Cloaks and Daggers

Ha! what a day, and as the old saying goes: truth is stranger than fiction. Edward Snowden will no doubt bring American paranoia to the boil: Oh my God, RED CHIIINA!! and now MOSSGO!!! Interestingly, Snowden made an oblique reference to this paranoia in his Q&A last week, and today the usual suspects are doing the rounds on American tv, calling for Snowden’s head. A general rule: those who shout the loudest are usually those who have the most to lose if the truth is revealed; which brings me on to Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who posited to Fox News: “why was Snowden allowed to leave Hong Kong in the first place?”(here). Er, it might be because Snowden made the people of Hong Kong and China aware that the US was conducting mass surveillance of them.

And of course the knuckle-heads go on about ‘repressive regimes’ in China and Russia. Ha! for an intrusive, heavy-handed government, Putin & Co have let all the world’s media descend on Sheremetyevo Airport, they are letting Snowden go through as a transit passenger to another country, and they’ve allowed diplomats from Ecuador to take charge of Snowden.

If Snowden had landed at an American airport he would have been whisked out of sight within seconds, to face years of torture and indefinite detention, and not allowed any contact with the outside world, before being brought before a secret court, to be secretely sentenced, and then thrown in a secret prison for the rest of his life. Americans need to wake-up and smell the coffee.

The ongoing Snowden saga is still almost completely ignored by the mainstream media; but those which do report it have almost completely blotted out two other related stories this week, both of equal importance. The first involves Michael Hastings, an investigative journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal (who was the supreme commander of the US war in Afghanistan). Michael Hastings died in a high speed car crash last Monday, in, er, mysterious circumstances (here).

The second story involves Russell Tice, a Former NSA Intelligence Analyst who helped spark a national controversy in 2005 over claims that the NSA were engaged in unlawful and unconstitutional wiretaps on US citizens. Tice gave the story to the New York Times during the first presidency of George Bush. The NYT famously sat on the story for more than a year, and didn’t break it until after Bush had been elected for a second term.

This week, Russell Tice has been speaking to the ‘independent media’, and what Tice has been saying about NSA spying, the Snowden affair and the role of the media is mind blowing stuff (America, you’ve had it!). It seems probable that the likes of Al Jazeera and RT will pick-up on this story, so you might be hearing more about it soon. In the meantime I strongly urge you to listen to this podcast from The Corbett Report. In the interview, Tice is articulate and logical, and what he says about corruption in the US political system is truly terrifying…

Russ Tice Reveals the Truth About NSA Spying

The ‘NSA Emperor’, General Keith Alexander, is mentioned a lot in the above podcast. Alexander is one of the most powerful and shadowy figures in America, and he’s now going after Edward Snowden’s scalp. You can find out a lot more about General Keith Alexander here.

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