Why the Ruling Class is So Upset About Edward Snowden

[Octafish]

“The Damage to Our Intelligence is Gut-Wrenching to See”

Why the Ruling Class is So Upset About Edward Snowden

by GARY LEUPP
CounterPunch June 26, 2013

EXCERPT...

It all, in my humble opinion, boils down to this. The entirety of the ruling elite and the journalistic establishment are keen on defending the programs Snowden has exposed; keen on punishing him for his whistle-blowing; determined to vilify him as a punk, narcissist, egoist, attention-hungry ne’er-do-well (anything but a thoughtful man who made a moral choice that has enlightened people about the character of the U.S. government); feverishly working on damage control while anticipating more damning revelations; and determined to get those four laptops with their incriminating content back into the bosom of the national security state.

What sort of state is it, that says to its own people, we can invade a country based on lies, kill a million people, hold nobody accountable but hey, when one of us does something so abominable as to reveal that the state spies constantly on the people of the world, we have to have a “manhunt” for him and punish him for treason?

The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has the audacity to tell NBC News, “It is literally gut-wrenching to see” Snowden’s revelations… because of the “damage” they do to “our intelligence capabilities”! As though there were really an “our” or “us” at this point. As though we were a nation united, including the mindful watchers and the grateful watched.

[font color="green"]No, there are us, and there are them. The tiny power elite that controls the mainstream press and cable channels, the corporations that dutifully hand over meta-data to the state (and then deny doing so to allay consumer outrage), the twin political parties, are sick to their stomachs that they’ve been so exposed.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/26/why-the-ruling-class-is-so-upset-about-edward-snowden/

[JM42]

1. Perhaps because they have secrets of illegal activity they've been involved in?

[Octafish]

2. Wikileaks Release Suggests STRATFOR Inside Info Plan with Goldman Sachs Exec

By Ryan Villarreal: Subscribe to Ryan's RSS feed
IBTimes.com
February 27, 2012 6:26 PM EST

WikiLeaks released more than 5 million e-mails Monday hacked from U.S.-based global intelligence firm Strategy Forecasting Inc. (Stratfor), revealing an alleged plan between the firm's CEO and a Goldman Sachs executive to set up an investment fund that would rely on inside information gathered by the company.

A September 2011 company-wide e-mail composed by Stratfor CEO George Friedman indicates that Goldman Sachs financial adviser and former Managing Director Shea Morenz was directly involved in the establishment of the investment fund StratCap.

"Shea Morenz provided us with two opportunities," wrote Friedman.

"First, he made an investment in Stratfor designed to give us the capital needed to build our staff and our marketing. Second, he proposed a new venture, StratCap, which would allow us to utilize the intelligence we were gathering about the world in a new but related venue -- an investment fund. Where we had previously advised other hedge funds. We would now have our own, itself fully funded by Shea."

CONTINUED...

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/305532/20120227/wikileaks-stratfor-stratcap-goldman-sachs-fund-julian.htm

Secret information is like a license to print money.

PS: Welcome to DU, JM42! I believe you are correct about the "Why?"

[JM42]

3. You have to realize that they're all in it for the money. Fuck the country. Money rules.

[Octafish]

5. That's it, exactly: ''Money trumps peace.''

The very words of George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007, uttered at a press conference in which not a single of the callow, cowed press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.

I remember Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention.

[JM42]

6. Geeze. He's totally wasted, but at least he was telling the truth for once.

Last edited Tue Jul 9, 2013, 12:56 PM - Edit history (1)

War throughout history has mostly been about money (gold, silver, women, whatever). The corporations decide what we do or do not do with our military, not the government. The shrub was perhaps the best example of letting the "military industrial complex" have its way with our country. I'm a little upset with Obama for not moving more quickly, but he did get our troops out of Iraq and turned over military control to Afghanistan. That's nothing to sneeze at.

[grasswire]

12. a warm welcome to DU

You get it. Hope to see more posts from you.

[JM42]

16. Thanks, but he was still drunk off his ass. Perhaps that's the only way he CAN tell the truth.

[JDPriestly]

25. I don't know whether he was drunk.

Face it. Bush should have been in therapy, not in the White House.

He showed one personality to the public and a very different one to those who knew him well.

He guarded what he said to the public because he knew that his ideas were crass and ugly.

[JM42]

28. Okay, maybe it was an LSD flashback, but he's always sounded drunk off his ass.

[Cleita]

33. Oh he was drunk and often. Remember when the SS had to carry him out of the

bleachers at the olympics and the stupid, drunken donkey face he frequently displayed when he couldn't even remember to finish his sentences because he forgot what he meant to say midway? I used to be a bartender. I know when someone is in their cups when I see them.

[colorado_ufo]

20. Welcome to DU!

Please note, though, that Obama got troops out of Iraq, not Iran. No troops in Iran.

[JM42]

22. My bad. I mean Iraq. One stupid letter. And thanks for the welcome.

I fixed it in the previous post. Damn I must be tired and it's not even 1:00 in the afternoon.

[calimary]

78. Welcome to DU, JM42!

Glad you're here! What a disgrace he was! World-class. He was a world-class embarrassment. There was a photo I saw posted after some Southeast Asian conference I believe, and the conferees were descending a grand outdoor staircase such as one leading up to an important government building or some such place. And there he was, coming down the stairs - and his zipper was down. Just cringe-worthy. His whole "administration" was utterly cringe-worthy. DU kept me sane during those miserable years!

[zeemike]

14. Holey shit, he actually said it.

He really was a stupid stupid man.

But I missed it because I hated to hear him talk...

[JM42]

17. It isn't "talk" - it's drunken babble.

[zeemike]

19. Good point.

But the only way I could ever tolerate drunken talk is if I was drunk myself...and I quit that over 10 years ago.
And welcome to DU...

[JM42]

21. Thank you. The shrub was never a "dry drunk" - he was always drunk.

Do you remember the picture of him in the bleachers holding the flag backward with Jenna looking at him with a face that said, "DADDY!"

[zeemike]

23. Or when he gave Angela Mercle a back rub?

Yep he was drunk...I have know a lot of drunks, so my opinion is informed.

[JM42]

24. He was clearly loaded and she was clearly offended.

[Octafish]

41. He treated a head of state like a hired hand. Remember what he did on Letterman?

The drunken coke-whore used another human being's clothing to clean his eyeglasses.

[JDPriestly]

46. Whose coat is that?

[Octafish]

49. Maria Pope

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1498196

I understand Smirko, after shaking hands with a local, wiped his hand on Clinton's shirt in Haiti.

http://guerillawomentn.blogspot.com/2010/03/bush-wipes-hand-on-clintons-shirt-after.html

[ctsnowman]

90. Two fucking terms

for that dipshit. What a fucking joke.

[midnight]

55. Yep.... They let us in on that several years ago via "Money Trumps Peace"

[grasswire]

8. another sickening revelation, Octafish

Thanks for posting.

[Octafish]

30. You are most welcome, grasswire.

The comment was so revelatory it must've shocked even the most corrupt member of the press.

What ticks me off is that whenever I have brought the statement up over the years, the common attitude is a shrug, "What can we do?" Then it's back to talking about the price of gas going up and the price of houses going down.

[JDPriestly]

44. Free market. Ha! Manipulated markets is more like it.

And they take our 401(K) pension funds and expect us to invest our retirement wisely when they are using every trick in the book to find ways to just grab all the money themselves.

What criminals!

[Octafish]

54. Guess who bought LIBOR today?

NYSE body to run Libor as City attempts to put scandal behind it

Not that anyone would consider it a conflict of interest or anything, with derivatives being such a well-regulated component in the world of high finance so often backed by the United States taxpayer.

Meet the Unseen Bullwhip of the New Slavemasters: LIBOR

[Enthusiast]

82. Plus K&R! nt

[The Second Stone]

4. All of this stuff trickled out over the years, Snowden has

confirmed what other whistle blowers have stated in terms of general capabilities. He has not given details, merely said that everything is vacuumed up. That we as the general public are the targets of the spying. Confirming what others have said. But the attention brought to it is tremendous. It confirms that we are the targets, not Al Queda, not the Boston Marathon bombers, not organized crime, but everyone. Hoover used this power to run Washington for 50 years. Presumably the NSA is doing the same.

What Snowden did is illegal. What the government is doing is much, much worse.

[Octafish]

42. ''What Snowden did is illegal. What the government is doing is much, much worse.''

It is amazing. The spies in our own government are engaged in operations against their bosses, We the People.

My grandfather and three of his brothers fought that very thing in World War II.

PRISM and the Rise of a New Fascism

We Are All Witnesses Now

by JOHN PILGER
CounterPunch WEEKEND EDITION JUNE 21-23, 2013

EXCERPT...

Snowden’s revelation that Washington has used Google, Facebook, Apple and other giants of consumer technology to spy on almost everyone is further evidence of a modern form of fascism. Having nurtured oldfashioned fascists around the world – from Latin America to Africa and Indonesia – the genie has risen at home. Understanding this is as important as understanding the criminal abuse of technology.

Fred Branfman, who exposed the “secret” destruction of tiny Laos by the US air force in the 1960s and 1970s, provides an answer to those who still wonder how a liberal African-American president, a professor of constitutional law, can command such lawlessness. “Under Mr Obama, America is still far from being a classic police-state . . .” he wrote. “But no president has done more to create the infrastructure for a possible future police state.” Why? Because Obama understands that his role is not to indulge those who voted for him but to expand “the most powerful institution in the history of the world, one that has killed, wounded or made homeless well over 20 million human beings, mostly civilians, since 1962”.

In the new American cyberpower, only the revolving doors have changed. The director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, was an adviser to Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state in the Bush administration who lied that Saddam Hussein could attack the US with nuclear weapons. Cohen and Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt – they met in the ruins of Iraq – have co-authored a book, The New Digital Age, endorsed as visionary by the former CIA director Michael Hayden and the war criminals Henry Kissinger and Tony Blair. The authors make no mention of the Prism spying programme, revealed by Snowden, that provides the NSA with access to all of us who use Google.

Control and dominance are the two words that make sense of this. These are exercised by political, economic and military design, of which mass surveillance is an essential part, but also by insinuating propaganda into the public consciousness. This was Edward Bernays’s point. His two most successful PR campaigns convinced Americans that they should go to war in 1917 and persuaded women to smoke in public; cigarettes were “torches of freedom” that would hasten women’s liberation.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/21/prism-and-the-rise-of-a-new-fascism/

Adlai Stevenson, Jr., called corruption in office "Treason." Now it's business as usual.

[cantbeserious]

63. Pretty Much Sums Up My Disgust With Obama, Bush And Cheney

eom

[Enthusiast]

83. Me too......nt

[Art_from_Ark]

80. Adlai Stevenson was a great politician

One of America's best. It's too bad that he, and RFK, were never able to become President.

[JDPriestly]

45. [phone]

[sabrina 1]

48. 'We are the targets, not Al Queda'. That is the scandal they are trying to cover up.

That the billions spent on security has been obtained fraudulently. That the data-mining of the American people is NOT about our security, it is about MONEY.

That THEIR worst enemies are the people, not the 'terrorists'.

And they know when the people find out this is all a huge scam, they will not be able to use their 'terror' excuse for getting our tax dollars anymore.

[marions ghost]

51. +++++

"what the govt is doing is much, much worse"

[Jessy169]

7. Maybe they aren't as upset about Snowden's leaks as they are about...

... all the other BIG NASTY SECRETS that haven't leaked out (yet) to the public. They need to villify Snowden, string him up in the public square, whip him, degrade him, make an EXAMPLE out of him -- if for no other reason than to serve as a deterrant to other secret-knowers who might be thinking about following in Snowden's tracks.

[grasswire]

10. ....and too many who say they are Democrats are helping to vilify him..

...in order to protect the secrets from the American people. Shameful.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

11. ^^^ THIS ^^^

I believe they feel they must shut him down to serve as a deterant to future whistleblowers.

If he is successful in getting sanctuary, other will feel more willing to take the risk, too.

And that is why I hope he makes it.

[Octafish]

50. Those in on the secret are one-up on those who are not privy.

Preventing the Bolivian president from flying out of Europe was an act of desperation. These people are sore afraid of being exposed for the fascists they are that they were willing to commit an act of war. Something very rotten is at the core of the Secret Government and its presence is a cancer killing democracy.

[WillyT]

68. Did Somebody Say... "Secret Government" ???

DULink: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023144317

[Enthusiast]

84. You nailed it.

"Something very rotten is at the core of the Secret Government and its presence is a cancer killing democracy."

And it was an act of desperation.

[byeya]

9. I think they are fearful that old scandals, BCCI, the Vatican Bank, etc, will be seen as part of

the corrupt continuum when the dots get connected. These fascists think nothing of bringing down whole countries like Greece if it adds to their immense, undeserved, fortunes. Any embarrassing information is labeled Top Secret and woe to he/she who releases same. The use of the DoD and State Depts to rob nations' of their natural resources and pollute these coutries for the benefit of the rich must remain inviolate.

[grasswire]

15. the people are just part of a commodity to them

While they promote "patriotism" and American exceptionalism, they gut the product of American workers and bleed the treasury dry.

We've been so suckered, for so long.

Wake up, citizens! Stand in solidarity!

[byeya]

26. Yes. Workers are throwaway commodities along with the resources used to import or make goods

to be sold. Speak up and you're on the outside. Be unemployed "too long" and you're an unemployable misfit.

People are realizing that they have more common ground with furniture makers in Agentina(say) than the CEO's and staff and their banker allies here in the USA. Labor needs to once again go international.

[JDPriestly]

47. Precisely. And then they blame Americans for needing Social Security.

They steal by hook or by crook immense fortunes and blame the rest of us honest citizens for being poor and dependent on the government.

That is the horror of it all.

[Octafish]

52. Absolutely, byeya. Smart people can connect dots.

BCCI was part of the BFEE world turd works. In 2004, they use something new -- Riggs Bank, for one. Tomorrow it will be something else, unless the Truth is spread to those who are willing to do something about it -- Vote.

From The Outlaw Bank: BCCI

by Jonathan Beaty & S.C. Gwynne:

THE BIG SLEEP

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the BCCI affair in the United States was the failure of U.S. government and federal law enforcement to move against the outlaw bank. Instead of swift retribution, what took place over more than a decade was a cover-up of major, alarming proportions, often orchestrated from the very highest levels of government. When the Justice Department finally moved decisively against BCCI in late 1991, it did so reluctantly, with both Robert Morgenthau and the national press corps breathing down its neck.

The government knew a great deal about BCCI's criminality and knew it from a wide variety of sources. Though the public did not hear about its transgressions until later, BCCI had long been graven into the annals of U.S. law enforcement, intelligence, national security, and diplomacy. Authentic, unambiguous information about the bank's money laundering, weapons dealing, nuclear proliferation, terrorist accounts, and other crimes had reached the State Department, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the CIA, and even the White House's National Security Council years before. The detail of information was exceptional, the failure to follow up on it baffling.

U.S. officialdom had known for years just exactly how bad the bank was, and even that it secretly owned First American Bank...

What finally busted the logjam was not the government but the prodigious buildup of information on BCCI from sources outside federal law enforcement: from Morgentahau, from Blum, from Kerry's maverick subcommittee, from current and former BCCI employees around the world, from sources in the intelligence and weapons communities....

CONTINUED...

http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BCCI.htm

Remember that was 2004 -- way before the latest rogue wave of corruption bailed out the crooks of Wall Street cough friends of Geithner.

Generated and connected a lot of dots when the great DUer blm honored me by asking about BCCI a ways back:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2118878

[nashville_brook]

67. as corrupt as the banking system is now,

i wonder if there is still a need for a Riggs or BCCI. seems like HSBC would do just fine.

[Octafish]

70. It seems the corruption has become systemic, a qualification for advancement at least.

Ones who can do anything about it are left on the sidelines:

William K. Black, for one.

“From 2000 to 2007, (appraisers) ultimately delivered to Washington officials a petition; signed by 11,000 appraisers…it charged that lenders were pressuring appraisers to place artificially high prices on properties. According to the petition, lenders were ‘blacklisting honest appraisers’ and instead assigning business only to appraisers who would hit the desired price targets” (FCIC 2011: 18).

SOURCE: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/07/two-sentences-that-explain-the-crisis-and-how-easy-it-was-to-avoid.html#more-5709

PS: Did you see who bought LIBOR today? Bet it won'g be long before they can jig trillions out of it and into their own Swiss accounts.

[RufusTFirefly]

75. If you're concerned about Riggs Bank, try Googling "Riggs Bank" and "Politico"

You can add in "Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation" if you're feeling intrepid.

But don't worry: I'm sure that Politico's connections with Riggs and Reagan are old news. Never fear. Keep reading their articles; I feel certain they're "fair and balanced."

Look forward!!

[Octafish]

103. See your Riggs and raise you a Nugan-Hand Bank.

And Banco Nazionale del Lavoro. And BCCI. And UBS. And just about every major bank since.

Odd how one name publicly and privately links these. The late, great Jonathan Kwitny wrote all about he seemed to weasel out of any illegality during Iran-Contra:

Who Gave Bush His Teflon Coat in the Iran Contra Scam?

LosAngeles Times
November 04, 1988|JONATHAN KWITNY |

EXCERPT...

But the way George Bush has been let off the hook sickens me--as does the notion that he could be an acceptable candidate for the presidency, let alone leading the polls, less than two years after the Iran-Contra scandal broke.

The Bush-Reagan team rode to office on the issue of terrorism, pledging to halt it by never negotiating with terrorists and stopping others from doing so. For much of their Administration, federal law prohibited waging war on Nicaragua. Yet Bush attended dozens of meetings at which were discussed either our active role in starting and sustaining the Contra war or the secret supply of arms to Iran, which in public he called a leading terrorist state. Bush's assertion now that he didn't know of these activities is preposterous. An aide's minutes show him being briefed on arms shipments to Iran as they were in progress. He says that he misunderstood; he thought that the sales were Israeli. If so, he was muddleheaded on this linchpin issue and lacked leadership, considering our influence over Israel. Alternatively, he is simply lying; records show that he had been told earlier that Israel was acting as our front in the transactions.

In fact, Bob Woodward has reported, and Bush hasn't (to my knowledge) denied, that Bush was with Reagan when the President signed the Bible that was delivered as a gift to the "terrorist" ayatollah along with a planeload of missiles and other arms.

Nor was Bush just a loyal confidant who kept his mouth shut when Reagan erred. Bush, a former CIA director, hired career CIA officer Donald Gregg as his personal vice presidential adviser. When Contra military aid was banned, Gregg began phoning and meeting with an old CIA pal of both men, Felix Rodriguez, who, allegedly as a private citizen, went to the Salvadoran military base where arms were transferred for shipment in small craft to Contra bases.

Guns, ammo, mines and explosives were collected by men close to White House aide Oliver North and used in a terror war against civilian farm cooperatives in Nicaragua. Rodriguez ran the arms depot, at times talking almost daily with Gregg and meeting at least three times with Bush--whose office says that they only discussed other things, and that the presence of the arms deals on the agenda for one of those meetings was a typing error.

It gets worse. As his own assistant Rodriguez hired, under an assumed name, Luis Posada Carriles, another former CIA colleague who had just been sprung from a Venezuelan jail--with his help, Rodriguez has hinted. Posada was in jail for the mid-air bombing of a civilian Cuban airliner that took 73 lives. That surpasses all the Arab terrorist acts that Bush and Reagan have complained of.

Bush's office has said that he didn't know of Posada's background. Nonsense. Posada bombed that airliner on Bush's watch, in October, 1976, and Castro's howls of CIA culpability and U.S. denials were big news. Surely a CIA director worthy of the title would have called for the file on Posada.

CONTINUED...

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-11-04/local/me-984_1_contra-arms

That particular fellah also seemed to have gotten a hand into every thing worth keeping secret since the Bay of Pigs Thing.

Oh well. Must be business as usual for the son of a Senator, another strange coincidence for a former head of the CIA turned vice president turned president turned father of a president.

Sorry to ramble. I get nostalgic.

Look forward, my Friend. And, stay thirsty!

[RufusTFirefly]

104. I'm tempted to call, but I'll simply fold

You'll get precious few arguments from me on this stuff, Octafish.

A pity so much of this information constitutes "Fog Facts."

[Octafish]

105. You've got all aces, RufutTFirefly.

Didn't mean to go overboard, pulling cards out of my boot and from my sleave, stacking the deck, and grabbing everything I could from the discards, but when it comes to where we're at, we got to.



Thank you for the heads-up on Beinhart. Seeing how the BFEE has lied America into war over and over again, that looks like one fantastic read into how the doctors of propaganda work. I do know what side you're on, my Friend. You and your card -- Truth -- trump the warmongers, every time.

[tex-wyo-dem]

79. That is really a big part of the problem...

People fail to connect the dots and instead see things as isolated incidents rather than a whole. If a critical mass could see the big picture, then we would start to see real change.

Thanks, again, Octafish for shining a light in those dark corners.

[Myrina]

13. 2 pronged: they own those companies, and they likely benefit financially from the secrets.

n/t

[JM42]

18. DING DING DING! - We HAVE A WINNER!

That's all it is about.

[cantbeserious]

64. Yes - Their Gravy Train Cannot Be Denied

eom

[Octafish]

94. Carlyle Group spawned many identical monsters, like Trireme Partners...

They used inside information gleaned from their future employees working in government to see where the wars are and are going to be.

Take Richard "PNAC Pearl Harbor" Perle and his $10 million pitch to Adnan "Iran-Contra and Selection 2000 Fixer-Upper" Khashoggi, please:

Lunch With The Chairman

by Seymour Hersh
The New Yorker March 17, 2003

EXCERPT...

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.

Perle served as a foreign-policy adviser in George W. Bush’s Presidential campaign—he had been an Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan—but he chose not to take a senior position in the Administration. In mid-2001, however, he accepted an offer from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to chair the Defense Policy Board, a then obscure group that had been created by the Defense Department in 1985. Its members (there are around thirty of them) may be outside the government, but they have access to classified information and to senior policymakers, and give advice not only on strategic policy but also on such matters as weapons procurement. Most of the board’s proceedings are confidential.

As chairman of the board, Perle is considered to be a special government employee and therefore subject to a federal Code of Conduct. Those rules bar a special employee from participating in an official capacity in any matter in which he has a financial interest. “One of the general rules is that you don’t take advantage of your federal position to help yourself financially in any way,” a former government attorney who helped formulate the Code of Conduct told me. The point, the attorney added, is to “protect government processes from actual or apparent conflicts.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/17/030317fa_fact?currentPage=all

[Myrina]

96. Brilliant, thank you for this!

[CtDemoFarmer]

27. On how many US Military bases around the world do you...

think there are NSA and NSA contractor facilities that monitor the communications of that countries people and the surrounding nations? The people of the world will soon wake up to the type of friendship that the US provides.

[marions ghost]

36. Big Brother is never your friend...

[Octafish]

60. It breaks my heart. It should be totally different.

Lao Tzu wrote: "He who does not trust enough will not be trusted."

President Kennedy started the Peace Corps because peace, not threats of violence, are the way to make true and lasting friendships.

Instead, we have the "Money trumps peace" of George Walker Bush, whose own family not only profits from war, they do their damndest to use their selected office to improve their, uh, holdings. Take Paraguay. Their goons there just knocked out of office a man of integrity.



PS: I was about to welcome you to DU, CtDemoFarmer, when I saw you are a long-time member. Thank you for taking time to comment on this post. Please contribute more often.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

29. Americans have to be kept in the dark or else the game is over.

[cantbeserious]

65. Willfull Ignorance By Plan And Design

eom

[Octafish]

98. ...in cages without walls, or else they'd all go crazy mad.

It's the police state tyrants have dreamed of -- repression without walls.

Until Snowden, few knew they're being watched. And NSA technology means everyone is monitored, their associations recorded, their conversations stored, their thoughts catalogued.

The best thing for the tyrants: The majority have no idea as to their situation and its increasingly perilous denouement.

[William deB. Mills]

31. Embarrassment

The cardinal rule for survival in Washington is: “Never do anything that embarrasses me!” And by now Obama--who has spent four years cozying up to the Neo-Cons and letting them off the hook for all their violations of principle, as well as cozying up to the financial elite and letting them off the hook despite overwhelming prima facie evidence that many should be “given their day in court—has a great deal to be embarrassed about. One word describes the Obama administration so far: “co-opted.” Mr. President, you have 3.5 years left to prove me wrong.

[truebluegreen]

38. +1

And welcome to DU.

[Enthusiast]

85. PLUS ONE! nt

[heaven05]

32. thanks

for counterpunch.org.

[Cleita]

34. I hope this gets blown wide open in the months to come. Our media won't report much and will

attempt to cover up a lot but it looks like the foreign press is gearing up to exposing everything and I can hardly wait. The power elite can't control it all if it's worldwide.

[intaglio]

35. Using this man's definition

The "ruling class" could not give a 2d upright about Mr E Snowden Esq. A few of them, with money in media companies, will be looking at a very small increase in profit. What this undefined "ruling class" is interested in is damaging a President who is not one of them and how this is done they do not care.

They probably like simplistic ideologues like Professor Leupp who contribute to such foolish books like "Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion"

[Octafish]

56. Gary LEUPP: ''We in our turn should feel, if not terrorized, nauseated.''

The point of Dr. Leupp's essay is that the warnings of Frank Church have come true:

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” -- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho)

http://www.thenation.com/blog/frank-church-and-abyss-warrantless-wiretapping#

[intaglio]

99. Professor

It's at the bottom of the article (emphasis mine)

GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press)

What Prof. Leupp knows about Japanese History and religion in general may be extensive but, going on his 2nd article his knowledge judicial precedent and technology is abyssmal, just like all of the others here taking umbrage against a legal activity which is then used by a legally constituted court to authorise further actions. If you want to yammer on about it get Congress to change the way in which FISC is constituted and then try to have a change in the Constitution to render public information private.

Good luck with that 2nd part because, if you succeed then wave goodbye to the internet - and cellphone services - and the Postal Service; because they rely on envelopes and metadata being open to all comers.

[bvar22]

37. That is a great summation.

DURec for wider exposure.

[polynomial]

39. Do wha dididy dumb didity do

In my opinion the Russians should reconsider giving sanctuary to Snowden. Here, Snowden has insider current events about Booz Allen and Hamilton however, it is very possible that insider good secret stuff is played out in the free for all, whereas, the one percent trillion dollar derivative market place is adjusted for this breach in corruption secrecy.

Actually this whole business of corporate secrecy makes me chuckle witty and laugh to myself as I write this mastermind of profiteering, and the trillion dollar secret derivative market is and still is in my view a direct part of the whole war game for the past ten twenty or thirty years.

Iraq, Afghanistan, or other ancillary brief wars like an Arab spring, Egypt, Libya, Central America, etc. People complain that now this is Obama’s economy, but from my view and ever since Bush one Herbert Walker Bush was the CIA as director, be sure many, many, loyal individuals are still in place in the entire secret stuff business. The only way to resolve this mess is to purge that entire system that is connecting to the Bush/ Cheney political syndicate.

Mata data sets are likely declassified as quickly as no warrants are needed. Did you get that, saying that with a laugh and chuckle? Corporate cool suits are without warrant making huge deals to franchise out Mata data worldwide in the best deal the current Republican Tea market will tolerate.

Please Ladies and Gentlemen anyone president who can put an Arabian horse rancher in charge of FEMA along with making Mata data secret is rigging the roulette wheel in all that is needed that builds America. Sort of like cotton comes to Harlem via Jordan Shirts, Jay-Z designer jeans from the sweat shops in Bangladesh on sale by nearest big box Wal-Mart. Bush and company duped the minority end to end.

[madrchsod]

53. welcome to du

[LiberalLovinLug]

40. Big K & R

He nails it.

[snagglepuss]

43. to read later

[WillyT]

57. HUGE K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[MNBrewer]

58. But I thought everything he revealed was already known, and was also (somehow) a lie

it's also causing damage to our intelligence capabilities? ALL THREE SIMULTANEOUSLY?

[DirkGently]

59. Absolutely. This is a threat to The Way Things Are Done.

Nothing makes an insider or elitist angrier than someone bucking the chain of command. There is nice, cozy arrangement right now, particularly for national issues, wherein very little information not beneficial to government is reported in-depth. There are gobs of "leaks," but somehow they're all helpful to the establishment.

Look at all the "classified" info dumped trying to defend the NSA spying scandal. "Zillions of terror plots were stopped!" Yet not one squeal of "traitor," nor any threats of prosecution.

This is serious stuff. Damaging information is the precise information people need to hear, and it's largely been successfully characterized as crime. This is the same logic used on progressives in general. Occupy, an explicitly peaceful, non-violent movement, was nonetheless stalked and spied upon and infiltrated, because, you know, complaining about monied interests or government corruption is tantamount to treason.

What's going to happen at some point is truly "damaging" secrets will be revealed, because now it all goes in the treason bucket.

And I'm going to reverse a habit I have here and point out this is AN OBAMA PROBLEM. This administration, not Bush, began abusing the Espionage Act and applying it to whistleblowing and leaking.

It's not acceptable because he's doing it. And it won't be acceptable when the next conservative continues it.

[Civilization2]

61. thanks for the post, great article, from a great site.

Some people actually seem to miss the whole power structure of the 1% in control of nearly everything,. although this is becoming more and more difficult for them to maintain. Reality has a way of asserting itself.

[NineNightsHanging]

62. Thanks for posting this

Some of the virulent and irrational attacks on Snowden on this site come from PAID disruptors.

[cantbeserious]

66. Thank You For Sharing

eom

[Progressive dog]

69. Yes we're an awful country because of the 1%

so let's cheer for everyone who tries to bring it down. Those other countries are so much better, we should cheer people like Snowden. Other countries don't have wealthy people.
It's all are fault and patriotism requires us to commit national suicide. That's obviously the moral thing to do.

I am an American and am proud of it. Despite our government's many flaws, we have as many or more civil rights than almost every country in the world. For over 200 years, our democracy has expanded voting rights. For over 200 years, civil rights have been expanded. No other nation has a comparable record.

What deceptive nonsense.

What sort of state is it, that says to its own people, we can invade a country based on lies, kill a million people, hold nobody accountable but hey, when one of us does something so abominable as to reveal that the state spies constantly on the people of the world, we have to have a “manhunt” for him and punish him for treason?

[Warren Stupidity]

71. 68 posts before the authoritarian response shows up?

You guys are not being diligent at all.

[Progressive dog]

87. If that's a question it got the number of responses wrong,

the first use of authoritarian I see is post #71. I think that guy has that word like a dog with a bone. He uses it instead of substantive argument.

[A Simple Game]

97. Union rules say they have to have a lunch break. No wait that can't be right.

I doubt they believe in belonging to unions.

[Karmadillo]

72. I hate to ask, but in what way is the quote you highlighted deceptive nonsense?

[Progressive dog]

74. Treason is not only defined in the US

Constitution, no government official has ever seriously considered charging him with treason.
The author uses lying the USA into war as a reason not to charge Snowden with a crime. That same argument can be used to let murders go free, certainly many more than one died in Iraq and we didn't punish anyone.

[tomp]

88. murderers are going free, that was the point.

sheesh!.

[Progressive dog]

89. No it wasn't

[Quantess]

76. That quote is spot-on. (no text)

[Liberal_Dog]

73. K & R

Thanks Octafish.

[Kurovski]

77. K&R. (nt)

[Enthusiast]

81. Kicked and Recommended! nt

[MichaelKelley]

86. trying to understand

I am also trying to understand that who he is and what are the situations currently and why everyone is behind him? I am getting small information from here and there, but I am not getting time to go thoroughly about this matter.

[marmar]

91. k/r

[woo me with science]

100. Marvelous thread.

Thank you.

[Laelth]

101. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[Quantess]

102. Excellent thread.

Time for a kick.

[whatchamacallit]

106. So much win!

K&R!