The establishment is bringing in the big guns to escalate the propaganda war on former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In a massive hit piece just published by liberal establishment magazine The New Republic Princeton historian and writer Sean Wilentz empties the dirty trick bag in a deranged and rambling knee-capping. In addition to Snowden - who is likely rising to the top of Obama’s kill list after El Presidente nixed NSA reforms on Friday –the author also delivers shots to journalist Glenn Greenwald as well as Wikileaks’ Julian Assange. I must admit that I have never read such an obviously over the top effort by an elitist shill whose Ivy League snobbery has earned him a who’s who of swinish friends, two of whom are Bill and Hillary Clinton. While chock full of dastardly spin, ad hominem attacks, guilt by association ploys and enough toxic slime to float a battleship the author’s sleaziest tactic is to denounce both Snowden and Greenwald as GASP - libertarians.
If there is anything that puts a burr up the asses of the warfare, surveillance, crony-capitalist , prison industrial complex elitist state and the thoroughly corrupt two-party criminal syndicate that serves it that would be the damned libertarians. Christ knows that it is just plain wrong and quite likely borders on treason to expect that this country would stay out of foreign wars of choice, stop spying on its own citizens, stop pumping 85 billion dollars a month into Wall Street gambling casinos and shut down our gulag system that in any normal society would be shameful. Libertarians watch out because the Wilentz piece is the harbinger of things to come, now that the hated Snowden and Greenwald have now been labeled as such it is only a matter of time until the next step in the logical progression of a fascist state is taken in that libertarians will soon begin to be deemed “terrorists”. This is the way that it happens in any totalitarian system and once that label begins to gain traction and enough of the sheeple through their television delivered propaganda systems begin to make the connection it will be time for the yellow and pink badges to start getting passed out. If you find that to be hysterical and paranoid I would strongly suggest that you take a better look around.
The hit piece, entitled “Understanding the real motivations of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and Julian Assange” is a doozy, clocking in at a whopping 6,000+ words and is filled with nastiness designed to impugn the credibility of Snowden and Greenwald in particular with Assange as a throw in. The drive by shooting on the Wikileaks leader settles a score by proxy for Wilentz's pals the Clintons. Hillary suffered no small amount of embarrassment when the organization leaked thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables sending the entitled one on a global tour to kiss the asses of offended heads of state and Mrs. Rodham-Clinton is notorious for her mean streak and penchant for vendettas. Assange was the top enemy of the establishment before Snowden took his place, set up on bogus sex charges that would have him extradited to The Homeland where he would be tortured, tried (a secret indictment may exist) and possibly executed. He is currently holed up in Ecuador's London embassy but still remains a highly influential global figure for exposing the high crimes of a rogue state.
The primary target is of course Snowden as well as those who support him. The patriot and whistleblower has been receiving far too much positive press for the evil empire’s tastes and now that Obama has extended his middle finger to the American people on NSA reforms the Mighty Wurlitzer is whirring into action. It will be Orwell’s “two-minute hate” 24/7 as the fascists who run the U.S. work desperately to erode his credibility and demonize him. The escalation in the rhetoric of scum like House Intelligence Committee boss Mike Rogers who just announced that he is conducting a Darrell Issa/Peter King style inquisition on whether Snowden was working on behalf of the Russians will lead to the next phase which will be targeting the man for termination with extreme prejudice. It is essential to break down his levels of support and to paint those sympathetic to his cause as enemies of the state and there are bonus points for taking out “libertarians” as well, they are the greatest threat to the system as it is currently configured and their targeting is a bipartisan endeavor.
The opening salvo alone pretty much trumpets the intention of the entire thing:
By exposing the secrets of the government, they claim to have revealed its systematic disregard for individual freedom and privacy. Theirs are not the politics of left against right, or liberals against conservatives, or Democrats against Republicans, but of the individual against the state. To oppose them is to side with power against liberty, surveillance against freedom, tyrannical secrecy against democratic openness.
What’s astonishing about their ascent to heroism is the breadth of their support. The embrace of the antiwar left and the libertarian right was to be expected. But effusions of praise for the leakers can also be found throughout the liberal establishment. The New York Times, which has come to rely on the leakers as prize sources, is now crusading on Snowden’s behalf. Its editorial page has celebrated him for having “done his country a great service” and supports clemency for the crimes he has committed. A stellar array of liberal intellectuals and pundits, from David Bromwich and Robert Kuttner to Richard Cohen and Ezra Klein, have hailed Snowden, as have elected officials, including Senators Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden. To criticize the leakers, as the legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin and a few other writers have done, is to invite moral condemnation. Even mild objections to their methods are dismissed as damning proof of either corruption—“principle-free, hackish, and opportunistic,” in Greenwald’s words—or outright complicity with Big Brother.
So far, the adulatory treatment the leakers have received closely mirrors their own self-presentation. But important caches of evidence have gone largely unexamined by the media. Documents are, of course, the leakers’ stock-in-trade—and they have produced quite a few documents of their own. The Internet houses a variety of their writings for message boards, blogs, and magazines. Much of this writing was produced before the leakers entertained the possibility of a global audience. They are documents in which one can glimpse their deepest beliefs and true motives. What they reveal is at odds with the flattering coverage the leakers have received, and goes beyond personal eccentricities or dubious activities in the service of noble goals. They reveal an agenda that even the leakers’ most dedicated admirers should question.
The piece gets a lot of mileage out of attacking Snowden as a supporter of Ron Paul who is trashed by the Princeton elitist as a kook, racist and supporter of the John Birch Society. The author digs up a good many of comments made in chat rooms etc. allegedly made by Snowden (or maybe NSA sock puppets) here are some of them:
“I have a Walther P22,” he wrote. “It’s my only gun, but I love it to death.” (obviously a reference to the fictional Brit superspy James Bond - probably GCHQ's contribution to Wilentz)
“See, that’s why I’m goddamned glad for the second amendment”…Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished” (that will peel off a few of the gun control advocates who sympathize with Snowden)
… the elderly “wouldn’t be fucking helpless if you weren’t sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day.” (perhaps we have the 2016 Republican presidential nominee)
Why bother with any more, bits and pieces of Wilentz’s screed will be popping up throughout the state media for the next several weeks and has surely already been sent out as NSA approved talking points.
Glenn Greenwald, whose new media venture First Look Media founded on a stake of reportedly $ 50 million by EBay founder Pierre Omidyar is flogged mercilessly by Wilentz simply because any sort of honest and critical investigative journalism will render rags like The New Republic obsolete. The writer airs a litany of grievances against Greenwald that is a textbook example of the old ‘throw as much shit at the wall as possible to see what sticks’ tactic. Wilentz brings up everything from his job history, the fact that as a private attorney that he once defended white-supremacist Nathan Hale (consistent with the now established state contempt for the Constitution), visited right-wing websites and has at times expressed views that could make him a closet right-winger including comments about illegal immigrants blah, blah, blah. This should all sell well with the liberal elite snobs and their vicious political correctness jihads that are conducted in the name of protecting identity based demographic segments while supporting a president whose policies are fascistic, warmongering and encourage a culture of elitist corruption while punishing those economic entrapment in the underclass render them voiceless while Barry and the boys continue to shovel money into big banks that fail to lend it out. Greenwald is also denounced as a Ron Paul supporter.
In tying it all into the new overarching narrative launched by the Über fascist Rogers on Sunday morning Wilentz also invokes Putin and Russia
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The payoff of the Snowden affair for Putin and the Russians thus far has been substantial. Just as the Kremlin’s human rights reputation, already woeful under Putin has spiraled downward, it is able to swoop in to rescue an American political outlaw, supposedly persecuted by the Obama administration. The dissident journalist Masha Gessen has observed, “The Russian propaganda machine has not gotten this much mileage out of a U.S. citizen since Angela Davis’s murder trial in 1971.”
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Admittedly the Obama regime as well as the entire hypocritical U.S. establishment has been smarting over Putin’s granting of amnesty to Snowden served up a nice shit sandwich with a vodka chaser last summer. Putin also had the gall to pounce on a gaffe by the stammering goon that is Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry to prevent the entry of the country into yet another Middle East war, largely through the instigation of the House of Saud and based on the predictable lie. The whopper being that the Bashar al Assad regime used Sarin gas on civilians including women and children at Ghouta. Putin brokered the deal to have Assad surrender his chemical weapons stocks and prevent yet another costly and disastrous war of choice. Putin then rubbed the faces of The Homeland into a big steaming pile of American exceptionalism with a scathing New York Times Op Ed piece where he not only reminded those ignorant of history that Russia was a crucial World War II ally and that:
“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”
That the Putin smackdown was served up on September 11th was the equivalent of a running drop kick in the balls for Obama and the rest of the swine who run this place. While Putin’s human rights record is nothing to write home about let us not forget that we now reside in a torture state where there exist secret courts, the Constitution has been disemboweled by the Bush and Obama administrations and there is no way on God’s green earth that Snowden will ever get a fair trial in the U.S. The more likely result would be a hell of torture, sexual humiliation, mental cruelty and sadism followed by a the public spectacle of a show trial and then disappearance into a prison cell for the rest of his days where he will be tortured on a daily basis. Give some credit to Putin in this regard, he doesn’t hide the fact that he is a cruel mean bastard behind a flag and a largely false history.
The smug and sanctimonious hypocrisy of this country when it comes to pretending that it something that is the exact polar opposite of that which it truly is plumbs the depths of perversion.
The Wilentz manifesto is at The New Republic but can also be found at The New Statesman if you don’t want to give them the benefit of web traffic which is understandable. Read it if you will but be advised that a strong stomach is necessary.
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
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