Snowden isn’t a Washington insider, he’s never held an official position --- but he did reveal top secret information.
On Jun 12, 6:39 am, MJ <[email protected]> wrote: > Smear Brigade Goes After Snowden-- and Greenwald. They can't refute the > message --so they go after the messengersbyJustin Raimondo, June 12, 2013 > When whistleblowers expose government wrongdoing and abuses, the procedure is > always the same: the regime’s defenders focus on the whistleblower’s alleged > personality defects and smear him within an inch of his life. They did it > withDan Ellsberg, they did it withJulian Assange, they did it withBradley > Manning, and that all too familiar modus operandi is unfolding pretty quickly > in the case of Edward Snowden, the heroiclibertarianwho exposed Washington’s > massive and unconstitutional spying operation against American citizens. The > pundits who take seriously their job as the power elite’s Praetorian Guard > are going after Snowdenhammer and tongs, and in these dark times their > polemics provide a rich source of humor. > The funniest one – although this is admittedly a hard choice to make – has > got to bethis pieceby one William Foxton, a ratherpatheticTory “moderate” who > claims to care about “civil liberties, Internet freedom, that sort of thing.” > So you see he’s one ofus– but he’s “never liked Glenn Greenwald,” the > journalist who broke the story. Well, why not?Greenwald, after all, has been > one of thestaunchestadvocatesof those very > causes,almostsingle-handedlyresponsiblefor calling foul on the foulest attack > on civil liberties since the era ofJ. Edgar Hoover. > Foxton is coy on this point: he says maybe it’s because Greenwald’s pieces > are “enormous,” not to mention “turgid” – although this doesn’t appear to > deter Glenn’s numerous readers. Oh, but you see, they’re a “cult” – although > he doesn’t let us in on the secret ceremonies, complete withSatanic altarsand > Druidic incantations, that no doubt figure prominently in the activities of > the Greenwaldian sect. So then how do Greenwald’s many admirers – myself > among them – qualify as cult members? Well, you see: > “Thelast time I criticized him I got a barrage of online abuse– including > memorably a 24-slide PowerPoint presentation explaining how the American > security services had ‘got’ to me, and how Greenwald was their number-one > target. Maybe, as his adoring public have suggested, I’m either a homophobe > or in the pay of the CIA. Perhaps both.”The poor baby: hisfeelingswere hurt! > But really he should be flattered that anyone is reading him at all, never > mind taking the trouble to create an entire Power Point presentation proving > him wrong. Of course, being a homophobe is a crime in Britain: you can > bejailedfor calling somebody a faggot and so discretion is mandatory. It’s > enough to simply mention somebody’s sexuality in a seemingly casual aside. > The dogs can hear the whistle: he’s apoofter. Wink, wink. > Or “maybe I’m jealous of the success he’s had, of the stories he’s broken,” > an admission that makes Foxton seem like a jolly good bloke, really an honest > and essentially nice guy – an impression easily dispelled in the next > sentence, where he takes the opportunity to repeat the haughty disdain of > theNew York Timesprofile of Greenwald describing him as a “blogger” for “a > British web site.” > So, you see, Greenwald is just agay blogger, not really a journalist – that’s > the core of the message we’re supposed to be getting. He’s just a blogger – > oh, and did I mention’s he’s gay – he’s not legitimate, he’s adeviant. No, > it’s not jealousy, says Foxton, not really: > “What I think is more likely is I dislike him because he has built a huge > platform with opinion writing, and nowhe’s blurring the linebetween opinion > pieces and straight reporting. That huge platform he’s built means sources > come forward to him from his vast base of followers, with real hard news > stories, and then he insists on reporting them.”The link Foxton thinks > somehow proves his point takes us to atweetin which Greenwald admits to > havingopinions. What’s difficult for Foxton and his fellow Praetorians to > finesse, however, is that the barefactsreportedbyGreenwaldand > ablyarticulatedby Snowden condemn the regime in and of themselves. That the > whole spying operation was done in secret, and on such a grand scale – with > DNI James Clapper all the whiledenying itto Sen. Ron Wyden’s face – is all we > need to know. Whatever opinions Greenwald has on the matter don’t enter into > it. > The only way to get over this enormous disadvantage is to focus on the > messengers – Greenwald and Snowden – in hopes everyone will forget about the > revelations and their import. So we are told Glenn Greenwald isgay, he’s just > abloggerfor crissakes, and – worse! – he hasopinions, and so can’t really > qualify as a bona fide journalist in Foxton’s league. He’s agay > bloggerwithopinionswhoinsistson reporting “real hard news stories.” Imagine! > Well well, my good friend, > “That could be a serious problem in myopinion, because his own self-described > status as an ‘activist’ and an ‘advocate’could cast doubt on the accuracy of > that reporting.”Why, the bloke doesn’t know fact from opinion: “He’s an > unabashed polemicist.” Which is why, Foxton says, > “I often feel when reading a Greenwald article there are valid explanations > for some of the things he’s reporting on, but that’s often hidden behind his > apparent loathing of the West in general, and the US in particular. For him, > no state surveillance can ever be justified – and almost anything he gets > hold of can be turned to make America look like a vicious Police state.”Agay > bloggerwithopinionswholoathes the West, and especially the US, is clearly > someone not to be trusted: there’s got to be something he’s not telling us. > He isn’t reporting all the perfectly good reasons why the US government > should have access tothe details of every phone call ever made, and the > contents of my email, all of it done in the dark without public knowledge or > debate. Clearly Greenwaldloathes the Westand its traditions ofthe rule of > law,democratic discourse, andindividual rights: why else would he be so > opinionated about the efforts of Senor Foxton and his co-thinkers in the US > government to traduce them? > You can’t really blame Foxton – who has apparently beenassignedto run > interference with Greenwald – for the paucity of his “arguments.” Our wise > rulers have been caught with their pants down, this time, onboth sidesof the > Atlantic. Character assassination is their only option: anything to change > the subject. > The psychoanalytical school of character assassination is well represented in > the barrage unleashed against the Snowden revelations: e.g. such amateurs as > columnistMegan McArdle, who implies that Certain Well-Placed Friends in > Washington assure her Snowden is toast: > “Last night I saw a few tweets from people I respect noting that in coming > days, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden may not look as noble as we now think > him.”Yes, comrade, my friends in the KGB assure me this Snowden is a > wife-beater, a child-molester, a fink and a fool – it’ll all come out > inPravda, you’ll see. > Like Foxton, McArdle confesses she finds Snowden “unlikable.” The title of > her piece is “Whistleblowers Are Weird,” and the word weird is strewn > throughout, like spice in an otherwise unpalatable stew. How can she say this > about a person she has presumably never met? Well, because whistleblowers are > weird by definition: we’re all “hard-wired for loyalty,” because “trust” is > the glue that holds our society together. After all, what’s to prevent that > guy down the hall from coming in to work and hacking poor Megan to death? > Well, it’s “fear of the consequences,” but also due to a basic human tribal > solidarity that is part of our psycho-biological makeup. “That’s why > psychopaths are so dangerous,” she avers – and you can see where this is > going. Snowden is clearly a psychopath, or, at the very least, a borderline > case, according to Doctor McArdle. It goes downhill from there. > InMegan’s World, only a mentally deranged person would defy groupthink and do > the right thing, or, at least, what they consider to be the right thing – > with the clear implication that such people are not only unlikable, they are > downright dangerous and belong in prison. > Enough with the amateurs – surely a word that defines McArdle’s oeuvre – and > on to the professional smearers, of whichNew York TimescolumnistDavid > Brooksis an exemplar. His theme is not unlike McArdle’s: Snowden’s sin is to > have departed from the Hive, and fatally separated himself from the Hive Mind: > “From what we know so far, Edward Snowden appears to be the ultimate > unmediated man. Though obviously terrifically bright, he could not > successfully work his way through the institution of high school. Then he > failed to navigate his way through community college.“According to The > Washington Post, he has not been a regular presence around his mother’s house > for years. When a neighbor in Hawaii tried to introduce himself, Snowden cut > him off and made it clear he wanted no neighborly relationships. He went to > work for Booz Allen Hamilton and the C.I.A., but he has separated himself > from them, too.”Before I go any further, I have to say that this “high school > dropout” meme has been the leitmotif of much of the coverage of Snowden: > forget what he revealed, forget the high-paying career he forged, the man’sa > high school dropout. And he went to one of those chintzy vocationalcommunity > colleges, and couldn’t even get through that. Why, the guy’s a loser, a > loner, a half-crazy “product of one of the more unfortunate trends of the > age: the atomization of society, the loosening of social bonds, the > apparently growing share of young men in their 20s who are living > technological existences in the fuzzy land between their childhood > institutions and adult family commitments.” > Yeah, that’s the ticket – he’s one of those nutty computer nerds who’s > basically still a child, not a real adult likeBrooks. He’s “unmediated,” > unmodified, and downright unnatural because his “life is not embedded in a > series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, > religious group, state, nation and world.” Brooks might have added Snowden’s > refusal to be embedded in the embrace of the Surveillance State, but that > would have violated the whole point of his column, which only vaguely refers > to what Snowden hasactually revealed. > Social deviants of Snowden’s ilk, in the Brooksian view, tend to see the > world a little differently. For them, the Hive Mind doesn’t exist: “Instead, > it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state.” > From there Brooks segues neatly into an attack on libertarianism – or, rather, > “The distinct strands of libertarianism that are blossoming in this > fragmenting age: the deep suspicion of authority, the strong belief that > hierarchies and organizations are suspect, the fervent devotion to > transparency, the assumption that individual preference should be supreme. > You’re more likely to donate to the Ron Paul for president campaign, as > Snowden did.”The Ron Paul factor is sure toloom largein this contretemps, and > I imagine the Homeland Security folks will be getting out that “study” they > did on “right-wing extremism” and the allegedly growing danger it represents > to the Obama regime: you know, the one that advised local police departments > to be on the lookout for Ron Paul bumper stickers on cars and any individuals > who might belong to the Libertarian or Constitution parties. Of course, > Brooks and his fellowneoconshatethe Pauls, Rand as well as Ron, and think > they can use this incident to discredit the movement – which just shows how > out of touch they are, and how right they are to be as frightened as they > seem to be. BecauseRon has embraced Snowden, Rand isintroducing > legislationthat would effectively abolish their sinister Panopticon, and the > White House petition to pardon Snowden haswell over halfthe 100,000 > signatures needed to merit a White House response – afterone day! The Hive > Mind isn’t acting like a hive – so what’s going on here? > Brooks, for sure, doesn’t have a clue. He rambles on nonsensically, for the > most part, for seven or eight paragraphs about how no young person will ever > be entrusted in such a position again (really?) – and the word “betrayal” > rings out, like a theme song. Not a word about the betrayal ofthe > Constitution, of the rule of law, of the trust of the citizenry in their > officials. “For society to function well,” he writes, “there have to be basic > levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to > common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, > Snowden has betrayed all of these things.” > This is an exact inversion of what has actually happened, a Bizarro World > account of the Snowden affair. Translated from the Bizarro-ese, those > sentences read like this: > “For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and > cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. > By deciding to unilaterally set up a vast spying apparatus that collects our > phone calls, emails, and other online content, and files it away in a vast > Universal Dossier – in secret – the US government has betrayed all of those > things.”Brooks takes special delight in inverting the truth: he even writes > that Snowden “betrayed the Constitution”! How so? > “The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary > 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed. > Snowden self-indulgently short-circuited the democratic structures of > accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else.”No, the > Founders created the United States so that the government could know > everything about us, and have the capacity to read every jot and tittle of > every communication we’ve ever made: indeed, according to the Brooksian > version of the Founding, they wrote the Constitution so that their work could > besystematically destroyed in secretby ambitious politicians and war-maddened > ideologues. > Truth is the neocon Kryptonite, and Brooks has succeeded in writing an entire > column in which this substance is completely absent. And yet, by the end of > it, he accomplishes what he set out to do – because I’m not writing about the > actual revelations, now am I? > Now that’s a real professional for you. > As we’ve been warning in this space for some time, the past decade or so has > witnessed a silent slow-motion coup in the US, in the course of which the > apparatus of a police state has been quietly assembled on the rather good > chance our wise rulers will soon be needing it. With the Snowden revelations, > the veil is lifted on their already well-advanced plans. As the above > demonstrates, they’re doing their best to change the subject, or, when that > doesn’t work, resorting to hedging by arguing: heck no, we aren’t listening > in on your phone conversations, we’re just storing them in asafe place– for > later reference. And as far as scooping up your emails, and other internet > content, it’s onlyforeignerswe’re collecting dossiers on – anything we > collect on Americans is just an “accident.” > They are lying. As Snowdenput it: > “Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector. Anywhere. I, > sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your > accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal > email.”Theylied usinto aseriesof wars in theMiddle East: now they are trying > to lie us into accepting a police state. Will they get away with it, as they > have in the past? While the Smear Brigade and their employers are pretty > complacent, and even smug in the face of these revelations, there is an > undertone of fear, and even panic, in their voices. As if they know the jig > is up, and it’s time to start making plans for a getaway. > Slow to anger, but dangerous once aroused, the American people are stirring. > After the long night of the “war on terrorism,” and years of being cowed by > an unreasonable fear, they are finally beginning to show signs that they’ve > had enough. Brooks, Foxton, and McArdle (sounds like a law firm specializing > in bankruptcy proceedings) are the Regime’s last attempt to save face and > recover some shred of credibility. We’ve only just seen the beginning of the > smear campaign about to be unleashed on Snowden – but I have news for these > character assassins: it isn’t going to work. > It isn’t going to work because Snowden isn’t a Washington insider, he’s never > held an official position – and, yes, like millions of uncredentialed > non-insiders, he never took to college and his high school education was a > rocky road, to say the least. Up against the Ivy Leaguers of the > Washington-Georgetown cocktail party set, and the denizens of Washington’s > royal court where loyalty to the State is assumed, Snowden is “weird,” as > McArdle put it. Who else but a weirdo would give up a lucrative career, a > gorgeous girlfriend, a wonderful life in paradisaical Hawaii, for the cause > of liberty? Why, he’s got to becrazy– a nut, an extremist, a “solitary naked > individual” up against “the gigantic and menacing state.” > Which is precisely why Americans – that is, all those Americans who remember > what it is to be an American – will rally andarerallyingto his cause. As the > groundswell demanding his pardon – and also demanding some accountability > from our previously unaccountable rulers – continues to rise, it’s going to > be fun watching the David Brookses of this world go into panic mode. So sit > back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the show – because it’s going to a long > and very enjoyable > one.http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/06/11/the-smear-machine-gears-up/ -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
