Jebus.
The fear and frenzy over Our Impending Doooooom! has reached fever pitch. So many online commentators are certain that The Hag will get us into a nuclear war with Russia -- over Syria, Ukraine or someplace -- that they are literally freaking out over it. We Are Doomed!
Now stop, I say. Stop. It. Right. Now.
The fear of Nuclear Annihilation time-honored tactic for control of domestic populations used by both the US/NATO and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, though neither power had any intention of using nuclear weapons against the other -- except in the most extreme circumstance, a circumstance that never arose.
But boy was the fear of what might happen ever useful and effective.
What we're witnessing right now is a classic example of Cold War style Brinkmanship and propaganda which is being exploited to the max by both sides with the undeniable implication that one or the other will engage in a nuclear first strike --- and we're all gonna die!
Over Ukraine. Over Syria. Over... well, something, somewhere, somehow, some time.
And Putin is a Madman.
This whole frenzy depends on the underlying belief that Putin is a Madman who will sacrifice Mother Russia and the Russian people to demonstrate how low hanging and clangy his big brass balls are...
Right.
No. That's not how Brinkmanship works.
Yes, there are plenty of neoCon cage rattlers in the US/NATO governments who appear to want to engage in a Nuclear Holocaust with the Soviet Union, erm, Putin's Russia. Russia Hate is that strong, and "destroying" Russia is their aim.
But that can only happen if Putin is the Madman the propagandists try to make him out to be. I say he is not. Nothing like it.
And he has absolutely no intention of sacrificing Mother Russia to slow or stop the Imperial Juggernaut.
The cage rattlers will not get their Nuclear Holocaust, not this time, and with any luck, not ever.
But the fear of what might happen will continue to be ratcheted up, the better to control domestic populations, not so much to strike fear in rivals.
The propaganda campaign against Russia started up in earnest as Edward Snowden settled into what appears to be a very comfortable exile as the guest of the Russian Federation. I have long felt that the Snowden Thing started out as a Black Op -- part of a rivalry between The Agencies, meant to provide an upper hand to one faction of security/spy agents over another. The initial exposures of domestic spying by the NSA, for example, didn't tell us anything (much) that we didn't already know or suspect. Greenwald, et al., had to scramble to point out that this was confirmation of what we knew/suspected and that was the main point of the revelations, and that was good!
Whatever. There was little more than proforma outrage from the powers that be, styling to be seen as responsible adults and all that. But when details of foreign spying operations were published, everything changed. What The Agencies were doing to foreign governments was not supposed to be released, I guess, and at that point -- starting before then, of course -- Snowden became a real persona non grata, and his protector Putin became The Evil One as far as the propaganda machine was concerned.
In addition, WikiLeaks, which once seemed like a Honeypot to snag various malcontents, but as Snowden accomplice and helper, was subjected to increasingly intense pressure from all sides.
I think that much of the anti-Putin and anti-Assange propaganda is due in large measure to the continued presence of Snowden as guest of the Kremlin, and that (temporary) resolution to the current Brinkmanship will be found in withdrawing the Russian welcome extended to Snowden.
He's the card Putin can play to bring a (temporary) end to the present state of affairs.
That doesn't mean that it won't happen again (it most likely will; the Imperial Project is relentless, and the dismemberment of the Russian Federation is a long-ago announced goal); but its current iteration will become inoperative.
In the meantime, it's worthwhile to review how Brinkmanship works, and to understand that Putin at least is no Madman.
See all of this as a shadowplay, not as reality.
Showing posts sorted by date for query wikileaks. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query wikileaks. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Monday, October 17, 2016
The Hillary Speeches Hoo-Hah
I've held off saying much about the Hillary Speeches Doc Dump because there isn't really a whole lot to say about it. I have read a few of the docs that have appeared or been linked from elsewhere. It's all but impossible to search WikiLeaks' archives itself (I tried "Podesta emails", for example, and came up with 62 of supposedly thousands of hacked emails.)
Anyway, what's in these emails and the partial transcripts of speeches Hillary gave to the High and Mighty for Big Bucks strikes me as pretty benign. She even tries to inject a modicum of social conscience into people and institutions that have none. No wonder this isn't getting a lot of traction in the media or much of anywhere else. Despite the headlines, there's very little there there.
There's so little there there that Lambert over at NC, always one of the most inciteful (heh) analysts of Things Clinton ("Clintoooon!"), had to say: "Reading these, I’m thinking the $675,000 had nothing to do with the actual content…."
We know from endless prattle of the likes of Lambert and many others that all things Clinton ("Clintoooon!") are the definition of corrupt. There is no political corruption on the face of the earth unless it is smeared with Clintoon shit. None. And these emails, according to Julian Assange would be filled with smoking guns of Clintoon corruption that would, somehow or other, destroy her campaign.
Well. No. Not so far anyway.
They show her getting along with the Mighty-Mighty titans and malefactors of great wealth to be sure, but in every one of the ones I've seen, she's telling them to their faces that they need to get a soul and start treating the rest of humanity -- like all the millions who've been harmed by their shenanigans -- better. Sometimes there are details of what she expects of them -- such as lending to Main Street to get the economy going again -- and sometimes there aren't, it's just a moral(ish) declaration. "It's your obligation to do better for the Little People."[Paraphrase.]
So the question has been raised, "Why the hell didn't she just release this stuff when Bernie asked? 'Cause it sure doesn't look like there was anything worth hiding in what's been hacked."
Of course these aren't the whole transcripts, they're excerpts, but there's nothing shocking or more than modestly ear-grating in them. She doesn't have a way with words, let's put it that way. She's no great orator to the Great and Worthy or to the Rabble. But there's an inner coherence to what she has to say, and gets across her points relatively well. One of which is, "I'm your friend, and I want you to behave better."
Gee. Alert the media! Get this to Olbermann, stat! (An old joke, but sometimes it's fun...)
Her positions -- so far as I can make out -- are pretty much the same as Obama's when it comes to those people. Which has been arm's length but relatively friendly. Enough so that they're rolling in money while the rest of us have continued to struggle with little or no help from Our Betters.
I think it's Greenwald who has proposed that though the emails are not particularly damning or devastating, they do show how She (Who Must Be Obeyed) would govern, and it's not pretty.
Well, no. It never is.
With Hillary it is perhaps less pretty because of her nature and background and her absence of oratorical power -- particularly problematical is her legal training and experience. I'm convinced it destroys otherwise good people who want to do right, but once they learn about the Law, they're lucky to do anything unless it conforms to custom and can be parsed to mean what it doesn't.
I come from a family of attorneys. I don't recommend their ways as a general thing. It's nuts making.
Big Dog has had many of the same problems of excessive legalism as Hillary does.
I think it's interesting that it's called "corruption" when it is really something else again. Let's call it an excess of moralism based in flawed understandings of law and propriety. Or maybe it's inner defiance....
Anyway, it's gotten the Clintons in trouble more than once.
These emails don't show the kind of corruption that Hillary is incessantly accused of. The accusation of "pay to play" quid pro quos between Herself and the myriad High and Mighty interests she's dealt with don't fly in the end because there's no direct sign of a quid let alone a pro quo. Well, I should say, there's more than a few quid, in that many tens of millions of dollars have gone into hers and Bill's pockets and into the Clinton Foundation, but other than a "fair hearing" it's not clear that anything has been delivered to those interests that they wouldn't have already received anyway. They didn't have to pay her for what they got on the other end. They would have gotten it anyway.
In other words, the charges of "corruption" are based in a fantasy understanding of how government is supposed to work.
Not an understanding of how it does work.
So what did they pay her for?
It's always a question, isn't it? Why do ex-officials, it doesn't matter who they are, cash in so heavily on the speaking-lecture circuit or gain multi-millions from legal partnerships or from sitting on boards of directors once they leave office? How does that work, exactly, and what are the parameters?
What do the speakers-partners-board-members provide the payers?
You can't get a clear understanding of this System from all the yapping going on about it, particularly not from all the puerile insults being thrown around: "Clintoooon!!!!" Etc.
Yes, it is a System, fully formed long ago, by which those who once served in high government office (and sometimes not so high) can profit mightily and legally once they leave the marble halls of government, and by which they can thence return to the Hallowed Corridors of Power, rich as Croesus, to start the cycle over again. It is the custom of the tribe. Dick Cheney, anyone?
We may disagree with it -- I certainly do -- but it is legal, and it is all but impossible to prove a direct pro quo for the quid, so legally it's not corruption. No, not really. Really!
It's especially so the higher you go up the ladder of the System. Lower ranks can and do get in trouble or sometimes go to jail for relatively minor indiscretions in squeezing the teats of the System, but the higher the rank, the less likely one is to have one's tits put through the wringer.
The System itself is corrupt, but we don't hear about that, and passions rarely rise over the whole damn thing. No, it's individuals like Hillary who are pilloried for working the System to their advantage, for profiting legally (or sometimes not) from the opportunities on hand.
That someone else does likewise, say Colin Powell or Condolezza Rice to pull two names at random out of a hat, is not a problem -- they're not running for office of course -- but they're profiting from the same System Hillary has. The list of profiteers is almost endless.
That Hillary has worked the System better than many must be galling to her rivals who are convinced she's just not that smart, but the emails show her with a clear grasp of issues and the interests of the people she's speaking to, and the interests of those who have been left behind, a fuller grasp than I would have expected. She may not express herself artfully -- far from it -- but she's no slouch or dullard when it comes down to it.
I suspect she suffers from being "too smart for her own good."
What she seems to lack is good judgment. This has led to some catastrophic misjudgments and utter horror for millions of people in the Middle East, North Africa, Central America and elsewhere. Her husband suffered from some of the same problems of poor judgment Hillary has though perhaps on a different plane...
Yet strangely, or perhaps not, Hillary's poor judgment seems to be right in line with the theories of how things ought to be as they are the accepted consensus among the Ruling Class. In other words, even her moral scolding -- and moral failing -- is taken by them as right and proper.
They should be doing better by the Lower Orders. But they don't. Aww, such a Pity so many have to suffer...
All the Hag-Hate in the world is not going to change that. It will have no affect on the System at all. It's a diversion. Perhaps even an engineered one to ensure that nothing will interfere with the System as it is.
Trump, too, seems to be a diversion.
Keep the Rabble entertained enough and at one another's throats enough, and Wah-Lah! Their impotence for another cycle is assured.
That is key to keeping the Overclass on top and the Rabble incapable of doing anything about it.
Part of the President's job assignment is to soothe or tame the Rabble. Obama is a master at it; there hasn't been anyone as skilled at it since FDR. Hillary is not skilled at it, not at all, and Trump's apparent goal is to rile them up so much they commit mayhem or even a Revolution from the Right.
TPTB cannot tolerate that, of course, but they must be disappointed in Hillary's failure to connect with, let alone tame the Rabble who might well rise up on their own against what they see as an inappropriate continuation of an unacceptable status quo.
The situation puts the Overclass on the spot. Clearly they have decided on Hillary for the White House, but as she is incapable of properly taming the masses, something or someone will have to supplement her rule. I don't see Mr. Kaine being much help in that regard. Certainly Bill will face the same sort of difficulty he did when he was president. Nor would Democratic control of one or both houses of Congress do her any favors. In fact, given the historic fecklessness and misrule of the Democrats, and their lack of interest in progressive policy solutions to domestic and international problems, I can easily imagine a Democratic majority in either or both houses of Congress would be even worse for Hillary than it was for Obama when he had a Democratic majority.
If the Rs keep the House -- likely but not certain -- who would be surprised if articles of impeachment are filed within minutes of her taking office? Who would be surprised with endless "investigations," scandal mongering, hysterics even greater than when Bill was in office? The media will eat it up, just as they have with the sex-accusations against Trump. They don't care about other aspects of his history, though, do they? The man is a gangster and a con man, and he is a representative of his class, but none of that matters when there is sex on the table.
Nothing matters except The Sex.
It strikes me that there's a revenge drama running through all this nonsense, "get back" for past slights and mistakes. How all that works is a topic for another day.
Right now, though, the Hillary Speeches Hoo-Hah is a lot of sound and fury signifying almost nothing.
Anyway, what's in these emails and the partial transcripts of speeches Hillary gave to the High and Mighty for Big Bucks strikes me as pretty benign. She even tries to inject a modicum of social conscience into people and institutions that have none. No wonder this isn't getting a lot of traction in the media or much of anywhere else. Despite the headlines, there's very little there there.
There's so little there there that Lambert over at NC, always one of the most inciteful (heh) analysts of Things Clinton ("Clintoooon!"), had to say: "Reading these, I’m thinking the $675,000 had nothing to do with the actual content…."
We know from endless prattle of the likes of Lambert and many others that all things Clinton ("Clintoooon!") are the definition of corrupt. There is no political corruption on the face of the earth unless it is smeared with Clintoon shit. None. And these emails, according to Julian Assange would be filled with smoking guns of Clintoon corruption that would, somehow or other, destroy her campaign.
Well. No. Not so far anyway.
They show her getting along with the Mighty-Mighty titans and malefactors of great wealth to be sure, but in every one of the ones I've seen, she's telling them to their faces that they need to get a soul and start treating the rest of humanity -- like all the millions who've been harmed by their shenanigans -- better. Sometimes there are details of what she expects of them -- such as lending to Main Street to get the economy going again -- and sometimes there aren't, it's just a moral(ish) declaration. "It's your obligation to do better for the Little People."[Paraphrase.]
So the question has been raised, "Why the hell didn't she just release this stuff when Bernie asked? 'Cause it sure doesn't look like there was anything worth hiding in what's been hacked."
Of course these aren't the whole transcripts, they're excerpts, but there's nothing shocking or more than modestly ear-grating in them. She doesn't have a way with words, let's put it that way. She's no great orator to the Great and Worthy or to the Rabble. But there's an inner coherence to what she has to say, and gets across her points relatively well. One of which is, "I'm your friend, and I want you to behave better."
Gee. Alert the media! Get this to Olbermann, stat! (An old joke, but sometimes it's fun...)
Her positions -- so far as I can make out -- are pretty much the same as Obama's when it comes to those people. Which has been arm's length but relatively friendly. Enough so that they're rolling in money while the rest of us have continued to struggle with little or no help from Our Betters.
I think it's Greenwald who has proposed that though the emails are not particularly damning or devastating, they do show how She (Who Must Be Obeyed) would govern, and it's not pretty.
Well, no. It never is.
With Hillary it is perhaps less pretty because of her nature and background and her absence of oratorical power -- particularly problematical is her legal training and experience. I'm convinced it destroys otherwise good people who want to do right, but once they learn about the Law, they're lucky to do anything unless it conforms to custom and can be parsed to mean what it doesn't.
I come from a family of attorneys. I don't recommend their ways as a general thing. It's nuts making.
Big Dog has had many of the same problems of excessive legalism as Hillary does.
I think it's interesting that it's called "corruption" when it is really something else again. Let's call it an excess of moralism based in flawed understandings of law and propriety. Or maybe it's inner defiance....
Anyway, it's gotten the Clintons in trouble more than once.
These emails don't show the kind of corruption that Hillary is incessantly accused of. The accusation of "pay to play" quid pro quos between Herself and the myriad High and Mighty interests she's dealt with don't fly in the end because there's no direct sign of a quid let alone a pro quo. Well, I should say, there's more than a few quid, in that many tens of millions of dollars have gone into hers and Bill's pockets and into the Clinton Foundation, but other than a "fair hearing" it's not clear that anything has been delivered to those interests that they wouldn't have already received anyway. They didn't have to pay her for what they got on the other end. They would have gotten it anyway.
In other words, the charges of "corruption" are based in a fantasy understanding of how government is supposed to work.
Not an understanding of how it does work.
So what did they pay her for?
It's always a question, isn't it? Why do ex-officials, it doesn't matter who they are, cash in so heavily on the speaking-lecture circuit or gain multi-millions from legal partnerships or from sitting on boards of directors once they leave office? How does that work, exactly, and what are the parameters?
What do the speakers-partners-board-members provide the payers?
You can't get a clear understanding of this System from all the yapping going on about it, particularly not from all the puerile insults being thrown around: "Clintoooon!!!!" Etc.
Yes, it is a System, fully formed long ago, by which those who once served in high government office (and sometimes not so high) can profit mightily and legally once they leave the marble halls of government, and by which they can thence return to the Hallowed Corridors of Power, rich as Croesus, to start the cycle over again. It is the custom of the tribe. Dick Cheney, anyone?
We may disagree with it -- I certainly do -- but it is legal, and it is all but impossible to prove a direct pro quo for the quid, so legally it's not corruption. No, not really. Really!
It's especially so the higher you go up the ladder of the System. Lower ranks can and do get in trouble or sometimes go to jail for relatively minor indiscretions in squeezing the teats of the System, but the higher the rank, the less likely one is to have one's tits put through the wringer.
The System itself is corrupt, but we don't hear about that, and passions rarely rise over the whole damn thing. No, it's individuals like Hillary who are pilloried for working the System to their advantage, for profiting legally (or sometimes not) from the opportunities on hand.
That someone else does likewise, say Colin Powell or Condolezza Rice to pull two names at random out of a hat, is not a problem -- they're not running for office of course -- but they're profiting from the same System Hillary has. The list of profiteers is almost endless.
That Hillary has worked the System better than many must be galling to her rivals who are convinced she's just not that smart, but the emails show her with a clear grasp of issues and the interests of the people she's speaking to, and the interests of those who have been left behind, a fuller grasp than I would have expected. She may not express herself artfully -- far from it -- but she's no slouch or dullard when it comes down to it.
I suspect she suffers from being "too smart for her own good."
What she seems to lack is good judgment. This has led to some catastrophic misjudgments and utter horror for millions of people in the Middle East, North Africa, Central America and elsewhere. Her husband suffered from some of the same problems of poor judgment Hillary has though perhaps on a different plane...
Yet strangely, or perhaps not, Hillary's poor judgment seems to be right in line with the theories of how things ought to be as they are the accepted consensus among the Ruling Class. In other words, even her moral scolding -- and moral failing -- is taken by them as right and proper.
They should be doing better by the Lower Orders. But they don't. Aww, such a Pity so many have to suffer...
All the Hag-Hate in the world is not going to change that. It will have no affect on the System at all. It's a diversion. Perhaps even an engineered one to ensure that nothing will interfere with the System as it is.
Trump, too, seems to be a diversion.
Keep the Rabble entertained enough and at one another's throats enough, and Wah-Lah! Their impotence for another cycle is assured.
That is key to keeping the Overclass on top and the Rabble incapable of doing anything about it.
Part of the President's job assignment is to soothe or tame the Rabble. Obama is a master at it; there hasn't been anyone as skilled at it since FDR. Hillary is not skilled at it, not at all, and Trump's apparent goal is to rile them up so much they commit mayhem or even a Revolution from the Right.
TPTB cannot tolerate that, of course, but they must be disappointed in Hillary's failure to connect with, let alone tame the Rabble who might well rise up on their own against what they see as an inappropriate continuation of an unacceptable status quo.
The situation puts the Overclass on the spot. Clearly they have decided on Hillary for the White House, but as she is incapable of properly taming the masses, something or someone will have to supplement her rule. I don't see Mr. Kaine being much help in that regard. Certainly Bill will face the same sort of difficulty he did when he was president. Nor would Democratic control of one or both houses of Congress do her any favors. In fact, given the historic fecklessness and misrule of the Democrats, and their lack of interest in progressive policy solutions to domestic and international problems, I can easily imagine a Democratic majority in either or both houses of Congress would be even worse for Hillary than it was for Obama when he had a Democratic majority.
If the Rs keep the House -- likely but not certain -- who would be surprised if articles of impeachment are filed within minutes of her taking office? Who would be surprised with endless "investigations," scandal mongering, hysterics even greater than when Bill was in office? The media will eat it up, just as they have with the sex-accusations against Trump. They don't care about other aspects of his history, though, do they? The man is a gangster and a con man, and he is a representative of his class, but none of that matters when there is sex on the table.
Nothing matters except The Sex.
It strikes me that there's a revenge drama running through all this nonsense, "get back" for past slights and mistakes. How all that works is a topic for another day.
Right now, though, the Hillary Speeches Hoo-Hah is a lot of sound and fury signifying almost nothing.
Friday, October 14, 2016
Creepy Clown vs The Hag
This election pageant has devolved into a cage match between Creepy Clown and The Hag. Some of it appears to be as scripted as a pro-wrestling match, other aspects seem to be ad libbed to the point where the contest is running the risk of spinning entirely out of control.
The irony is that the riveted focus of the contest is on the Sex Thing; dredging up Big Dog's past while all these new accusations against Trump are put in play. And blaming Putin and the Russians for the leaked Podesta emails...
Which puts a whole other layer of irony on this mess of a presidential campaign.
Sex sells, of course, so I guess we should have anticipated this focus on doing the nasty. Which, without consent, makes it assault and/or rape. Nasty indeed. Now of course we all know that Bubba was vehemently accused of doing likewise a couple of decades ago, and that got him in several tubs of hot water, including winding up impeached -- but not removed from office -- by the august majesty of Congress Assembled. It was quite the goon show. That was right around the time I started writing and commenting online. The impeachment of Bill Clinton triggered a lot of us to make some waves and call for... some semblance of reason in Our Government.
The thing was, there were plenty of things to criticize Clinton and his administration for. PLENTY. Every time the focus turned to The Sex though, all those other things -- from NAFTA to Serbia and Rwanda, the dismantlement of welfare as we knew it, the free rein given the banks, and on and on --
were shunted aside. And it quickly enough became clear that that was a prime motivation for focusing on The Sex. Keep the Rabble amused and entertained with prurient stories of Bubba's libido and poof, all those other things disappear.
Sure enough, it worked. It wasn't just the Rabble being entertained, either. This was hard core Presidential Porn for vast swaths of the Government as well. The Congress was entirely captivated; the media likewise. Special prosecutors went wild with glee. It was insane.
The echoes of all of that in the accusations once again being hurled at Bill Clinton, and by extension somehow tainting his wife ("The Hag") are dredging up plenty of revulsion among the masses. "Oh please, let us not go through all this again. Please!" I'm seeing the same sort of hyperbole about Bubba -- he's a rapist and worse, oh much worse, and Don't Forget Vince Foster, and Mina airport, and so much else that he's guilty-guilty-guilty of! -- being injected into the commentary about Trump's libido. It's as if the insanity of those times was institutionalized, and is now a permanent fixture of the government/media complex.
Of course many young people are being exposed to it for the first time. They didn't live through it like old codgers like me did. They didn't experience the utter hysteria the first time around, so this current hoo-hah must come as something of a shock to them. WTF? Right?
Not just the hoo-hah over Trump's stunted adolescent pawing of females and "locker room talk," but all the stuff about Bubba being a cad and a heel and an inveterate womanizer, too. Not that no one knew about it, it's just that until recently it wasn't much of a Thing anymore. Then suddenly, BOOM. It's back in all it's sleaze and tattered glory.
Somehow this is supposed to impugn Hillary ("The Hag") for sticking with Her Man, yadda yadda. I'm surprised that the accusations that she's a lesbian or that Web Hubble is Chelsea's father haven't yet surfaced again. Let's try not to be shocked/surprised if they do.
There's a whole encyclopedia of accusations to draw from, after all.
Hag-Hate is a definite subculture in the USofA. What Bubba did back in the day -- and more importantly what he is accused of doing -- is a fundamental part of Hag-Hate. She was there, she enabled, she probably (an accusation) procured. She's therefore as Utterly Evil as he is.
Policy discussion and issues of (shall we say) more global importance get shoved to the background.
But isn't that the point? I think so.
In point of fact, the Clintons ("Clintoons" in the puerile lexicon of Hag-Hate) and their supposed rightist political opponents agree on most issues of global importance. Such disagreement as there is on the Important Issues comes from the left, not from the right. Never has been all that much disagreement on those Important Issues on the R side of the aisle, as there still isn't.
That's why I've said many times that Hillary ("The Hag") is running as the Establishment Republican candidate, not really as a Democrat at all. As many have pointed out, some of her policy proposals are to the right of Nixon. She isn't even as "leftist" as a Rockefeller Republican. Her belligerence and warmongering are direct throwbacks to Bush-Cheney, but they're rooted in the Kissinger perspective of world domination that flows through White House regimes like a river.
We the Rabble don't seem to be able to move or channel this river of hegemony in any way.
But who cares? It's not about The Sex, is it?
Trump is being portrayed as the prototype Creepy Clown, and I won't go so far as to say that's unfair. He's self-aware enough to understand that because he's rich and famous ("") he can get away with most anything he wants when it comes to Female Flesh, and he can crush his male rivals one by one or in batches (at least in his own mind.) This is the mindset of a gangster and conman. No surprise, that's what he is.
That should be something the electorate pays attention to, but it seems that there's little or no comprehension of Trump's nature. Some see him as a bully and a predator -- but they like it. ("At least he's our Bully!" That sort of thing.) No, no, no. Trump does not bully on behalf of anybody but himself. Do you understand? No, they don't.
He's conning his supporters. Oh, but they like it. Whether they know it or not, they like being conned by Trump, because at least he's bothering to tell them what they want to hear ("Lock her up!") whereas the sticks in the mud "regular" Republicans endlessly tell them to sit down and shut up. Much as the "regular" Democratic Pooh-Bahs tell the rest of the Rabble to do likewise. "Sit down and shut up; there is no alternative."
Maggie Thatcher must be so pleased and proud looking up at us from her perch in Hell.
Sigh.
But again, none of that matters when the story is all about The Sex.
It's been noted that the obsessive focus on who did what to whom when is practically overwhelming the story of the Podesta email hack that is supposed to be exposing all the "devastating" details of what Hillary ("The Hag") really believes about the World and Everything.
And of course it's all Putin's fault.
Jeebus.
What I've seen of these emails (note, it's useless to try to search WikiLeaks for anything of interest), suggests to me that there's essentially nothing in them that we didn't already suspect or know, and that to a surprising degree, Hillary ("The Hag") was using her position and the opportunity to inject something resembling a social conscience into the crowds of malefactors of great wealth before whom she was speechifying. WHAT???? If there's a smoking gun of perfidy worthy of more than a passing glance, I haven't seen it. But then, we only see what others want us to see...
In other words, if she were smart, and her campaign wasn't so focused on the Creepy Clown, she'd actually be using these leaks in her defense; if she and her campaign were smart, they would have been using these things from day one. No, she doesn't come across as an antagonist to these High and Mighty Owners, not at all; but she does come across as a Persuader, "helping" them to do the Right Thing for once in their sorry lives. In this, she really strikes me as akin to a Republican moralist of yore.
But no. The focus must stay on the Creepy Clown and how Outrageous he is.
It's political malpractice, but then, side issues are always more important in the Pageant, aren't they? Gossip and scandal, you know? That's what the People really want.
And of course, Blame It All On the Russians.
I've been thinking about this anti-Putin, anti-Russia propaganda campaign quite a bit. It makes no logical sense at all. It's not just out of bounds, it's crazy, and it could spin out of control at any time, leading to God only knows what. But why? Why does it exist at all?
A theory is that it grows directly out of the neocon "Project for a New American Century" which is the blueprint for the catastrophe in the Middle East, and the plan for establishing and extending American Hegemony over the entire globe. The destruction of Russia -- regime change, followed by dismemberment -- is part of the long-term goal. So, too, the destruction and dismemberment of China. Any rival to American Imperial Power must be destroyed, vanquished or absorbed. The two strongest rivals are Russia and China, so it is proposed, and taking them out is in the National Interest. Or something.
So Putin, fully aware of this, sees the saber rattling and tub thumping coming out of DC and particularly from the Clinton campaign as an existential threat to Mother Russia, never mind to himself. That's actually quite rational.
But the blaming of Putin/Russia for everything is propaganda-silly. When I see it parroted in the "news" and online, I'm just gobsmacked. Have we learned nothing from the barrage of lies and half truths that led to the monstrous invasion and occupation of Iraq? And all the continuing fall out from that? What? How can Americans still be so gullible?
Dear God, no.
But I think there's something more than merely the Plan being followed. No, I think the current propaganda barrage is the result of something more immediate: Snowden. What?
Think about it. Russia-US relations changed fundamentally when Putin-Stalin granted asylum to Edward Snowden three years ago (or whenever it was, I forget now...) That act was blamed directly on Putin, and it was cited as defiance of US orders and demands that he be turned over to American authorities forthwith.
Not only has that not been done, but Russia has provided Snowden with a home, apparently with a good living, a girlfriend, and much, much more. He has become well integrated into Russian high life. And he is being carefully protected by the Kremlin.
Anti-Russian and particularly anti-Putin propaganda ramped up immediately, and it has now reached a fever pitch unseen since the propaganda barrage preparatory to the invasion of Iraq. We're seeing a similar anti-WikiLeaks propaganda barrage, which I attribute at least in part to WikiLeaks' assistance in spiriting Snowden into comfortable exile in Russia.
For a long time, I thought Snowden was a black op, a "limited hangout". Perhaps he started out that way, but something changed along the way, and once he was protectively ensconced in Mother Russia, his revelations became less about domestic spying and so forth (which the NSA, etc. were quite prepared to "explain") and more about international spying, some of which was quite embarrassing from a diplomatic point of view (let alone from the security state standpoint.) In other words, he crossed a line that was unpermitted. That enraged his former supervisors at the Agencies. And revenge became their prime directive, no just revenge against him, but revenge against all those who had helped him.
That sort of revenge appears to be in play in the actions of the Clinton campaign to literally destroy the Republican brand and if possible take Congressional power away from them -- while utterly destroying Trump in the process.
It's revenge for the impeachment and the follies that followed.
It's all very, very personal.
Yes, our governing class is just that nasty. Oh yes.
All this is sickening, but there's nothing we can do about it from our position Outside the Gates. Our Betters don't listen to us. They govern contrary to our interests. They dismiss our pleas.
They are Bourbon-like. This would be true no matter which unacceptable candidate is in office. It is who they are, and it is what they must do. No matter who it is. We saw quite clearly how this works with Obama's transformation once he was installed in the Big Chair. He became the creature of those he had denounced.
So we're screwed once again.
But meanwhile, we can focus attention on the All Important Sex Issues once again.
Save us.
The irony is that the riveted focus of the contest is on the Sex Thing; dredging up Big Dog's past while all these new accusations against Trump are put in play. And blaming Putin and the Russians for the leaked Podesta emails...
Which puts a whole other layer of irony on this mess of a presidential campaign.
Sex sells, of course, so I guess we should have anticipated this focus on doing the nasty. Which, without consent, makes it assault and/or rape. Nasty indeed. Now of course we all know that Bubba was vehemently accused of doing likewise a couple of decades ago, and that got him in several tubs of hot water, including winding up impeached -- but not removed from office -- by the august majesty of Congress Assembled. It was quite the goon show. That was right around the time I started writing and commenting online. The impeachment of Bill Clinton triggered a lot of us to make some waves and call for... some semblance of reason in Our Government.
The thing was, there were plenty of things to criticize Clinton and his administration for. PLENTY. Every time the focus turned to The Sex though, all those other things -- from NAFTA to Serbia and Rwanda, the dismantlement of welfare as we knew it, the free rein given the banks, and on and on --
were shunted aside. And it quickly enough became clear that that was a prime motivation for focusing on The Sex. Keep the Rabble amused and entertained with prurient stories of Bubba's libido and poof, all those other things disappear.
Sure enough, it worked. It wasn't just the Rabble being entertained, either. This was hard core Presidential Porn for vast swaths of the Government as well. The Congress was entirely captivated; the media likewise. Special prosecutors went wild with glee. It was insane.
The echoes of all of that in the accusations once again being hurled at Bill Clinton, and by extension somehow tainting his wife ("The Hag") are dredging up plenty of revulsion among the masses. "Oh please, let us not go through all this again. Please!" I'm seeing the same sort of hyperbole about Bubba -- he's a rapist and worse, oh much worse, and Don't Forget Vince Foster, and Mina airport, and so much else that he's guilty-guilty-guilty of! -- being injected into the commentary about Trump's libido. It's as if the insanity of those times was institutionalized, and is now a permanent fixture of the government/media complex.
Of course many young people are being exposed to it for the first time. They didn't live through it like old codgers like me did. They didn't experience the utter hysteria the first time around, so this current hoo-hah must come as something of a shock to them. WTF? Right?
Not just the hoo-hah over Trump's stunted adolescent pawing of females and "locker room talk," but all the stuff about Bubba being a cad and a heel and an inveterate womanizer, too. Not that no one knew about it, it's just that until recently it wasn't much of a Thing anymore. Then suddenly, BOOM. It's back in all it's sleaze and tattered glory.
Somehow this is supposed to impugn Hillary ("The Hag") for sticking with Her Man, yadda yadda. I'm surprised that the accusations that she's a lesbian or that Web Hubble is Chelsea's father haven't yet surfaced again. Let's try not to be shocked/surprised if they do.
There's a whole encyclopedia of accusations to draw from, after all.
Hag-Hate is a definite subculture in the USofA. What Bubba did back in the day -- and more importantly what he is accused of doing -- is a fundamental part of Hag-Hate. She was there, she enabled, she probably (an accusation) procured. She's therefore as Utterly Evil as he is.
Policy discussion and issues of (shall we say) more global importance get shoved to the background.
But isn't that the point? I think so.
In point of fact, the Clintons ("Clintoons" in the puerile lexicon of Hag-Hate) and their supposed rightist political opponents agree on most issues of global importance. Such disagreement as there is on the Important Issues comes from the left, not from the right. Never has been all that much disagreement on those Important Issues on the R side of the aisle, as there still isn't.
That's why I've said many times that Hillary ("The Hag") is running as the Establishment Republican candidate, not really as a Democrat at all. As many have pointed out, some of her policy proposals are to the right of Nixon. She isn't even as "leftist" as a Rockefeller Republican. Her belligerence and warmongering are direct throwbacks to Bush-Cheney, but they're rooted in the Kissinger perspective of world domination that flows through White House regimes like a river.
We the Rabble don't seem to be able to move or channel this river of hegemony in any way.
But who cares? It's not about The Sex, is it?
Trump is being portrayed as the prototype Creepy Clown, and I won't go so far as to say that's unfair. He's self-aware enough to understand that because he's rich and famous ("") he can get away with most anything he wants when it comes to Female Flesh, and he can crush his male rivals one by one or in batches (at least in his own mind.) This is the mindset of a gangster and conman. No surprise, that's what he is.
That should be something the electorate pays attention to, but it seems that there's little or no comprehension of Trump's nature. Some see him as a bully and a predator -- but they like it. ("At least he's our Bully!" That sort of thing.) No, no, no. Trump does not bully on behalf of anybody but himself. Do you understand? No, they don't.
He's conning his supporters. Oh, but they like it. Whether they know it or not, they like being conned by Trump, because at least he's bothering to tell them what they want to hear ("Lock her up!") whereas the sticks in the mud "regular" Republicans endlessly tell them to sit down and shut up. Much as the "regular" Democratic Pooh-Bahs tell the rest of the Rabble to do likewise. "Sit down and shut up; there is no alternative."
Maggie Thatcher must be so pleased and proud looking up at us from her perch in Hell.
Sigh.
But again, none of that matters when the story is all about The Sex.
It's been noted that the obsessive focus on who did what to whom when is practically overwhelming the story of the Podesta email hack that is supposed to be exposing all the "devastating" details of what Hillary ("The Hag") really believes about the World and Everything.
And of course it's all Putin's fault.
Jeebus.
What I've seen of these emails (note, it's useless to try to search WikiLeaks for anything of interest), suggests to me that there's essentially nothing in them that we didn't already suspect or know, and that to a surprising degree, Hillary ("The Hag") was using her position and the opportunity to inject something resembling a social conscience into the crowds of malefactors of great wealth before whom she was speechifying. WHAT???? If there's a smoking gun of perfidy worthy of more than a passing glance, I haven't seen it. But then, we only see what others want us to see...
In other words, if she were smart, and her campaign wasn't so focused on the Creepy Clown, she'd actually be using these leaks in her defense; if she and her campaign were smart, they would have been using these things from day one. No, she doesn't come across as an antagonist to these High and Mighty Owners, not at all; but she does come across as a Persuader, "helping" them to do the Right Thing for once in their sorry lives. In this, she really strikes me as akin to a Republican moralist of yore.
But no. The focus must stay on the Creepy Clown and how Outrageous he is.
It's political malpractice, but then, side issues are always more important in the Pageant, aren't they? Gossip and scandal, you know? That's what the People really want.
And of course, Blame It All On the Russians.
I've been thinking about this anti-Putin, anti-Russia propaganda campaign quite a bit. It makes no logical sense at all. It's not just out of bounds, it's crazy, and it could spin out of control at any time, leading to God only knows what. But why? Why does it exist at all?
A theory is that it grows directly out of the neocon "Project for a New American Century" which is the blueprint for the catastrophe in the Middle East, and the plan for establishing and extending American Hegemony over the entire globe. The destruction of Russia -- regime change, followed by dismemberment -- is part of the long-term goal. So, too, the destruction and dismemberment of China. Any rival to American Imperial Power must be destroyed, vanquished or absorbed. The two strongest rivals are Russia and China, so it is proposed, and taking them out is in the National Interest. Or something.
So Putin, fully aware of this, sees the saber rattling and tub thumping coming out of DC and particularly from the Clinton campaign as an existential threat to Mother Russia, never mind to himself. That's actually quite rational.
But the blaming of Putin/Russia for everything is propaganda-silly. When I see it parroted in the "news" and online, I'm just gobsmacked. Have we learned nothing from the barrage of lies and half truths that led to the monstrous invasion and occupation of Iraq? And all the continuing fall out from that? What? How can Americans still be so gullible?
Dear God, no.
But I think there's something more than merely the Plan being followed. No, I think the current propaganda barrage is the result of something more immediate: Snowden. What?
Think about it. Russia-US relations changed fundamentally when Putin-Stalin granted asylum to Edward Snowden three years ago (or whenever it was, I forget now...) That act was blamed directly on Putin, and it was cited as defiance of US orders and demands that he be turned over to American authorities forthwith.
Not only has that not been done, but Russia has provided Snowden with a home, apparently with a good living, a girlfriend, and much, much more. He has become well integrated into Russian high life. And he is being carefully protected by the Kremlin.
Anti-Russian and particularly anti-Putin propaganda ramped up immediately, and it has now reached a fever pitch unseen since the propaganda barrage preparatory to the invasion of Iraq. We're seeing a similar anti-WikiLeaks propaganda barrage, which I attribute at least in part to WikiLeaks' assistance in spiriting Snowden into comfortable exile in Russia.
For a long time, I thought Snowden was a black op, a "limited hangout". Perhaps he started out that way, but something changed along the way, and once he was protectively ensconced in Mother Russia, his revelations became less about domestic spying and so forth (which the NSA, etc. were quite prepared to "explain") and more about international spying, some of which was quite embarrassing from a diplomatic point of view (let alone from the security state standpoint.) In other words, he crossed a line that was unpermitted. That enraged his former supervisors at the Agencies. And revenge became their prime directive, no just revenge against him, but revenge against all those who had helped him.
That sort of revenge appears to be in play in the actions of the Clinton campaign to literally destroy the Republican brand and if possible take Congressional power away from them -- while utterly destroying Trump in the process.
It's revenge for the impeachment and the follies that followed.
It's all very, very personal.
Yes, our governing class is just that nasty. Oh yes.
All this is sickening, but there's nothing we can do about it from our position Outside the Gates. Our Betters don't listen to us. They govern contrary to our interests. They dismiss our pleas.
They are Bourbon-like. This would be true no matter which unacceptable candidate is in office. It is who they are, and it is what they must do. No matter who it is. We saw quite clearly how this works with Obama's transformation once he was installed in the Big Chair. He became the creature of those he had denounced.
So we're screwed once again.
But meanwhile, we can focus attention on the All Important Sex Issues once again.
Save us.
Monday, October 10, 2016
The Second Contact Between Hillary and Trump
Always one for a good time, I had the second "debate" between the Presidential contestants on last night while I busied myself with other things.
My, wasn't it nasty, though.
Jeebus.
They seem to have picked up energy from the VP set-to, or something, and the accusations flew fast and furious. Trouble is, we've heard them all before and they no longer resonate. Yes, he's a misogynist and liar; yes, she skirts the edges of legality and may cross over from time to time; yes, Bill is a serial philanderer (or was, anyway).
I didn't know about Trump's press availability with The Women Who Accuse Bill (and One More) just before the "debate"" until after the event. How interesting. Yah, it was a good deflection from his own "locker room banter," but ultimately, it's a nonstarter. Everyone knows -- too much -- about Big Dog's randiness and they long ago made of it what they would. Nobody's mind will be changed by trotting out The Women again. On the other hand, we're just getting used to the notion of Trump the Serial Assaulter (though why it should have been a mystery until now is anyone's guess.) His peccadilloes will play for a while until people get bored with them.
Ultimately, though, they don't stain Hillary. She's blameless -- well, more or less -- in all of this, so the point of bringing up Bill's indiscretions (or the Other Accuser that I'm still somewhat mystified by) is more of a distraction than a Thing. Hunh?
I didn't watch much of it, but I heard plenty. All the same accusations we've been hearing on and on, about taxes, emails, Russia, Muslims, yadda yadda, almost all of it completely meaningless.
Mention was made of the Wikileaks release of partial transcripts from the high-paying Clinton speeches to People Who Matter. The issue that's been glommed onto is Hillary's "public" vs "private" positions. OK, so?
Or rather it would have been a meh if it weren't for Hillary's hooey about the Ruskis hacking; what the FFF? Another tailspin into the gutter.
The point of course is that she didn't even try to deny she said what she's reported to have said, doesn't discount the truth of what's been released, but she blames it on the Russians, which is stone stupid.
But then Our Rulers never were known for their smarts, I think.
Meanwhile, I looked over some of the Wikileaks leaks of what she said to the High and the Mighty, and my initial impression is that she was trying -- probably unsuccessfully -- to inject some concept of social consciousness into the realm of Those Who Must Be Obeyed.
In other words, if she had a brain -- or her people were actually thinking things through -- they would realize these leaks are better for her than opponents make them out to be.
But then, who ever said they could figure things out without a focus group?
Her baroque and legalistic excuses for the Email Thing are wearing thin, but Trump's continued yapping about it doesn't help his cause in the least. Saying she should be in jail because of it, while red meat to his fans, is one of many disqualifications for high office Trump has exposed throughout this mess of a campaign. I'm sure that a tit for tat could be used -- no, YOU should go to jail! -- but it's just stupid. If Trump were running a serious-revolutionary campaign and he didn't have so many vulnerabilities and skeletons in his own closet, I'd say go for it, jail them all and hang the rest of them, but that's not what he's doing. He's trying to finagle a neo-Republican ascendancy with Himself in the driver's seat. It's not revolutionary, it's just more of the same bullshit, with an extra dose of cruelty.
So in the end, I'm more convinced than ever that he's a ringer, meant to lose and to split the R Party in the process. Revenge, let's say, for the impeachment. Yes, of course, Our Rulers are just that obsessed with Get Back. This tells me that when Trump loses, he will be rewarded handsomely. Oh, very handsomely indeed.
It's all as phony as a three dollar bill.
Yep.
So I'm thinking that when they gamed this thing out, they discovered that Hillary couldn't win the White House unless the R candidate were someone like... Trump, who I'm given to believe has been a family friend of the Clintons for years, and perhaps was.... induced to run with the proviso that he lose and throw a monkey wrench into the R Party to boot.
Signs are sure pointing that way.
I think I'll skip the next one.
My, wasn't it nasty, though.
Jeebus.
They seem to have picked up energy from the VP set-to, or something, and the accusations flew fast and furious. Trouble is, we've heard them all before and they no longer resonate. Yes, he's a misogynist and liar; yes, she skirts the edges of legality and may cross over from time to time; yes, Bill is a serial philanderer (or was, anyway).
I didn't know about Trump's press availability with The Women Who Accuse Bill (and One More) just before the "debate"" until after the event. How interesting. Yah, it was a good deflection from his own "locker room banter," but ultimately, it's a nonstarter. Everyone knows -- too much -- about Big Dog's randiness and they long ago made of it what they would. Nobody's mind will be changed by trotting out The Women again. On the other hand, we're just getting used to the notion of Trump the Serial Assaulter (though why it should have been a mystery until now is anyone's guess.) His peccadilloes will play for a while until people get bored with them.
Ultimately, though, they don't stain Hillary. She's blameless -- well, more or less -- in all of this, so the point of bringing up Bill's indiscretions (or the Other Accuser that I'm still somewhat mystified by) is more of a distraction than a Thing. Hunh?
I didn't watch much of it, but I heard plenty. All the same accusations we've been hearing on and on, about taxes, emails, Russia, Muslims, yadda yadda, almost all of it completely meaningless.
Mention was made of the Wikileaks release of partial transcripts from the high-paying Clinton speeches to People Who Matter. The issue that's been glommed onto is Hillary's "public" vs "private" positions. OK, so?
Or rather it would have been a meh if it weren't for Hillary's hooey about the Ruskis hacking; what the FFF? Another tailspin into the gutter.
The point of course is that she didn't even try to deny she said what she's reported to have said, doesn't discount the truth of what's been released, but she blames it on the Russians, which is stone stupid.
But then Our Rulers never were known for their smarts, I think.
Meanwhile, I looked over some of the Wikileaks leaks of what she said to the High and the Mighty, and my initial impression is that she was trying -- probably unsuccessfully -- to inject some concept of social consciousness into the realm of Those Who Must Be Obeyed.
In other words, if she had a brain -- or her people were actually thinking things through -- they would realize these leaks are better for her than opponents make them out to be.
But then, who ever said they could figure things out without a focus group?
Her baroque and legalistic excuses for the Email Thing are wearing thin, but Trump's continued yapping about it doesn't help his cause in the least. Saying she should be in jail because of it, while red meat to his fans, is one of many disqualifications for high office Trump has exposed throughout this mess of a campaign. I'm sure that a tit for tat could be used -- no, YOU should go to jail! -- but it's just stupid. If Trump were running a serious-revolutionary campaign and he didn't have so many vulnerabilities and skeletons in his own closet, I'd say go for it, jail them all and hang the rest of them, but that's not what he's doing. He's trying to finagle a neo-Republican ascendancy with Himself in the driver's seat. It's not revolutionary, it's just more of the same bullshit, with an extra dose of cruelty.
So in the end, I'm more convinced than ever that he's a ringer, meant to lose and to split the R Party in the process. Revenge, let's say, for the impeachment. Yes, of course, Our Rulers are just that obsessed with Get Back. This tells me that when Trump loses, he will be rewarded handsomely. Oh, very handsomely indeed.
It's all as phony as a three dollar bill.
Yep.
So I'm thinking that when they gamed this thing out, they discovered that Hillary couldn't win the White House unless the R candidate were someone like... Trump, who I'm given to believe has been a family friend of the Clintons for years, and perhaps was.... induced to run with the proviso that he lose and throw a monkey wrench into the R Party to boot.
Signs are sure pointing that way.
I think I'll skip the next one.
Friday, April 11, 2014
The Prodigal Returns -- Or Something
Earlier, I was looking for some kind of news regarding the much anticipated return of Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras to New York to humbly receive their Polk Award for reporting the Young Snowden NSA material last summer, and surprisingly there was nothing but WikiLeaks live blogging their plane's travel across the Atlantic, blogging which ceased approximately half an hour before it landed.
I just checked online for any updates, and the most recent was from Le Monde.
There you have it. Even if you don't read French, it's pretty clear they got through the tight security at JFK without incident.
Who'd a thunk, eh?
---------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Paul Carr at Pando wants to know if the Intercept has ceased publishing. Hard to say that it's still publishing, as there has not been a new post for ten days or more, and even the comments stopped several days ago.
After the Poynter story about a strategic planning session -- involving unnamed principals, at an unannounced location, at some point in the unspecificed past -- during which discussion centered on First Look's focus and audience and so forth, the basics of any startup, let alone a "transformative" quarter-billion dollar media empire, quite late in the game it would seem, I wouldn't be surprised if retooling and potentially relaunch of the Intercept were in order.
I just checked online for any updates, and the most recent was from Le Monde.
Le journaliste Glenn Greenwald passe sans encombre la frontière des Etats-Unis
Le Monde.fr |Glenn Greenwald et Laura Poitras, deux des journalistes derrière les révélations sur l'Agence de sécurité nationale (NSA) américaine sont arrivés aux Etats-Unis, vendredi 11 avril. Venus à New York recevoir le George Polk Award, prix américain qui reconnaît l'excellence en journalisme, ils ont passé les contrôles de l'immigration à l'aéroport de New York sans problème, a annoncé Julie Turkewitz, journaliste pour le New York Times.
Arrival in nyc of @ggreenwald. No arrest made. #nytimes. http://t.co/mQPXuLWDf7
— julieturkewitz (@fotojulie)
There you have it. Even if you don't read French, it's pretty clear they got through the tight security at JFK without incident.
Who'd a thunk, eh?
---------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Paul Carr at Pando wants to know if the Intercept has ceased publishing. Hard to say that it's still publishing, as there has not been a new post for ten days or more, and even the comments stopped several days ago.
After the Poynter story about a strategic planning session -- involving unnamed principals, at an unannounced location, at some point in the unspecificed past -- during which discussion centered on First Look's focus and audience and so forth, the basics of any startup, let alone a "transformative" quarter-billion dollar media empire, quite late in the game it would seem, I wouldn't be surprised if retooling and potentially relaunch of the Intercept were in order.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
The New Model Imperial
[Apropos of nothing in particular, I'm reminded that my sister and her husband drove older Imperials in the Fifties and early Sixites; they had two of them as I recall, a 1951 and a 1954. To me, they were very stodgy cars, too proper by half. But my first car was a Packard convertible, followed by a Buick Roadmaster and which was followed by a Cadillac Sedan de Ville. So I should talk...]
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We're living in an era in which the Imperial Idea is reasserting itself with a vengeance. I've often commented that the course of warfighting in the Great and Glorious (Neverending) War on (Some) Terror(ism) initiated following the attacks of 9/11/2001 has closely followed the British Empire's march, and the targets were, until recently, mostly the failed projects of the British -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, the Yemen, even Egypt. They may still be failed Imperial projects, but they have been ripped to pieces and strictly punished for their temerity. Let that be a lesson to them.
Recently, the Imperial Idea has expanded, though, to encompass theaters of operations outside the former British sphere, starting with Libya (which was an Italian colony at one time) and moving on to Syria (French) both of which experienced a descent into civil war and chaos , the Syrian matter still unresolved, and now, interestingly, expanding into (the) Ukraine (Russian). There are other sites where the New Imperial Idea is being fostered (Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, among them) but for now (the) Ukraine is the hot spot. (Note: "The" Ukraine is a Soviet slur according to some; the proper name of the country is simply "Ukraine" with no preceding article...)
There was some hoo-hah the other day over Mark Ames' article at Pando Daily that exposed Pierre Omidyar's funding of the opposition in (the) Ukraine, and his daring to question the integrity of the First Look Media staff, especially regarding their ability to do "adversarial" journalism when their boss and the owner of First Look is an active "co-investor" with the US government and other NGOs in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government and the installation of a more compliant one.
Oh, the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that ensued! Oh, the focus on personalities and not the issue! The Twitter Wars! The tits-for-tats!
Yes, well, that's how it goes with today's media. It's really is all about personality, hardly about issues at all.
In the midst of the all the angst and ennui over the Pando article, there appeared a blogpost that's having a bit of play because it dares to focus on the issues of New Model Imperialism, and how the various regime changes and overthrows under way, particularly the one in (the) Ukraine, fit into the New Model Imperial Idea, and how -- perhaps -- Ames wasn't even conscious of what he was doing when he wrote the article in question. (Note: I'll write another post dealing specifically with that one.)
According to the author, Patrick Higgins, Ames inadvertently showed just how the New Model Imperial Idea is organized and implemented through the collaborative activities of NGOs (they are legion and extremely well funded by the US government and private agencies), private funders like Pierre Omidyar through their foundations, pre-existing and newly created in-country opposition groups, together with American government agencies -- openly and prominently by the USAID, covertly the CIA and others unnamed and probably unknown. It's a formula for regime change that typically doesn't require military intervention. It may lead to civil war, but that's an internal matter (viz: Syria), not something that requires sending in Marines and occupation forces to enforce order and the rule of predation as in the dreadful cases of Iraq and Afghanistan. The situation in Ukraine is a bit dicier because it treads on Russia's historic interest in holding or at least controlling territories on its western and southern borders, and the overt attempt to detach Ukraine from the Russian sphere isn't going over well in the Kremlin. Not a bit.
Higgins gets into the fact that oligarchs like Pierre quite naturally play a prominent role in the New Model Imperial Idea, not (by any means) a marginal one. They are integral to the process of regime change that is such a feature of New Model Imperialism. It's actually hard to imagine the process of regime change without oligarchic participation. Especially so in the case of Ukraine.
RT ran a story the other day that touched on the role Oligarchs as a class play in the Ukrainian developments, focusing on the role Ukrainian Oligarchs are playing, not even mentioning Pierre. Understanding that RT is strongly funded and influenced by the Kremlin, if the story is true -- there's no reason to doubt it at this point -- then parts of the Imperial pageant we're seeing play out in (the) Ukraine is being undertaken by Ukraine's own Oligarchs who apparently are being installed or installing themselves as Eastern District rulers and warlords -- fascinating. They are playing roles that seem to be in line with Kiev's new rulers, who in turn pledge fealty to Frau Merkel and her bankers, but how is one to know? These men are billionaires. They will do what billionaires do. They will look out for themselves, not "their people" -- of which there are none. If it means the Ukrainians and Russians are pink misted, so be it.
The newly-appointed Dnepropetrovsk governor is Igor Kolomoysky, Ukraine’s third-wealthiest man, with an estimated fortune of $2.4 billion. He co-owns the informal commercial group Privat, which includes Ukraine’s largest bank Privatbank, which Kolomoysky heads, as well as assets in the oil, ferroalloys and food industries, agriculture and transport
A former ally of Yulia Tymoshenko, Kolomoysky reportedly had a falling out with her and refused to finance her election campaign in 2010, which the ex-prime minister subsequently lost to Yanukovich. Kolomoysky was reported to be a principal sponsor of the UDAR party, which is one of the three fueling the street campaign to oust Yanukovich. Kolomoysky has a dual Ukrainian-Israeli citizenship and controls his business empire from Switzerland.
The new governor of Donetsk Region is Sergey Taruta, who is estimated to worth around $2 billion, putting him among the top-10 wealthiest people in Ukraine. He heads ISD, one of the biggest mining and smelting companies in the world, and also own Donetsk-based Metallurg Football Club.I've noticed that people refuse to accept news, even if it is perfectly factual, if it comes from the "wrong" source, and these days, RT (like Iran's Press TV) is considered by many on the "left" (so-called) as a "wrong" source. Unless the news reported above appears in the New York Times, say, many will simply dismiss it as propaganda.
Well, yesterday, the Times did report it. They couched the appointment of Oligarchs to rule the potentially restive East Ukraine as perfectly natural, of course, who wouldn't do this, but it's clearly recognized as something... odd if "natural" and provocative nonetheless.
Russia has its Oligarchs too, and so does the USA. Pierre Omidyar is one of them.
I still don't know much about him, largely because he has such a low public profile, and stories about him and his enterprises are fairly rare. His apologists at First Look and the Honolulu Civil Beat are fiercely defensive. And why shouldn't they be? He pays their freight. It's only natural to protect and defend one's patron.
The stories I have seen about Pierre, though, suggest that he is both busy and quite slippery, engaging in more than a few large projects, both philanthropic and for profit, in which his participation barely breaks the surface of consciousness. He says he likes to slip in under the radar and slip away again. Even those who profess to know him probably don't. One of the things that comes out in the article linked, however, is that even if the public knows little about Pierre Omidyar, he is quite well known in Power circles, indeed is a major player therein. How many people know that Pierre was living in Honolulu at the same time as Snowden? How many people know of the Omidyar Network's connections with Booz Allen, Snowden's last NSA-contractor employer? Then there is the whole PayPal 14 Thing which has so angered many in the online civil disobedience community, and which prompted Alexa O'Brien to declare of Greenwald, "He fucking lied."
As principal shareholder and chairman of eBay, Omidyar controls eBay’s child company, PayPal. PayPal has recently made headlines for prosecuting the so-called “PayPal 14,” the hacktivists who staged a virtual ‘sit in’ in protest of PayPal’s decision to cut off Wikileaks’ funding by organizing a Denial of Service attack on PayPal’s website. PayPal was co-founded by Max Levchin, a dedicated NSA supporter.
More worrying still, Sal Gambianco, one of the principal investment partners with the Omidyar Network, actually sits on the board of advisors of Globant, a software company in which both the Omidyar Network and Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden’s former employer, are major shareholders. Philip Odeen, one of the Booz Allen Hamilton board members, also sits on the Board of Directors of Globant. The Omidyar Network and Booz Allen Hamilton are also both major investors in Innocentive.Omidyar Network, BTW, is the funder of the Ukrainian opposition organization -- which is actually an umbrella organization for more than 50 Ukrainian opposition groups -- which Ames discovered in his research prompted, he said, by Marcy Wheeler's tweets which cogitated over whether the regime change in Kiev constituted a "coup." (The obfuscatory denials from Wheeler, Greenwald and Culligan that they were discussing something else notwithstanding.)
Paging through the list of member organizations of "New Citizen" (aka "Centre UA") is really kind of creepy, as many of the opposition organizations that cluster under the umbrella of "New Citizen" are National Endowment for Democracy (NED) clients as well, and a surprising number of them are essentially media propaganda outfits.
I think I mentioned how slickly produced the video feeds from the Maidan were. This was no amateur on the fly footage, it was highly professional and designed to inspire/inflame. Well, among the 58 "New Citizen" member organizations are
The umbrella can actually provide any sort of "technical assistance" the members need or want. That's its function. ON mentions that "New Citizen" is an umbrella for "over 50" orgs, but that seems to have escaped most other notice. Each of these member orgs has funding of its own, of course, and one of them ("Center UA") is also the master org for "New Citizen." "New Citizen" you see is a "project" of "Center UA") Oh what a tangled web...
The fact that the Omidyar Network funded the umbrella organization for so many other organizations has been dismissed as unimportant, "minor funding" given the $5 billion or so that Victoria Nuland-Kagan boasted of spending over the last two decades in Ukraine.
In other words, the "investment" of $335,000 in "New Citizen" over two years by the Omidyar Network is barely a drop in the bucket [UPDATE: Omidyar Network issued a communiqué today which "clarified" its "investments" in "Center UA" -- not mentioning "New Citizen". According to the brief communiqué, ON has "invested" a total of $1.105 millon in "Center UA", $335,000 in 2011 and $770,000 in 2013, made to "amplify the voices of Ukrainian citizens" and "promote open and accountable government." The communiqué is somewhat at odds with other documents however.] compared to the $5 billion, Nuland claims the US has "invested in the development of democratic institutions and other goals" since Ukrainian independence over two decades ago. That works out to about $20million a year, not by any means a small sum, but what-- exactly -- it's been spent on, and how much has been spent during any given budget cycle remains to be investigated.
We don't know. These are not things our rulers think we should know, either.
Omidyar is by no means the most generous funder of the Ukrainian opposition, the United States government is, directly and through its myriad NGOs, but Omidyar's funding should be more than a little interesting to in light of events. Greenwald and Wheeler claim it is not, however, as the political activities of Mr. Omidyar -- who pays them -- are of no interest to them, nor is his involvement in overthrowing dictators abroad in concert with the interests of the US Government of any particular moment. Just business, I guess.
Such willful blindness is itself interesting for what it says about dedication to "adversarial journalism and transparency."
Of course, we are supposed to "wait" before we pass any judgement on these things. 6 months, say. OK?
No, the course has been set, and the destination is clear. We are being led into another round of an old Imperial contest that always -- ALWAYS -- harms ordinary people, and at some point, we the Rabble have to say, NO MORE.
We are being propagandized and manipulated to believe that (suddenly) Russia has been transformed into the Soviet Union and Putin has become the reincarnation of Stalin (or Hitler, depending.) Lies and fabrications are everywhere, and the risks to the Ukrainian people from all sides is horrendous.
I doubt what Pierre Omidyar has to do with it is any greater than what the native Ukrainian oligarchs have to do with it -- though I don't doubt his assistance is welcome. The people of Ukraine, however, are the losers. How badly they will lose remains to be seen, but they can gain nothing.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
The Public Had A Right
I'm listening to Young Snowden's ARD interview for German television that was posted at Cryptome the other day. It's kind of repetitive given the multiplicity of stories already aired and published about NSA surveillance and the Security State, but it is one of the few times that Young Snowden himself has been seen/heard from in all the HooHah.
I watched a few minutes of the video of the interview and noted with interest that it seemed to be conducted in a very luxurious Russian hotel suite or possibly in a suite of rooms in an expensive new dacha, perhaps just outside of Moscow.
Regardless of whether it's a hotel or a dacha, if that is where Young Snowden is now being housed, rather than a place selected specifically for the interview, I wouldn't agree that he has "given up" much comfort in his (likely temporary) exile. It appears, in fact, that he is living in high style -- and very expensively -- in Russia. Moscow, after all, is one of the most expensive cities on Earth. It was pointed out that when he was supposedly trapped at Sheremetyevo Airport, the cost of one of the roomettes he was believed to be occupying while there was on the order of $600 a day (given that they rent by the hour), and people were wondering then who was paying for his upkeep.
Even in Hong Kong, where stories now suggest he was for weeks or even a month, he was staying in a very luxurious hotel at considerable expense -- for someone. Initially it was said that he was paying his own freight from his savings from his employment, but if you can sort through the confusing timelines that have been aired/published, each slightly different and some rather remarkably different, you see he had a rather spotty employment record, at least "officially." How long he was actually employed in his various contracted and in house positions (with the CIA, NSA, Dell, and Booz Allen, among apparently others) is something of a mystery. His postings were apparently scattered widely -- among them Switzerland, CONUS, and eventually Hawaii -- but none of them seem to have been for very long. A few months or a year tops.
There's nothing particularly amiss with that kind of record in the Federal Service. That's how they generally hire; employment is frequently intermittent, and it may be with a contractor rather than with the government itself. One's assignment, status, employer of record and posting location can change quite suddenly. It's not unusual to stay on this irregular status for years. This practice keeps the total number of FTE Federal employees lower -- following a Congressional mandate.
As I listen to Young Snowden speaking to the German interviewer, I'm reminded, very strongly, of some of the training personnel I worked with during my time in the Federal Service. It is as if he is conducting a training session to his interlocutor, and for a moment I wonder -- was that his actual job? Was he responsible for training staff to accomplish various spytech tasks, and is that a reason why his work was fairly intermittent and his employer of record went back and forth between agencies and contractors? I have no way of knowing, of course, but from what I've seen and read (and based on my own experience), I wouldn't be surprised. It would also help explain how he manages to "know" so much and yet... not.
Knowledge is compartmentalized in government and among its many contractors. While various low-level individuals (as Snowden apparently was) may have extensive knowledge of a wide range of programs and activities, as a rule, their knowledge is incomplete. They only know what they need to know for a particular assignment. Some of what they may see or have irregular access to as part of that assignment is likely to be incomprehensible because it's not something they have been briefed or trained on. That may be a reason why Young Snowden doesn't want to be responsible for releasing information about Surveillance/Security State programs and operations -- because he cannot "know" for sure what these slides and other information actually contain. So he (supposedly) leaves it up to journalists to vet it and make sense of it -- in consultation with... government. Yes, it's important to remember, as has been repeated fairly often, that every story that has been published or aired about these programs and operations has been done in "consultation with" government agencies and officials. Exactly what that means has never been clarified, of course, nor will it be. But given the repeated references to "legal" issues and potential "legal" jeopardy that reporters and Snowden may be in if they don't tread a very fine line (notwithstanding all the charges that have already been leveled at Young Snowden, though not -- so far -- at Greenwald or any of the other reporters and publications involved) in releasing these top secret and other elements of the Snowden Trove, it seems to me that there is an ad hoc collaboration between the government and the publications and individuals involved in the stories to, let's say, limit the damage all around.
This is quite different than the situation with the Manning Trove and WikiLeaks, though there may be a superficial resemblance. Clearly, the participants learned from the mistakes made in that one, though so far as I could tell, there was actually nothing in the Manning Trove that was actually damaging to the government. Not even the "Collateral Murder" gun camera video. What the War Logs and Cables showed was military and State Department business as usual, much of which had already been reported, some of it extensively. What was odd to me about it was that so many people -- literally millions -- had almost unimpeded access to the full trove, just as Manning did, and the Defense Department waited months before doing anything substantive to restrict access. (State, on the other hand, acted almost immediately). To me, this was bizarre behavior. A breach of this sort, had it happened in my agency, would have been acted on and plugged within hours. I had some experience with relatively minor security breaches in my agency and know how they were handled. It was nothing like the situation with the Manning breach. Nothing at all.
With the Snowden Breach, it's not entirely clear what has and has not been done by the NSA in response. There's apparently been a series of ongoing investigations, but beyond that -- and the "consultations" which take place before airing or publication of any story about NSA programs and operations -- I don't know.
I notice, as well, that Young Snowden refuses categorically to reveal any new classified information in this interview, referring to his preference that journalists do that. This is clearly part of the legal line he must toe -- but why, exactly? According to his legal advisers, and the DoJ, he's been charged under the Espionage Act, which strictly and severely limits the defenses he can utilize.
But wait. He is a guest of the Russian Federation, and doesn't actually need legal defenses against the United States in Russia. So what's going on?
Is this a case in which he adhering to an agreement he supposedly has with the Russian Federation not to provide any information that can harm the United States while he is a guest of the RF? I don't know. None of these supposed agreements he's made have been detailed for the public.
What he has detailed, however, and what the various news organizations that have aired and published this stuff have reinforced, is that the various national and international surveillance agencies of the global security state (let's call it what it is) have the capability to "watch you" in real time, no matter who you are, wherever you are, and whatever you are doing. This capability is frightening.
Be Afraid.
Be Very Afraid.
The Government Is Watching You!!!!!!
Except that over and over again, it's pointed out and acknowledged that the government is (probably) not watching you at all, but in fact, private commercial interests are. They're not just watching, they're tracking and recording and monetizing everything you do, all the time. That is, they're doing it if they have access to you, which they do if you are using any kind of electronic communications.
Young Snowden is intent on letting us know that the government is surveiling one's activities, but he dismisses, with an airy wave of his hand, the fact that commercial interests are the major culprits in this more and more universal surveillance regime because he claims -- wrongly -- that commercial interests don't have the power of government to execute or incarcerate you. Either he's grossly ignorant or he is deliberately deceiving (as so many who make this bogus claim are). Private interests and corporation power more and more are indistinguishable from government power. Surely Young Snowden knows that. Later in the interview, he acknowledges that private companies -- like Booz -- should not be doing the kinds of surveillance and security activities that are properly a function of government. But they do.
Just to be clear, the government maintains massive databases on every one of us; they can, should they want to, discover just about anything on just about anyone, either through their own data collection or by purchasing data from commercial interests -- or just by using the Google, for criminy sakes. We are constantly under surveillance by government and private interests, almost without exception.
There is no doubt in my mind that the public has a right to know these things. The question is whether they have a right to do anything about it. I think they do, but that makes me a troublemaker at the very least. Doing anything about the all encompassing and pervasive surveillance we are under means fugging up and taking down whole systems, and that is something Young Snowden has repeatedly claimed he has no interest in doing. What he has said over and over is that he wants the public in the United States and abroad to have enough information about the NSA's surveillance programs and operations to make informed decisions about their appropriateness and continuation. Apparently, he assumes that an informed public has any real say in these matters. Or... maybe he's assuming something else. That, as he's said and others have pointed out, the knowledge of this surveillance is sufficient to control people's behavior.
I got this notice in my email, about the February 11, "Day We Fight Back" demonstration, and I have to ask, "Just what do they expect to accomplish?"
Aaron Swartz lost his life in pursuit of something bigger than himself, on behalf of open access to information people need or even might need in their lives. The Day We Fight Back is supposed to be in honor of Aaron Swartz and his work to make information a common currency not the exclusive property of a handful of institutions.
I'm all for what he was trying to do -- and his death so shamed JSTOR that most of their millions of documents are now available for the public to read online for no charge as opposed to their previous practice of charging individuals and institutions a veritable fortune for access to almost any of their document trove.
If there were some substantive reforms of -- or preferably abolition of -- the Surveillance/Security State as a result of the Snowden Revelations, then I would be all for it. So far, I have seen little or nothing to encourage me on that front.
But I have seen some people who realize they are being "watched" curb their activities.
That's worrisome. There are many ways around the surveillance/security apparat, but they seem to be the purview of a tiny fragment of the public. How will the general public come to understand and use them? Or is that not a matter we should be concerned with?
People will do what they will do, and no surveillance regime will keep them in check forever.
----------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: There is now a Vimeo video of the interview. One doesn't have to download a zip file. But according to Jonathan Turley, YouTube video versions, and apparently some other video versions are being taken down. According to him it is a concerted government action. I suspect it has more to do with ARD making copyright complaints, but that would be too unconspiratorial of me... heh.
UPDATE: And sure enough, the Vimeo video of the interview is now gone. Government plot? Ohhhhh... if Turley says it is, it must be, right?
The complete interview transcript is apparently available at the German NDR site. But the embedded video doesn't work for me, and it may be blocked in the US.
Friday, January 3, 2014
Let Us Reason Together -- Things Fall Apart (4)
The heat of the Omidyar/Greenwald "partnership for a new global media" hasn't produced any light at all to date, and given Twit Trends, it may never. There is something going on that we, the Rabble, are not privy to. What it is may never be revealed, but the signs aren't looking very promising right now.
"Pierre" has never had any kind of public profile or persona to speak of. He's always been in the shadows -- at least until recently. Now that he's declared his intentions, however, he's come under a lot of scrutiny, from people already in the media (such as Mark Ames and Yasha Levine who've been plugging away on the oligarchy beat for many a long year) and many others.
Greenwald has a long and storied history of turning on, attacking and smearing individuals who are natural allies in what he says he wants, in the quest for civil rights and liberties, and in the realms of media, law, and justice.
Together, the scrutiny of "Pierre's" dealings with the world and his companies' actions (particularly eBay and PayPal -- but there is more, much more) and Greenwald's... social difficulties... seem to be combining into a perfect storm that may lead to the undoing of the "new global media" venture before it even goes live for the first time.
The difficulty of the project was inherent, of course. The idea of forming a media partnership with a somewhat shadowy billionaire to concentrate on investigative journalism exposing government secrets and wrongdoing sounds pretty straightforward and necessary... until...
When you realize that "government" is operating today essentially as a service to and adjunct of corporate interests and power, the notion of exposing its secrets and wrongdoing may not be what it initially appears to be, especially when the exposition is being underwritten by one of the oligarchs (for that is what "Pierre" truly is) who is intimately involved in the nexus of government-corporate power through his companies and apparently through his charities as well.
If you don't ask what the intent is and just blindly and mindlessly accept that any exposure of government secrets and wrongdoing is a priori a Good Thing, then you probably don't understand the nature of government operations today and the many connections between corporations and government that have almost completely blurred the lines between the two.
To set an objective of exposing "government" secrets and wrongdoing while not mentioning the level of corporate control of the governments under which we live, suggests that the real intent of this "new global media" venture is to enhance corporate power and authority and diminish (perhaps extinguish) "government" authority over certain corporations.
Ultimately, one has to ask, "Is it all that wise to sacrifice what little government power and authority remains and submit entirely to corporate authority and control?"
I always ask, when people are pontificating about 'civil liberties' -- "Liberty for whom? To do what?" They never have an answer. But in Greenwald's case, it has long been clear that he is an advocate of "liberating" corporate interest from government control or authority, and he has little or no interest in personal liberties beyond his own. His defense of the abomination of the Citizens United decision was a clear enough indication of where his sympathies lay. And it's not with the People at all.
This may be why, in some measure, he tends to alienate so many people who would otherwise be his natural allies.
On the other hand, "Pierre" and his various enterprises (including a small media venture in Hawaii) seem to be allied with the National Security State in many intricate and intimate ways. The prosecution of the PayPal 14 is one of the highest profile examples of that alliance.
And that's where things have started falling apart.
Alexa O'Brien, who is as dogged and intrepid a New Media journalist as there is, who calls them as she sees them, covered the trial of the PayPal 14 and was horrified at the case presented by PayPal -- owned by "Pierre" -- that asserted falsehoods and damages that were never done, insisted on prosecution for relatively minor online offenses, and required severe punishment for those involved. Wait, said Alexa, this is wrong. This is corporate wrongdoing on a significant scale and an abomination. "Pierre" is involved in this matter, and his companies are pursuing to the limit these individuals that did not damage him or his companies in any sensible way but who fought back against his blockade of WikiLeaks, a rival in the "new global media of wrongdoing" game...
And Greenwald is now linked with this outfit?
She called "Pierre" out on it, and she's called Greenwald out on it. How can you be against "government" secrets and wrongdoing while protecting the kind of corporate viciousness she's seen in full cry in the case of the PayPal blockade of WikiLeaks and the trial of the PayPal 14?
She gave an interview in Germany (Episode 105: Jung und Naiv) in which she reiterated her reservations (linked in a previous post) about "Pierre" and his new media venture and refusing to endorse it or Greenwald's participation in it.
Shortly, Greenwald and O'Brien met on Twitter and had at one another in a very public spat in which, apparently, Greenwald was so rattled, he outright lied about whether Alexa had ever raised the PayPal 14 issue with him when he spoke to her about joining the New Media Conglomerate.
Understandably, Alexa is pissed.
Greenwald has a tendency to double down in these sorts of situations, so I wouldn't be surprised to see him smearing Alexa in numerous full-throated denunciations. It never seems to matter to him who he alienates or what sort of wreckage he leaves behind him as long as he gets what he wants. Which -- among other things -- is power, fame, and money.
Alexa is strong. Greenwald is ruthless.
And "Pierre" wants... what?* Well, that remains to be seen, doesn't it? But from the signs he wants to make government subject and subservient to his demands.
------------------------------------------------
Oh, and any bets on how soon Snowden is offered immunity and repatriated?
------------------------------------------------
* The intimacy with which "Pierre's" companies are allied with the Security/Surveillance State is a subject of a good deal of crowd-sourced research at the moment. Every day, something new comes to light, as should be expected given the depth of penetration the Oligarchy has among those who surveil us and secure them from us. There seem to be a number of overlaps -- shall we say -- between Omidyar's empire and that of the Booz Allen investment conglomerate (IIRC, Booz iswholly partially owned by Carlyle, but I could be misremembering [Indeed].) In other words, my speculation the other day that perhaps Snowden and "Pierre" hooked up in Hawaii well before the Revelations of the Story of the Century, LLC™ may be at least partially correct. It's hard to believe there would be "no knowledge" between them given their proximity and their co-interests. Ahem. (Did they [Snowden/Pierre] meet in a Honolulu strip club? "It would be irresponsible not to speculate..." Heh.)
But time will tell. Unraveling this thing is going to take a great deal of investigative journalism, and we can bet that none of the principals in First Look will have the slightest interest in doing it.
Clever.
This particular document may be getting close to the "smoking gun..."
http://www.minds.com/blog/view/264199355085361152/5-unnerving-documents-showing-ties-between-greenwald-omidyar-and-booz-allen-hamilton
"Pierre" has never had any kind of public profile or persona to speak of. He's always been in the shadows -- at least until recently. Now that he's declared his intentions, however, he's come under a lot of scrutiny, from people already in the media (such as Mark Ames and Yasha Levine who've been plugging away on the oligarchy beat for many a long year) and many others.
Greenwald has a long and storied history of turning on, attacking and smearing individuals who are natural allies in what he says he wants, in the quest for civil rights and liberties, and in the realms of media, law, and justice.
Together, the scrutiny of "Pierre's" dealings with the world and his companies' actions (particularly eBay and PayPal -- but there is more, much more) and Greenwald's... social difficulties... seem to be combining into a perfect storm that may lead to the undoing of the "new global media" venture before it even goes live for the first time.
The difficulty of the project was inherent, of course. The idea of forming a media partnership with a somewhat shadowy billionaire to concentrate on investigative journalism exposing government secrets and wrongdoing sounds pretty straightforward and necessary... until...
When you realize that "government" is operating today essentially as a service to and adjunct of corporate interests and power, the notion of exposing its secrets and wrongdoing may not be what it initially appears to be, especially when the exposition is being underwritten by one of the oligarchs (for that is what "Pierre" truly is) who is intimately involved in the nexus of government-corporate power through his companies and apparently through his charities as well.
If you don't ask what the intent is and just blindly and mindlessly accept that any exposure of government secrets and wrongdoing is a priori a Good Thing, then you probably don't understand the nature of government operations today and the many connections between corporations and government that have almost completely blurred the lines between the two.
To set an objective of exposing "government" secrets and wrongdoing while not mentioning the level of corporate control of the governments under which we live, suggests that the real intent of this "new global media" venture is to enhance corporate power and authority and diminish (perhaps extinguish) "government" authority over certain corporations.
Ultimately, one has to ask, "Is it all that wise to sacrifice what little government power and authority remains and submit entirely to corporate authority and control?"
I always ask, when people are pontificating about 'civil liberties' -- "Liberty for whom? To do what?" They never have an answer. But in Greenwald's case, it has long been clear that he is an advocate of "liberating" corporate interest from government control or authority, and he has little or no interest in personal liberties beyond his own. His defense of the abomination of the Citizens United decision was a clear enough indication of where his sympathies lay. And it's not with the People at all.
This may be why, in some measure, he tends to alienate so many people who would otherwise be his natural allies.
On the other hand, "Pierre" and his various enterprises (including a small media venture in Hawaii) seem to be allied with the National Security State in many intricate and intimate ways. The prosecution of the PayPal 14 is one of the highest profile examples of that alliance.
And that's where things have started falling apart.
Alexa O'Brien, who is as dogged and intrepid a New Media journalist as there is, who calls them as she sees them, covered the trial of the PayPal 14 and was horrified at the case presented by PayPal -- owned by "Pierre" -- that asserted falsehoods and damages that were never done, insisted on prosecution for relatively minor online offenses, and required severe punishment for those involved. Wait, said Alexa, this is wrong. This is corporate wrongdoing on a significant scale and an abomination. "Pierre" is involved in this matter, and his companies are pursuing to the limit these individuals that did not damage him or his companies in any sensible way but who fought back against his blockade of WikiLeaks, a rival in the "new global media of wrongdoing" game...
And Greenwald is now linked with this outfit?
She called "Pierre" out on it, and she's called Greenwald out on it. How can you be against "government" secrets and wrongdoing while protecting the kind of corporate viciousness she's seen in full cry in the case of the PayPal blockade of WikiLeaks and the trial of the PayPal 14?
She gave an interview in Germany (Episode 105: Jung und Naiv) in which she reiterated her reservations (linked in a previous post) about "Pierre" and his new media venture and refusing to endorse it or Greenwald's participation in it.
Shortly, Greenwald and O'Brien met on Twitter and had at one another in a very public spat in which, apparently, Greenwald was so rattled, he outright lied about whether Alexa had ever raised the PayPal 14 issue with him when he spoke to her about joining the New Media Conglomerate.
Understandably, Alexa is pissed.
Greenwald has a tendency to double down in these sorts of situations, so I wouldn't be surprised to see him smearing Alexa in numerous full-throated denunciations. It never seems to matter to him who he alienates or what sort of wreckage he leaves behind him as long as he gets what he wants. Which -- among other things -- is power, fame, and money.
Alexa is strong. Greenwald is ruthless.
And "Pierre" wants... what?* Well, that remains to be seen, doesn't it? But from the signs he wants to make government subject and subservient to his demands.
------------------------------------------------
Oh, and any bets on how soon Snowden is offered immunity and repatriated?
------------------------------------------------
* The intimacy with which "Pierre's" companies are allied with the Security/Surveillance State is a subject of a good deal of crowd-sourced research at the moment. Every day, something new comes to light, as should be expected given the depth of penetration the Oligarchy has among those who surveil us and secure them from us. There seem to be a number of overlaps -- shall we say -- between Omidyar's empire and that of the Booz Allen investment conglomerate (IIRC, Booz is
But time will tell. Unraveling this thing is going to take a great deal of investigative journalism, and we can bet that none of the principals in First Look will have the slightest interest in doing it.
Clever.
This particular document may be getting close to the "smoking gun..."
http://www.minds.com/blog/view/264199355085361152/5-unnerving-documents-showing-ties-between-greenwald-omidyar-and-booz-allen-hamilton
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Episode 105: Tilo Jung Interviews Alexa O'Brien Re: "Pierre"
It was largely through Alexa's Twitter exchanges with "Pierre" (we don't know who is actually Twitting for Omidyar, but it is likely not himself) that the world and WikiLeaks learned, much to its amazement, that PayPal was not "blockading" WikiLeaks at all, pfft, what an idea, the very thought of it made "Pierre" shudder. Figuratively. Alexa and WikiLeaks probed and probed, but got no satisfactory response regarding this remarkable revision of history. All "Pierre" would say is that WikiLeaks should try setting up a PayPal account again, because there would be no "blockade." WikiLeaks apparently demurred. So it's on them, if they don't use PayPal, not "Pierre," for he is manfully not -- at all -- athwart the barricades.
In this episode of Jung und Naiv, the intrepid but disinterested Tilo interviews Alexa O'Brien about this and other matters of potential interest. I thought the close was priceless: she has enormous respect for Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras. Unmentioned is Greenwald. Skewer thrust, perhaps?
There is also a longer interview with Ms O'Brien mostly regarding the Manning revelations and trial.
In this episode of Jung und Naiv, the intrepid but disinterested Tilo interviews Alexa O'Brien about this and other matters of potential interest. I thought the close was priceless: she has enormous respect for Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras. Unmentioned is Greenwald. Skewer thrust, perhaps?
There is also a longer interview with Ms O'Brien mostly regarding the Manning revelations and trial.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
On the Resurgent "Great Man Theory" and Sarah Harrison's Harrowing Heroism
One of the most interesting factors of the current series of crises afflicting the human species and the globe is the resurgence of the Great Man Theory of socio-political operations.
Now, I've never been much into the Great Man notion, though many, many people are. They seem to believe -- sincerely -- that the only way out of our predicament is through the agency of a Great Man, and they go to extreme lengths to identify and promote likely candidates. They also interpret history as if only the actions of the Great Men of the past mattered. It's a pernicious concept in my view, one that leads to authoritarianism at the least, totalitarianism if taken to a logical conclusion.
The Great Man, of course, could be a Woman; there may be a lot of lingering gender inequality, but when it comes to Leadership, women are now thought to be almost as capable as men. Almost.
Recently, Jesselyn Radack produced a somewhat shocking piece of Great Man propaganda and posted it over at dKos. It turned my stomach. But this is the kind of thing that happens routinely when the objective is to drive adherents away from one set of elites and toward another, by fostering extreme levels of truly mindless loyalty toward individuals -- selected by other Great Wo/Men.
Now, I've never been much into the Great Man notion, though many, many people are. They seem to believe -- sincerely -- that the only way out of our predicament is through the agency of a Great Man, and they go to extreme lengths to identify and promote likely candidates. They also interpret history as if only the actions of the Great Men of the past mattered. It's a pernicious concept in my view, one that leads to authoritarianism at the least, totalitarianism if taken to a logical conclusion.
The Great Man, of course, could be a Woman; there may be a lot of lingering gender inequality, but when it comes to Leadership, women are now thought to be almost as capable as men. Almost.
Recently, Jesselyn Radack produced a somewhat shocking piece of Great Man propaganda and posted it over at dKos. It turned my stomach. But this is the kind of thing that happens routinely when the objective is to drive adherents away from one set of elites and toward another, by fostering extreme levels of truly mindless loyalty toward individuals -- selected by other Great Wo/Men.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Billionaire's Butt Boys -- Or The Other Way Around
By now, everyone knows that Greenwald is leaving -- or has already left -- the Guardian to "pursue other opportunities," as they say in the Media Business, and become the editorial head of a new media venture along with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill (among unnamed others) to be funded handsomely by none other than Billionaire Pierre Omidyar, chair and co-founder of eBay.
Well then.
Something like this was almost bound to happen, as Greenwald has made clear throughout his media career (as apparently he did as early as law school) that he had no problem whatsoever hooking up with and serving the interests of corporate masters, the higher the profile, the better.
Well then.
Something like this was almost bound to happen, as Greenwald has made clear throughout his media career (as apparently he did as early as law school) that he had no problem whatsoever hooking up with and serving the interests of corporate masters, the higher the profile, the better.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Tired Now
As at least 5% of Americans must know by now, the Guardian has been regularly publishing stories about domestic and international surveillance from the trove of NSA documents they got through Edward Snowden, who is now an asylee/exile in Russia.
There's been something peculiar about this story from the get, but just what is going on in and through the national and international spookeries continues to be something of a mystery. The fact that so much media attention has been focused on NSA!!! spying and almost none on the pervasiveness of domestic surveillance through many public sector and private sector operations is one of the reasons why I have suggested this is a Summer Shark and Missing White Boy Story, a time-honored summer media diversion from things that actually matter. This story is a classic of the genre, and I suspect it will go away and be all but forgotten (until next summer) right around Labor Day.
Ah but, before it goes away, there will be several more bursts of OUTRAGE!!!!™ and scare mongering like there was on Sunday when Greenwald's Brazilian life-partner was -- erm -- detained at Heathrow and his things were confiscated.
The hysteria was immediate and nonstop. Though I don't follow Greenwald on the Twitter -- don't follow anyone anymore -- I read that he was just burning up the Twit Feeds with accusations and imprecations that went on and on and on about abuses of power, tyranny, and intimidation. The usual Greenwald stuff.
I got tired of it a long time ago.
Actually, it was a little more than getting tired of it.
There's been something peculiar about this story from the get, but just what is going on in and through the national and international spookeries continues to be something of a mystery. The fact that so much media attention has been focused on NSA!!! spying and almost none on the pervasiveness of domestic surveillance through many public sector and private sector operations is one of the reasons why I have suggested this is a Summer Shark and Missing White Boy Story, a time-honored summer media diversion from things that actually matter. This story is a classic of the genre, and I suspect it will go away and be all but forgotten (until next summer) right around Labor Day.
Ah but, before it goes away, there will be several more bursts of OUTRAGE!!!!™ and scare mongering like there was on Sunday when Greenwald's Brazilian life-partner was -- erm -- detained at Heathrow and his things were confiscated.
The hysteria was immediate and nonstop. Though I don't follow Greenwald on the Twitter -- don't follow anyone anymore -- I read that he was just burning up the Twit Feeds with accusations and imprecations that went on and on and on about abuses of power, tyranny, and intimidation. The usual Greenwald stuff.
I got tired of it a long time ago.
Actually, it was a little more than getting tired of it.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
How To Control the So-Called "Debate"
[Note: It doesn't matter what the "debate" happens to be; we could be talking about the Summer Story of Century -- the NSA Surveillance Thing -- or closing a neighborhood school or building a new WalMart; the tactics are the same.]
I've written quite a lot about propaganda and its relative success in shaping and controlling people's perceptions of the world and those around them. We are immersed in propaganda 24/7, and having been born and grown up in the Post WWII Baby Boom generation, I know that has been true my entire life.
Discussing perception management with my parents (my father born in 1901, my mother born in 1911), I realized they, too, spent their entire lives being propagandized to believe certain things and to "know" certain things that I -- in the Ultimate Wisdom of the Adolescent in the latter half of the 1960's -- knew were manifestly untrue. In hashing these things out, though, they considered me to be the victim of propaganda, specifically of Communist propaganda designed to undermine my patriotism and ultimately to conquer the USofA.
When I told them that that was propaganda, it became clear to me that we were all immersed in the same stew of lies, half-truths, misdirection, and fabrications, and finding our way out of it -- if there was one -- could be a full-time job.
It was clear to me in studying history and journalism in this country that there has never been a time when most of the media was not the propaganda wing of the government and its corporate sector patrons. Never. Not even during Watergate, that Great Gate that famously brought down a President.
Radical and alternative publications have always had a place in the American media environment, but even when they are honest and wise and true (often incompatible objectives to be sure), they cannot be separated from their political and ideological perspectives or those of their publishers, and whatever truth one may find in alternative media must still be approached with skepticism and critical thinking, just as one must approach the often more blatant propaganda of the Major Mass Media.
Not even Ramparts (c. 1962 - c. 1975, RIP) was immune from the general propaganda of its era nor was it free of the urge to propagandize on behalf of its own objectives. (/s)
The use of propaganda by government was supposedly illegal until very recently, but any sentient being should long ago have realized that the government is just as adept at using propaganda tactics on the People as any other institution in our lives, and it has never ceased doing so. A key to understanding the use of propaganda by government and the media is their institutional nature.
We all want media we can trust. We want a government we can trust. The horror is... there isn't any.
I've written quite a lot about propaganda and its relative success in shaping and controlling people's perceptions of the world and those around them. We are immersed in propaganda 24/7, and having been born and grown up in the Post WWII Baby Boom generation, I know that has been true my entire life.
Discussing perception management with my parents (my father born in 1901, my mother born in 1911), I realized they, too, spent their entire lives being propagandized to believe certain things and to "know" certain things that I -- in the Ultimate Wisdom of the Adolescent in the latter half of the 1960's -- knew were manifestly untrue. In hashing these things out, though, they considered me to be the victim of propaganda, specifically of Communist propaganda designed to undermine my patriotism and ultimately to conquer the USofA.
When I told them that that was propaganda, it became clear to me that we were all immersed in the same stew of lies, half-truths, misdirection, and fabrications, and finding our way out of it -- if there was one -- could be a full-time job.
It was clear to me in studying history and journalism in this country that there has never been a time when most of the media was not the propaganda wing of the government and its corporate sector patrons. Never. Not even during Watergate, that Great Gate that famously brought down a President.
Radical and alternative publications have always had a place in the American media environment, but even when they are honest and wise and true (often incompatible objectives to be sure), they cannot be separated from their political and ideological perspectives or those of their publishers, and whatever truth one may find in alternative media must still be approached with skepticism and critical thinking, just as one must approach the often more blatant propaganda of the Major Mass Media.
Not even Ramparts (c. 1962 - c. 1975, RIP) was immune from the general propaganda of its era nor was it free of the urge to propagandize on behalf of its own objectives. (/s)
The use of propaganda by government was supposedly illegal until very recently, but any sentient being should long ago have realized that the government is just as adept at using propaganda tactics on the People as any other institution in our lives, and it has never ceased doing so. A key to understanding the use of propaganda by government and the media is their institutional nature.
We all want media we can trust. We want a government we can trust. The horror is... there isn't any.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Meaning to add...
[There would have been more, but we spent yesterday adventuring in town with some Indians (aka "Induns") determined to engage the Powers That Be, and later with a long treasured teller of tales, Nasario Garcia, whose books and stories open many avenues of unique insight into what was not so long ago a strong and surprising cultural survival hidden in plain sight. It's one of the aspects of New Mexico's past and present I'm eager to learn more about. This is the world you are joining...]
The Silly Season is fully upon us now.
So somehow Greenwald managed to make the Snowden story about him again when he gave an interview to La Nacion in Argentina. I don't know whether the interview was conducted in Spanish or English, but of course, it was published in Spanish, and as picked up and reported by Reuters, it's a doozy in that Greenwald goes far beyond any previous demands and threats and denunciations into realms that are either playing to an audience or meant to raise eyebrows and hackles in the United States, and not merely the hackles of government drones (which has taken on quite a new meaning of late, hasn't it?) and agents.
In the interview, Greenwald is quoted by Reuters as saying:
Yes. Well. Greenwald is nothing if not a hyperbolic polemicist and propagandist on behalf of his cause. In this instance, he appears to be deliberately offering up a direct threat to the United States Government. There might-could be some repercussions. Ya think?
Well, some of Greenwald's critics started storming around and ranting about Greenwald's contempt and his implied and direct threats in this interview shortly after the Reuters article appeared.
Of course, it wouldn't be unusual for NSA's and other interested parties' scourbots to alert on the story for inspection and review for potential further action. I mean this is how your government and its many corporate partners work, and it's not pretty. Step out of line, the man come and take you away. More to the point, however, the man will make your life a living hell beforehand. The fact that Greenwald has been able to do his thing on an international basis without molestation (that we know of anyway) for all these years despite his, shall we say, provocations, is one of the indications that he is an asset on one of the teams contending for power over us, and until and unless he actually goes rogue, they're not going to do anything to him. Nor is the Evil, Perfidious, and All-Powerful Government going to do so. He's too valuable as a contrarian thorn in the side. (Yes, actually, there is value for the Powers That Be in having people like Greenwald around; it's a form of channeling and managing dissent, the more hyperbolically the better. After all, I go back to the days of Jerry Rubin.
While I loved Jerry's antics and theatrics and I saw him as a brilliant agitator and critic of the Establishment (and happened to meet him a couple of times -- he was so tiny!) he was also adopted by that Establishment, and his seamless transition from firebrand to multi-level marketeer was all but foregone. When he had a product -- like his books or his radicalism -- he packaged, marketed and sold them like liver sausage. Why not? This is America. The Marketeers' Paradise.
Or at least it used to be. For some, it still is.
I've read Greenwald's interview in both Spanish and auto-translate versions, and it seems to me that his critics are pointing to legitimate factors in the interview which appear to be intended to play to his Argentine audience and to raise hackles in the USofA -- while at the same time his critics are falling into the trap of the provocateur. This is among the reasons why he thinks his critics are teh stoopit. They are so often so easily waylayed by Greenwald's polemics and provocations. Too bad, suckers! (Rubin did this too; he was a master at it. Much better, in my view, than Greenwald.)
The issue is supposedly wanting "the United States on its knees" and threats that if anything (untoward) happens to Snowden, all his scary revelations about the Surveillance State will be released in a torrent. Yes, well. Sure.
Greenwald put up a post at the Guardian shortly after the alert went out about the Reuters piece, deflecting, denouncing and falsely denying the way he does, accusing his critics of stupidity and political revanchism and whatnot, as if any of that mattered. It doesn't, not really.
All that really matters in this latest hoohah is keeping the argument alive, because ultimately it's all about the argument and one-upping and besting one's opponent in the argument.
The odd thing is that this uproar was generated immediately after Snowden's appearance at Sheremetyevo, an appearance that had been orchestrated by WikiLeaks and the Russian government -- eagerly, almost desperately awaited by the global media -- in which Snowden essentially pleaded with Russian human rights representatives to intervene with the Putin regime to obtain temporary political asylum in Russia while he awaits safe passage assurances from Unnamed Western European and North American governments so that he may travel to his exile in Latin America.
Greenwald accuses Reuters of being a tool of the US Government, but good doG, Reuters is an international news agency, and it was Reuters journalists who were slaughtered in the infamous Collateral Murder gun camera video. Reuters reported on the interview in La Nacion because it's an international story of interest, and Reuters did not mischaracterize what Greenwald said.
The Greenwald attack on Reuters is uncalled for in any rational sense, but it takes attention away from Snowden's plight in Russia, a plight which seems to be genuine. He can't move. He's trapped at the airport, and as far as I can tell, that wasn't part of the Plan. His WikiLeaks handlers seem to be somewhat at a loss.
At any rate, the saga will continue for as long as it does.
That summertime news-hole has got to be filled with something.
The Silly Season is fully upon us now.
So somehow Greenwald managed to make the Snowden story about him again when he gave an interview to La Nacion in Argentina. I don't know whether the interview was conducted in Spanish or English, but of course, it was published in Spanish, and as picked up and reported by Reuters, it's a doozy in that Greenwald goes far beyond any previous demands and threats and denunciations into realms that are either playing to an audience or meant to raise eyebrows and hackles in the United States, and not merely the hackles of government drones (which has taken on quite a new meaning of late, hasn't it?) and agents.
In the interview, Greenwald is quoted by Reuters as saying:
"Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had," Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinean daily La Nacion.
This is the original Spanish of the passages in question:
"The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare."
"Snowden tiene suficiente información como para causar más daño al gobierno estadounidense él solo en un minuto del que cualquier otra persona haya tenido jamás en la historia de Estados Unidos"...
El gobierno estadounidense debe estar de rodillas todos los días rogando que nada le ocurra a Snowden, porque si algo le llega a suceder, toda la información será revelada y ésa sería su peor pesadilla.
Yes. Well. Greenwald is nothing if not a hyperbolic polemicist and propagandist on behalf of his cause. In this instance, he appears to be deliberately offering up a direct threat to the United States Government. There might-could be some repercussions. Ya think?
Well, some of Greenwald's critics started storming around and ranting about Greenwald's contempt and his implied and direct threats in this interview shortly after the Reuters article appeared.
Of course, it wouldn't be unusual for NSA's and other interested parties' scourbots to alert on the story for inspection and review for potential further action. I mean this is how your government and its many corporate partners work, and it's not pretty. Step out of line, the man come and take you away. More to the point, however, the man will make your life a living hell beforehand. The fact that Greenwald has been able to do his thing on an international basis without molestation (that we know of anyway) for all these years despite his, shall we say, provocations, is one of the indications that he is an asset on one of the teams contending for power over us, and until and unless he actually goes rogue, they're not going to do anything to him. Nor is the Evil, Perfidious, and All-Powerful Government going to do so. He's too valuable as a contrarian thorn in the side. (Yes, actually, there is value for the Powers That Be in having people like Greenwald around; it's a form of channeling and managing dissent, the more hyperbolically the better. After all, I go back to the days of Jerry Rubin.
While I loved Jerry's antics and theatrics and I saw him as a brilliant agitator and critic of the Establishment (and happened to meet him a couple of times -- he was so tiny!) he was also adopted by that Establishment, and his seamless transition from firebrand to multi-level marketeer was all but foregone. When he had a product -- like his books or his radicalism -- he packaged, marketed and sold them like liver sausage. Why not? This is America. The Marketeers' Paradise.
Or at least it used to be. For some, it still is.
I've read Greenwald's interview in both Spanish and auto-translate versions, and it seems to me that his critics are pointing to legitimate factors in the interview which appear to be intended to play to his Argentine audience and to raise hackles in the USofA -- while at the same time his critics are falling into the trap of the provocateur. This is among the reasons why he thinks his critics are teh stoopit. They are so often so easily waylayed by Greenwald's polemics and provocations. Too bad, suckers! (Rubin did this too; he was a master at it. Much better, in my view, than Greenwald.)
The issue is supposedly wanting "the United States on its knees" and threats that if anything (untoward) happens to Snowden, all his scary revelations about the Surveillance State will be released in a torrent. Yes, well. Sure.
Greenwald put up a post at the Guardian shortly after the alert went out about the Reuters piece, deflecting, denouncing and falsely denying the way he does, accusing his critics of stupidity and political revanchism and whatnot, as if any of that mattered. It doesn't, not really.
All that really matters in this latest hoohah is keeping the argument alive, because ultimately it's all about the argument and one-upping and besting one's opponent in the argument.
The odd thing is that this uproar was generated immediately after Snowden's appearance at Sheremetyevo, an appearance that had been orchestrated by WikiLeaks and the Russian government -- eagerly, almost desperately awaited by the global media -- in which Snowden essentially pleaded with Russian human rights representatives to intervene with the Putin regime to obtain temporary political asylum in Russia while he awaits safe passage assurances from Unnamed Western European and North American governments so that he may travel to his exile in Latin America.
Greenwald accuses Reuters of being a tool of the US Government, but good doG, Reuters is an international news agency, and it was Reuters journalists who were slaughtered in the infamous Collateral Murder gun camera video. Reuters reported on the interview in La Nacion because it's an international story of interest, and Reuters did not mischaracterize what Greenwald said.
The Greenwald attack on Reuters is uncalled for in any rational sense, but it takes attention away from Snowden's plight in Russia, a plight which seems to be genuine. He can't move. He's trapped at the airport, and as far as I can tell, that wasn't part of the Plan. His WikiLeaks handlers seem to be somewhat at a loss.
At any rate, the saga will continue for as long as it does.
That summertime news-hole has got to be filled with something.
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