I wasn't nice in kicking its ass?

Fact is, the NSA is a spearhead in U.S. imperialism's war on the world and on whatever is left of democracy. And now, a segment of the conspiracy merchandising community who have their heads the furthest up their own bungholes have decided to dedicate themselves to providing cover fire.

I don't give a shit about what documents Snowden and Greenwald may be stowing away! All that matters is that, with the few (actually many) documents they've published, they've blown this issue open to the point where even in the Congress, a motion to defund the warrantless surveillance programs fell only a few votes short.

Those who now distract by pushing on Snowden and Greenwald, instead of pushing on the NSA, are objectively helping the enemy. You think this is a coincidence, that we're talking about what S&G are hiding, instead of what the NSA is doing?! Two months after Alexander himself intervened in the discourse to make exactly this point, that it is somehow Snowden and Greenwald who are hiding things?!

Snowden and Greenwald aren't employees of the taxpayer. The NSA is. Snowden and Greenwald aren't running the surveillance state on behalf of the corporations and a worldwide empire. The NSA, CIA and the rest of the Alphabet Murder Agencies are. The contractors who make up the private side of the surveillance and national security state are. Where are the demands that they throw open their books? Hm? What are they hiding? What are their unstated motivations?

Apparently some people have more of a problem with Booz Allen Hamilton having formerly employed Snowden than they do with Booz Allen Hamilton actually still running the fucking surveillance state that is up their fucking bungholes (along with their heads).

It is to laugh & rage at the Edmonds and similar foolishness that has such fine RI minds in its grip.

.

[JackRiddler]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/24/ ... wden/print

Weekend Edition January 24-26, 2014

Obama Goes Beyond Orwell
Demonizing Edward Snowden

by JEFF MACKLER

Thirty years after George Orwell’s futuristic and predictive novel, “1984,” Orwell’s 1949 police state prediction is here in full bloom.

Wikipedia’s description of “1984” is apt indeed. Readers will forgive my bracketed insertions aimed at bringing Orwell’s Oceania to life: “Life in [the United States] the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public [Truman Show] mind control, accomplished with a political system euphemistically named [democracy] English Socialism (Ingsoc), which is administrated by a privileged [Democratic and Republican] Inner Party elite. Yet they too are subordinated to the totalitarian cult of personality of Big Brother, the deified [one percent] Party leader who rules with a philosophy that decries individuality and reason as [advocacy of privacy and civil liberties] thoughtcrimes; thus the people of Oceania are subordinated to a supposed [“national security” state] collective greater good.”

Not to belabor the Orwellian analogy, but Washington, D.C., Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon in his Dec. 16, 68-page opinion demanding an end of blanket government surveillance couldn’t resist describing as “almost Orwellian” today’s national security state. Said Leon, “I cannot imagine a more indiscriminate and arbitrary invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on almost every single citizen for the purpose of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval.”

President Barack Obama’s Jan. 17 speech before the Justice Department didn’t convince anyone that substantive changes are on the agenda regarding the government’s now admitted U.S. and worldwide surveillance of virtually every phone, e-mail, and other public and private communication system.

With the exception of a promise that a handful or so of select, still unnamed heads of state who are deemed to represent “friendly and allied nations,” no one, including top government officials around the world, would be exempt from National Security Administration (NSA) spy operations. BIG BROTHER Obama—who has been mercilessly exposed by the ongoing revelations of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden—felt compelled to affirm a previously and rigorously denied truth that every ruling-class leader in the world takes as an article of faith: Spying on everyone is fully justified. How else to keep a privileged tiny minority elite in power while exploiting and oppressing the vast majority?

Spying on one’s allies and enemies alike is absolutely necessary to defend the “national security” interests of the ruling rich everywhere. The so-called war on terror is nothing but today’s overt pretext to do what has always been done to advance the interests of the few against the many as well as the few against their competing elites everywhere.

Following Obama’s defense of the NSA’s “robust” spy operations, presidential adviser David Phouffe crudely uttered Obama’s basic argument, “There are people out there every day who are plotting. The notion that we would put down a tool that would protect people here in America is hard to fathom.”

No data was presented to prove this assertion. Indeed, of the tens if not hundreds of trillions or thousands of trillions (quadrillions) of NSA-intercepted communications, the Obama administration has to date proved incapable of presenting a single example of a successful operation that has prevented an act of terror. Or if I am exaggerating a bit, perhaps it is true that less than a handful of cases have been presented, albeit most refuted by the facts, to justify U.S. spy and surveillance operations against the whole world.

Within hours of President Obama’s speech, the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees—Republican Mike Roger and Democrat Dianne Feinstein—met briefly with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then issued a joint statement supporting the government’s spy program.

A few days later, these same officials and others asserted that Snowden had acted, or might have acted, in collaboration with Russian and/or Chinese spy agencies in collecting classified government files. A Jan. 20 New York Times article headlined, “Lawmakers Suggest Snowden Link To Russia Before He Leaked Data,” went to considerable length to indicate that no confirmation of these charges has been presented. Two days later, The Times reported, “Officials at both the NSA and the FBI have said their investigations have turned up no evidence that Mr. Snowden was aided by others.”

Yet the notion that Snowden went far beyond exposing the virtually universal nature of U.S. government surveillance operations was no accident, especially when Snowden’s alleged crimes now include releasing critical military secrets to the Russians and Chinese.

“Even if he did not intentionally do so,” argued several U.S. spymasters, they remained convinced that Russian and Chinese technology would likely have been employed to retrieve Snowden’s files from his five computers. No doubt, upping the ante from Snowden’s widely supported opposition to blanket spying on the world to Snowden being a Russian agent is seen by BIG BROTHER as justification for the continuation of all NSA spy programs and the further persecution and prosecution of this courageous whistleblower.

Snowden’s response was published in The New Yorker. It’s not the smears that mystify me,” he said. “It’s that outlets report statements that the speakers themselves admit are sheer speculation.”

One might wonder, however, just what harmful military secrets so worry Snowden’s would-be persecutors. He did, after all, release President Obama’s order mandating cyberwar against any target. Perhaps Snowden has new military information on the illegal 10-year U.S.-funded Contra War against Nicaragua, or the U.S.-organized military coups that brought the Shah to power and stole Iran’s oil in 1953, or the 1954 U.S.-organized coup that removed President Arbenz in Guatemala, or the U.S.-backed neo-fascist 1973 Pinochet coup in Chile, or the U.S. invasions of Grenada and the Dominican Republic, or the 1.5 million murdered in Iraq based on U.S. intelligence regarding “weapons of mass destruction,” or the 4 million murdered in Vietnam based on the manufactured Tonkin Bay incident, or maybe even secret U.S. intelligence regarding who used sarin gas in Syria, or the U.S. deployment of death-squad armies in Afghanistan, or U.S. military actions aimed at the re-colonization of Africa today, or military information on the U.S. drone wars that murdered some 5000 civilians in Pakistan?

But alas, we already know most of these atrocities in some detail. Would Snowden violate any moral principle on earth if he were to expose yet new war crimes committed by the Empire?

Obama’s speech did promise to solicit congressional input regarding possible changes, but no one considered that any such changes would be substantial. The president also suggested that the massive trove of everyone’s communications might be transferred from government computers to “private hands” or to some other unspecified “independent” agency. Perhaps a few more judges might be consulted before tapping into everyone’s personal communications, said the president. He neglected to mention that the previous panels of secret FISA Court judges had approved all NSA spying requests.

In each and every instance, however, whatever constraints Obama suggested would, he insisted, be negated in cases of “emergency” or “national security” concerns—the very mantra that every government employs to lie, cheat, and steal with impunity. Even The New York Times (Jan. 19, 2014) felt compelled to note, “The assurances Mr. Obama offered his critics may be made more nebulous, by exceptions written into any new policies” (emphasis added).

A few weeks earlier, The Times published a lead editorial enumerating the government’s blatant violations of elementary civil liberties while urging the Obama administration to put an end to Snowden’s seemingly never-ending and shocking revelations that almost daily undermine its credibility. The Times urged Obama to grant Snowden clemency. With an estimated 1.7 million government spy documents in his possession, the newspaper’s editors reasoned, in accord with the Negligence Law maxim, “the risk to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed,” a Snowden who was free, perhaps after having received a mild slap on the wrist, is a lesser threat to ruling-class interests than having to endure countless more exposés of government wrongdoing—crimes would be more accurate.

The deal that The Times envisions would be that Snowden return the government’s documents, with a promise that he and others to whom he sent the documents would publish no more, in return for an agreement that he would be free from any government prosecution.

Coming from perhaps the nation’s most important newspaper of record, which often expresses the views of important sections of the U.S. ruling class, The Times proposal has stirred considerable controversy. NSA history buffs in these spy matters have countered with the hope or opinion that Snowden, “like all spies before him,” would soon tire in his efforts; or perhaps disappear from public view, like other “spies” before him; or become mentally imbalanced due to prolonged isolation and depression; or perhaps, like others before him, become an alcoholic and pass into oblivion with no further damage done.

These are the hopes and dreams of the hard-nosed secret service cloak and dagger elements who daily pursue U.S. capitalism’s brutal course with impunity. But few are convinced by this argument, if for no other reason that the magnitude of Snowden’s files is unprecedented, his political course is increasingly to the left, and his political development is buttressed by possessing future time bombs can be exploded at will, thus further alienating the vast majority from any notion that the U.S. government represents them. The latest polls indicate that the credibility of the U.S. Congress has reached historic lows, with less than 9 percent indicating confidence in the government’s credibility.

Further, no one fully knows who else might have the secret documents in their possession. In a Jan. 18 television interview with Glenn Greenwald, for example, Bill Maher, host of HBO’s popular “Real Time” news/comedy show, stated that Greenwald had physical possession of Snowden’s 1.7 million document trove. While Greenwald, a staffwriter for the British Guardian newspaper now living in exile in Brazil, stated that the number 1.7 million was an exaggeration, he did not deny that he had possession and indeed was in collaboration with Snowden.

At least some of these documents similarly appear to be in the possession of The New York Times, the Washington Post, the German news magazine Der Spiegel, and others. If this proves to be the case, the U.S. government would have to secure their agreement along with Snowden’s.

What was most telling about the Maher-Greenwald interview, however, was their exchange regarding “national security.” Here Greenwald boldly asserted two interrelated propositions. First, he insisted that as a journalist, he was as qualified, if not more so, than the U.S. government to determine what constituted a legitimate “national security” issue. Greenwald went further, asserting that in the event he believed that any of the Snowden revelations did endanger the government’s “national security” interests, he would self-censor. How he would do was not clear. Greenwald, like Snowden, at best hails from American liberal traditions wherein a semblance of credibility is given to the government’s “national security” concerns.

In the case of The New York Times, its assigned Snowden reporters all agree beforehand to submit whatever they propose to publish to the CIA or NSA directly. These professional guardians of what is good or bad for the U.S. ruling class are thus accorded the “right” to keep secret at least some government crimes from public view.

No doubt Chelsea’s Manning’s 2007 leaking of a 39-minute helicopter cockpit video of “go to” U.S. Baghdad soldiers murdering 11 innocent civilians and a Reuters news reporter, was sufficient to qualify as material that required censorship. Manning is serving 30 years on charges of espionage for exposing this truth.

“Too big to fail,” the ruling class maxim adopted near unanimously by Congress when it bailed out the nation’s thieving banks, insurance companies, and leading corporations to the tune of $20 trillion, or perhaps $30 trillion, should also be seen as a necessary “national security” dictum employed to protect the nation’s ruling elite.

Similarly, J.P. Morgan Chase’s $2.6 billion slap-on-the-wrist fine for looking the other way when Bernard Madoff and his Ponzi scheme associates fleeced investors of qualitatively more than that sum should be added to the list of items in which “national security” interests trump human decency. J.P. Morgan’s fines for violating the law by lying to the government regarding the value of its near worthless mortgage bonds last year totaled a pathetic $14 billion, with no prison time served. Again, “national security” necessitates that real crimes go virtually unpunished. J.P. Morgan Chase, the names of the merged banking interests of the Morgan and Rockefeller families, literally paid a few pennies or less on the dollar in comparison to their $4 trillion holdings, not to mention with regard to the money that it is said to have stolen.

Snowden’s latest “crime” is the incredible January 2014 revelation, again via the government’s own documents, that the NSA and its ilk physically installed microchips in hundreds of thousands of computers before they were delivered to the unwary purchasers. Worse still, Snowden’s revelations demonstrated that since 2008 NSA spies installed countless permanent “bugs” in countless computers around the world via a refined radio wave technology that requires no physical contact with the victim’s computer. Zap! And your computer is wired for permanent government perusal!

One couldn’t help but recall President Obama’s visit to China last year when he sought to inform Chinese leaders that the U.S. makes a fundamental distinction between spying to defend its “national security interests” and spying to steal scientific, industrial, economic, or intellectual property secrets. The latter categories, insisted Obama, were off limits, if not morally repugnant to the “democratic principles” that Obama claims to champion. The Chinese were said to have responded that national security and economic security were one and the same—inseparable. No doubt, Obama’s platitudes aside, no self-respecting American capitalist would disagree.

But that exchange took place in 2013. Snowden’s documents released by Der Spiegel and others in early January 2014 reveal that the NSA knows no such self-restraints. Undoubtedly, the well-trained, and surely “morally” instructed secret NSA radio wave implanters will refrain from using their wondrous technology to gain unfair advantage over their capitalist competitors! We are a nation of laws after all! Everyone knows, for example, that in the stock market “insider trading” is banned! Corporate secrets are therefore safe and sound. It’s just an accident, of course, that a handful of billionaire investors just happen to guess right at the exact moment when stocks rise or fall.

Bloomberg News told the story in a May 11, 2011, article on the subject. “Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge-fund tycoon and Galleon Group LLC co-founder at the center of a U.S. insider-trading crackdown, was found guilty of all 14 counts against him in the largest illegal stock-tipping case in a generation.”

The article reported that billionaire Raj had “engaged in a seven-year conspiracy to trade on inside information from corporate executives, bankers, consultants, traders and directors of public companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS). He gained $63.8 million, prosecutors said.” One can only wonder if Raj’s friends, the “corporate executives, bankers, consultants, traders and directors of public companies, including Goldman Sachs Group” knew that they were giving their billionaire associate, Raj, illegal information!

The federal prosecutor in the case, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, told the media that illegal trading on Wall Street was “rampant.” But again, sending this “rampant” crew of thieves to jail is not in the “national security interests” of the U.S. government. It’s sufficient to send a select few to prison for a few years perhaps, only to be quietly pardoned when the departing president exercises his right to “free the rich.” Here, I won’t bother to research the names of those criminals who received a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card from capitalism’s highest elected officials.

I have always been fascinated by those Star Trek episodes that include Captain James Kirk and Spock fighting courageously against one or another of their infamous enemies, whether they are from the Klingon Empire or from other evil galaxies. But just when the Enterprise hero’s predicament seems almost irreversible, someone throws the switch and the hologram reality instantly disappears. Spock and Kirk open a door and return safely to the real world.

In truth, we live in a hologram world of sorts, created by an Evil Empire that justifies its looting of the planet by ever invoking its “national security interests.” In this name—today the war on terror, yesterday the war against the “communist menace”—every conceivable evil is tolerated, if not promoted. Turning off the hologram switch, the false world that the ruling elite creates to justify its minority rule, is a prerequisite to organizing the vast majority to challenge its subordinate status.

Edward Snowden’s revelations have gone a long way to lifting the veil of secrecy and foul play that is the norm in capitalist America. He has hastened the time when BIG BROTHER’S rules of engagement—and all forms of ruling-class oppression—are brought to an end forever.

Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and all other courageous whistleblowers deserve our full support, along with all other victims of capitalist injustice. Their contribution to humanity’s cause is immense and brings us closer to a time when the “national security” interests of the few give way to the collective interests of all the earth’s peoples, who have everything to gain by ridding the planet of capitalist horrors in all their manifestations.

Jeff Mackler is the National Secretary of Socialist Action.

[slimmouse]

Jack, Ive kindly cut out the eloquence of your appraisals for the larger good of humanity.

Ultimately you see, its kinda like us againt the morons.

Which side are you on?

[JackRiddler]

Just in case anyone wants to talk about the subject...

Further to Nordic's spectacular misunderstanding of what it means that Rusbridger was hauled in and given a public show-interrogation by a state threatening to invoke terrorism charges...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/ ... 0T20131203

LONDON, Dec 3 (Reuters) - British police are examining whether Guardian newspaper staff should be investigated for terrorism offences over their handling of data leaked by Edward Snowden, Britain's senior counter-terrorism officer said on Tuesday.

The disclosure came after Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, summoned to give evidence at a parliamentary inquiry, was accused by lawmakers of helping terrorists by making top secret information public and sharing it with other news organisations.

That might have been more than theater. See bolded section below.

The Guardian was among several newspapers which published leaks from U.S. spy agency contractor Snowden about mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain's eavesdropping agency GCHQ.

Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick

(wow that's a hell of a name, sorry can't help saying that)

who heads London's Specialist Operations unit, told lawmakers the police were looking to see whether any offences had been committed, following the brief detention in August of a man carrying data on behalf of a Guardian journalist.

Security officials have said Snowden's data included details of British spies and its disclosure would put lives at risk. Rusbridger told the committee his paper had withheld that information from publication.

"It appears possible once we look at the material that some people may have committed offences," Dick said. "We need to establish whether they have or they haven't."

David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald who brought the Snowden leaks to world attention, was questioned under anti-terrorism law when he landed at London's Heathrow Airport en route from Berlin to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, and computer material he was carrying was seized.

Lawmakers put it to Rusbridger that he had committed an offence under Section 58A of the Terrorism Act which says it is a crime to publish or communicate any information about members of the armed forces or intelligence services.

"It isn't only about what you've published, it's about what you've communicated. That is what amounts, or can amount, to a criminal offence," said committee member Michael Ellis.

Asked later by Ellis whether detectives were considering Section 58A offences, Dick said: "Yes, indeed we are looking at that."

That's fucking heavy. The UK is threatening to prosecute the editor of The Guardian for keeping the public informed about what the state is up to.

This, I submit, is about a thousand times more important than whether Greenwald has shared whatever files he has access to adequately with Tarzie and Edmonds. And clearly, if he were to release everything at once, there are those in power who would want to invoke the terrorism and espionage statutes.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Guardian published a letter of support from Carl Bernstein, the U.S. journalist who helped expose the Watergate scandal in the 1970s.

Bernstein, 69, said Rusbridger's appearance before the committee was a "dangerously pernicious" attempt by British authorities to shift the focus of the surveillance debate from excessive government secrecy to the conduct of the press.

STORED SECURELY

During his testimony, Rusbridger defended his decision to publish the leaks and said the paper had used less than one percent of the information and kept the rest stored securely.

"We have published I think 26 documents so far out of the 58,000 we've seen, or 58,000 plus. So we have made very selective judgements about what to print," he said. "We have published no names and we have lost control of no names."

Guardian articles over the last six months have shown that the United States and some of its allies, including Britain, were monitoring phone, email and social media communications on a previously unimagined scale.

There you go.

And why have they only published less than one percent of the information, some bloggers demand to know?

As if the possibility that the answer was "because that's how far they got before the state could make a criminal case against them, which is pretty impressive, considering," had never fucking occurred to them.

But it does explain why Greenwald left.

Looks like The Guardian did something that inadvertently created a legal opening for the state. So Greenwald took the docs and left. That protects the documents, mostly. But The Guardian's also less likely to face the music if it no longer has what the state wants.

So. They outsmarted the state, did something no one else was willing to do, and preserved the documents so that they could keep doing it, with a bare minimum of personal drama, showboating and carrying on throughout.

Let's kick them repeatedly.

The revelations provoked diplomatic rows and stirred an international debate on civil liberties. Britain's security chiefs said the leaks were a boon to the country's enemies who were "rubbing their hands with glee".

Snowden, who is believed to have downloaded between 50,000 and 200,000 classified NSA and British government documents, is living in Russia under temporary asylum. He has been charged in the United States under the Espionage Act.

You don't say. Gosh. That's a federal charge. Could that be why there were hundreds of conversations between The Guardian and the FBI prior to publication? Do ya think?

(That they talked to GCHQ and the Cabinet Office is not exactly astonishing. The stories raise questions about them.)

Countering criticism by lawmakers, Rusbridger said more emphasis was being given to the Guardian's decision to publish the leaks than to the fact they had been so easily obtained in the first place.

"We were told that 850,000 people ... had access to the information that a 29-year-old in Hawaii who wasn't even employed by the American government had access," he said. (Additional reporting by Freya Berry and Silvia Antonioli; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

[Belligerent Savant]

.

All fine points, JR.

However -- at the risk (or anticipation) of a reply which would include a recommendation for self-immolation (though in full disclosure, I chuckled out loud when reading your theatrical suggestions for "self-murder", etc -- good show), the above does not preclude the possibility that Greenwald's actions may not be wholly of his own devising.

In other words, there may very well have been machinations/agendas in place -- as entertained/speculated by some here and elsewhere (that Tarzie loon as a prime example; damn him to hell) -- to craft the current narrative Re: Greenwald, which among other objectives, minimally inspires divisions/factions within groups that would otherwise be in concert/agreement (see RI as but a micro-micro example), or worse, is part/parcel of a larger over-arching agenda we've yet to see materialize.

Greenwald's fortuitously-timed departure from the Guardian may have been sage anticipation on the part of Greenwald, or a timely recommendation made by his handlers (for lack of a better term) in preparation for the next set of acts to be played out for The Audience.

Now excuse me while i go fetch a match and flint..

[JackRiddler]

That could all be.

Some giant beast could also have him by the short hairs and be directing what he does. If so, this may or may not be his fault. This could have happened at various points, not necessarily from the beginning, and now he plays a role in whole or part. Maybe he cracked from threats. None of this appears to be the case, but it could still be so behind appearances.

You don't know. Spidey sense won't tell you.

If you don't acknowledge the possibilities given the unknowables -- including the strong possibility that face value is actually what's happening, that the state feels its secrets have been compromised by free agents and is therefore bringing its means to bear down on these people -- if you instead insist on the certainty of one scenario, if in fact you unerringly pick the one (no matter how unlikely or absent concrete evidence) that trashes the apparent dissident heroes (relatively speaking), indirectly serves the status quo, and dishes out helplessness and the sense that All Is Deception (Though My Readers Know It So They're Not Sheeple)... then maybe you are a conspiracy merchandiser, a fan thereof, or a totally radical blogger who is Always Right and yet Never Any Good.

.

[Belligerent Savant]

If you don't acknowledge the possibilities given the unknowables -- including the strong possibility that face value is actually what's happening, that the state feels its secrets have been compromised by free agents and is therefore bringing its means to bear down on these people -- if you instead insist on the certainty of one scenario, if in fact you unerringly pick the one (no matter how unlikely or absent concrete evidence) that trashes the apparent dissident heroes (relatively speaking), indirectly serves the status quo, and dishes out helplessness and the sense that All Is Deception (Though My Readers Know It So They're Not Sheeple)... then maybe you are a conspiracy merchandiser, a fan thereof, or a totally radical blogger who is Always Right and yet Never Any Good.

.

Indeed. Quite right.

(though -- and I say this without having meticulously followed each response/thread page on this topic -- I don't believe there's talk 'round these parts of an insistence of a single scenario. I may very well be wrong.)

[slimmouse]

I should say that for my own part, Ive been reasonably consistent I hope in making my own feelings known.

Namely that I dont proffess to know whether this episode is full of the usual deep-state hi jinx or otherwise.

But to me its all irrelevant in the greater scheme of things.

What we now know ( as many of us have suspected for some time) is what we now know.

This subsequently means we need to act on what we do know as opposed to falling out about how we came by this knowledge.

Which is enough apparently to merit Hari Kari in Jack's eyes. Not just for myself either.

[JackRiddler]

Oh, how that terrible wound you've suffered will be nursed, for all it is worth... about two cents? Not even that, in fact. Junk paper, zero percent on the dollar.

Last post, see here:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37667&p=532758#p532758

Here I shall repeat the part that is relevant to the subject of this thread, and that must constitute my last word on it for now, as I have many other things to do this week IRL and probably for a while yet. So I'm out of here until further notice:

[snip]

This board has its pre-history in the refusal to accept the story about the September 11th attacks as handed down by a systemically corrupt U.S. government that was launching not one but a whole series of new imperialist wars that would claim many millions of direct and indirect victims. Without making the usual novel of it, there was a basic understanding here of how dangerous it was to allow this government to radically redefine reality without challenge.

And now? The successor regime has an official story out about the whistleblowers who have been hampering it: These guys are dangerous to security! They're only in it for themselves. They've gained possession of documents and are using them for dubious purposes. Maybe they're spies for China, maybe they're profiteers. Aw shucks, says General Alexander himself, I dunno, we can't figure it out ourselves. And he invites journos and bloggers to investigate, or to pull some hypotheses out their asses about what nefarious things these whistleblowers and government haters may be up to. And while the state takes concrete measures to menace these whistleblowers, detains them, interrogates them, threatens them with severe criminal charges, you end up seeing a group of supposedly dissident bloggers (and conspiracy merchandisers) who should be on the NSA and Co. like white on rice instead doing their own riff on the NSA's propaganda line: In this version, the menaced whistleblowers and journalists turn out to be actors of the same state that is menacing them! It's all a show, and you can tune out by turning off and dropping out. No particular evidence is necessary. Hunch and innuendo are, in fact, more effective than some boring evidentiary listing (just add a bunch of links at the end, no one is likely to follow these). Just accept that it's all a show, and you'll be the smartest of all the monkeys, and not have to do anything else, since anyway nothing will ever change.

And on top of that, these supposed dissident bloggers et al. end up advancing the exact same demand that the state has raised against the whistleblowers: that the whistleblowers must provide a public accounting of all documents in their possession. As journalists are threatened and called up before McCarthyite hearings, as the state makes demands for the return of the Snowden documents, as the state threatens journalists with prison if they do not reveal sources and methods, a segment of the conspiracy culture lines up with the government in demanding the same "answers" of the whistleblowers, and doesn't even see it.

And so, a number of RI members, including some who've been posting for a long time, consider themselves smarter than the universe by adopting this third echo of a state-run defamation campaign.

You bet this pisses me off, especially given the arrogance and stubbornness with which the inverse-reality logic is presented (anyone who isn't in line with this logic is a patsy for the propaganda!). The inability to learn is dismaying. (Tough shit on those who are going to try judo-ing that into some projection, etc.)

But whatevs, it's easy to get over-involved in these things and too excited about what some guy out of millions on the Internet is saying. Remember always:


http://xkcd.com/386/

[snip]

Seriously, for the last time this board, which is only its people, especially the suffering admins and mods, not to mention the more prolific writers past and present, really is special. And so are most of you!

As Pele said (not just to his Daughter), "Love, love, love."

[Spiro C. Thiery]

The salient point begins at 8:30 when CNN's Morgan concern trolls a question about how to most effectively wed journalistic standards to the interest of state endorsed oligarchs, the Times' Risen counter-query, wanting to know what Piers specifically objects to -- and former Guardian Greenwald's eagerness to make sure everyone knows who the bad whistleblowers would be:



But he's just trying to protect himself and Snowden, after all (that's not sarcasm, it might be his intent) because we all know this "debate" is about Snowden and Greenwald versus the NSA, end of discussion ( that was sarcasm).

[coffin_dodger]

[Villager]

Letter to Sibel Edmonds

To Sibel Edmonds, Feb. 1, 2014

Your latest diatribe aimed at the heroic Edward Snowden, “The Entire NSA Cache Exposed Once and For All” (Jan. 31, 2014), is a ridiculously absurd attempt to denigrate Snowden's exposure of the NSA threat, suggesting that his contribution amounts to nothing new.

I have admired your whistleblowing work for some time, but this latest effort, which has turned into a virtual campaign to smear the integrity of not only Snowden but also leading journalists like Glenn Greenwald (who you call a “Mega Charlatan”), baffles me for its vacuousness and viciousness. It certainly is not helpful in defending Snowden and Greenwald who, I am sure you know, are in the target sights of the most powerful imperial power on earth.

And I do not appreciate your invoking my name in your campaign, as if previous whistleblowers have been unjustly deprived of the glory taken selfishly by Snowden. You list Katherine Gunn, Russell Tice, William Binney and myself in the list of whistleblowers who have already revealed, in your apparent view, everything there is to know about NSA spying. You whine that Snowden “wants all the credit” for the revelations about NSA—have you even met him? Your tone has the quality of sour grapes.

I notice you omitted from that list Thomas Drake, the NSA whistleblower who recently went to Moscow to meet with Snowden and joined in the ceremony led by Ray McGoverrn, Jesselyn Radack and Coleen Rowley to confer on Snowden the Sam Adams award for Integrity in Intelligence. Are you saying those whistleblowers were mistaken in making the award? Your last diatribe, Dear Mr. Snowden, It’s Time to Come Out & Take a Stand Publicly as to Your Intentions (Dec. 15, 2013), would be laughable if it was not so pernicious: hasn't Snowden “come out” enough for you? He's made his intentions quite clear, so much so that Washington wants to throw him in a dungeon or even kill him.

It's true the media sometimes gets carried away with sensationalist reporting on the secondary aspects of NSA spying on everything, which you foolishly reduce to NSA spying on the “pooping pattern” in toilets, but the media stories are not Snowden's doing. You say, “Snowden has exposed a practice that is as old as the Roman Empire. Industrial espionage has been utilized and performed by every empire and every government for thousands of years.” The same could be said of the revelations of NSA spying on Angela Merkel’s cell phone: governments have been spying on each other’s leaders for centuries. That's true, and the media sensationalize that, but that's not the core of Snowden's revelations.

Snowden has revealed in immense technical detail, far more than I was able to, something historically new: the NSA has built the hardware/software infrastructure to spy on entire populations and store everyone's intimate personal details and associations in a database, ready to be called up by analysts whenever they want to go after someone. This has only been made possible by the development of fast modern computers, linked by the fiber optics of the internet, and assisted by vast, cheap storage capacity which has only recently been built. It is the infrastructure for a total police state.

That is the powerful, central focus of Snowden’s revelations—but pooh-poohed by you at absurd length in ignorant fashion. And Snowden proved it to the world by presenting the NSA’s own internal documents, which cannot be denied by government officials. Who else has done that?

I wish you would cease your harmful campaign, or at least try being a little more generous in assessing peoples' intentions. And examine the details more carefully before making glib, damaging accusations.

Sincerely,

Mark Klein

https://sites.google.com/site/markklein ... el-edmonds

Mark Klein is a former AT&T technician who leaked knowledge of his company's cooperation with the United States National Security Agency in installing network hardware to monitor, capture and process American telecommunications. The subsequent media coverage became a major story in May 2006.

In recognition of his actions, the Electronic Frontier Foundation picked Klein as one of the winners of its 2008 Pioneer Awards.[1]

For over 22 years Mark Klein worked for AT&T. Starting with the company as a Communications Technician in New York, where he remained from November 1981 until March 1991, he later continued in that capacity in California until 1998. From January 1998 to October 2003, Klein worked as a Computer Network Associate in San Francisco. From October 2003 to May 2004 he returned to the role of Communications Technician, after which he retired in May 2004.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein

[Spiro C. Thiery]

The thing many seem to be missing re. criticism of the Snowden>Greenwald>Omidyar status-flow is that the essence of their presentation conforms nicely with the national security narrative:
1) there need be the likes of the NSA
2) whistleblowing is potentially dangerous and should be done responsibly
3) all we need is reform and better oversight

The result of the "revelations" is a growing number of world citizens in two categories:
1) those resigned to helpless subservience
2) those who think change is in the air and the likes of the NSA are on the run