Tuesday marks the release date of the long-awaited book by Polk Award winning journalist Glenn Greenwald on the NSA and the Edward Snowden leaks. No Place to Hide officially came out today and contains additional revelations on the unconstitutional exploits of the American Stasi at Ft. Meade as well as the suffocating surveillance state that we all must live under in The Homeland of the 21st Century. While I have yet to read the book - I have it on order - early accounts report that in addition to the Snowden story that there will also be material included on the NSA intercepting US manufactured routers for the implanting of surveillance tools, that Obama darling Susan Rice enlisted the NSA to assist in spying on diplomats and more. Unfortunately the book seems to be something of a tease as the author is still holding back the really good stuff which will likely be published when they finally get their shit together over at First Look Media's The Intercept.
As of early this morning the establishment attack dogs have yet to be loosed but they are coming and probably less for what Greenwald writes in the book than for some of the statements from a GQ interview entitled "The Man Who Knows Too Much" which is either here or as excepted for easy consumption over at the libertarian financial blog Zero Hedge. Some of the better chunks of red meat that will be thrown to the wolves the sun sets tonight are:
What do you think would happen if Snowden were to fly from, say, Moscow to New York today?
I think it would be a huge media circus, and then he would be instantly arrested and probably rendered incommunicado for the entire duration of his judicial proceeding on the grounds that he has classified information that could damage the United States. The prosecutors would say he would have to be kept away from media. He would just be disappeared. Rendered completely invisible and mute.
[Wonderful analysis on the current state of our judicial system and very true. There are authoritarian fiends right now who are absolutely drooling over the prospect of getting their hands on Snowden and torturing him to death]
AND –
You call out a few other names in this book, including David Gregory and Tim Russert. Why are these guys targets in your mind?
I think most TV journalists, like all those Sunday-talk-show hosts like David Gregory and Bob Schieffer and George Stephanopoulos, to a lesser extent—the whole kind of dynamic of those Sunday shows is to ensure that the most powerful people come on their shows, which they accomplish by giving them a platform to basically spew what they want in an unchallenged manner. I mean, there's the appearance of adversarial questioning, but it's all very reverent.
[If Joseph Goebbels had the ability to use television he would have invented the Sunday morning "news" shows]
You write that when Cheney wanted to get his message out, he'd go on Meet the Press.
Right, and that was with Tim Russert, who was depicted as hard-nosed. You know, like everyone was petrified of him. When he died, Lewis Lapham described him as the overaccommodating head waiter at some really swanky restaurant who's just really good at ass-kissing every rich person who comes into the door. And that was Tim Russert—which is why they all loved Tim Russert, right? Because the benefit of Tim Russert was that not only did he let them control the message, but he cast the appearance that they were subjected to really rigorous questioning. So it was the extra bonus of propagandizing while convincing the public that they weren't being propagandized. And so I think all those TV hosts do that, and I think that most major newspapers are incredibly deferential to high-level government officials, and especially to military and intelligence officials.
[BLASPHEMY! How dare Greenwald call out a deceased celebrity brown-noser like Tim Russert as the courtier to power that he always was and spot on about Cheney showing up on MTP to spew his fascist lies]
AND -
How do you feel about the early presidential jockeying?
Hillary is banal, corrupted, drained of vibrancy and passion. I mean, she's been around forever, the Clinton circle. She's a fucking hawk and like a neocon, practically. She's surrounded by all these sleazy money types who are just corrupting everything everywhere. But she's going to be the first female president, and women in America are going to be completely invested in her candidacy. Opposition to her is going to be depicted as misogynistic, like opposition to Obama has been depicted as racist. It's going to be this completely symbolic messaging that's going to overshadow the fact that she'll do nothing but continue everything in pursuit of her own power. They'll probably have a gay person after Hillary who's just going to do the same thing.
I hope this happens so badly, because I think it'll be so instructive in that regard. It'll prove the point. Americans love to mock the idea of monarchy, and yet we have our own de facto monarchy. I think what these leaks did is, they demonstrated that there really is this government that just is the kind of permanent government that doesn't get affected by election choices and that isn't in any way accountable to any sort of democratic transparency and just creates its own world off on its own.
The Democrats and their shills will be loudly wailing about the impugning of the inevitable Queen Hillary alone and the reference to a “gay person” as president will be seized upon as the same sort of vicious slander towards gays as Putin is accused of. Not that it bothers that Greenwald himself is openly gay one can already hear the workers in the propaganda chop shops busily concocting a Greenwald-Snowden-Putin axis of espionage. He also calls it spot on with Obama in that opposition to him has been so easily cast as being “racist”, one can largely thank the rebranded neo-Confederate, Jesus juicing GOP Religious Right base that became the “Tea Party” for a lot of it but it is also used to deflect legitimate condemnation of Obama policies. It is all so cynical but lost on the average American who still foolishly believes that they live in a functional democracy.
The ginned-up outrage will be rolling in soon so grab a seat and enjoy the show.
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