He went to China. He seems too coached in his remarks. His girlfriend was a pole-dancer. He was a bad neighbor. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Edward Snowden is experiencing one of the more broad-spectrum efforts at character assassination in recent memory after his deliberate exposure of the far-reaching nature of NSA domestic surveillance. It's an old trick. Shit on a critic from great height, shit on a critic with great volume, in the hope that the critic becomes entombed in shit and loses their viability as a critic.

Disclaimer: I don't give much of a damn about Edward Snowden. I give a very large series of damns about the information he revealed, as should any thinking American in my personal opinion. Attacking his character, his girlfriend, his travel plans etc. is a shortcut to thinking, a way to tamp down revelations that this administration, like the previous administration, has been peeking through a lot of windows in ways the American people need to be aware of. Snowden attacks = Obama defense, in my humble o, and it's a pretty gruesome display from a lot of people who spent a lot of time attacking Bush on similar grounds not so long ago. But IOKIYBO appears to be the rule of the day.

In the summer of 2002, eight months before the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I co-authored a book titled "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" with former weapons inspector Scott Ritter. The book we created, to this day, was dead-bang right not only about Iraq's lack of WMD, about Iraq's lack of al Qaeda/September 11 connections, but very accurately predicted the bloodbath shitshow that would take place if the invasion and occupation were to take place. Eleven years later, that book stands up to any test you want to give it, and it was Scott Ritter who provided the facts that make the book absolutely unimpeachable.

The final two paragraphs of Scott Ritter's Wikipedia page:

Ritter was detained in April 2001 and arrested in June 2001 in connection with police stings in which officers posed as under-aged girls to arrange meetings of a sexual nature. The first incident did not lead to any charges. He was charged with a misdemeanor crime of "attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child" after the second, but charges were dropped after he completed six months of probation and the record was sealed on condition that he avoid further trouble for a period of time. After this information was made public in early 2003, Ritter said that the timing of the leak was politically motivated.

Ritter was arrested again in November 2009 over communications with a police decoy he met on an Internet chat site. Police said that he exposed himself via a web camera after the officer said she was a 15-year-old girl; Ritter said he was not made aware of the ostensible age of his correspondent before the act. The next month, Ritter waived his right to a preliminary hearing and was released on a $25,000 unsecured bail. Charges included "unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communications facility, corruption of minors, indecent exposure, possessing instruments of crime, criminal attempt and criminal solicitation". Ritter rejected a plea bargain, testified in his trial and was found guilty of all but the criminal attempt count in a Monroe County, Pennsylvania courtroom on April 14, 2011. In October 2011 he received a sentence of one and a half to five and a half years in prison.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter#Arrests_and_conviction

I am not going to speak to Ritter's guilt or innocence regarding these charges; he had a lawyer and a trial and a jury, and it is what it is. But the revelation in February 2003 effectively removed him, and our book, from the debate over the war a month before the war kicked off...and the book was right, he was right, we were right, and now a lot of people are dead even though we were right.

Scott Ritter's personal failings doomed his message. The people who wanted to entomb him in shit to shut him up did not have to work hard to do so...but even with all that shit, there remains the pesky fact that he was 100% spot-on correct about the war, its aftermath and its eventual outcome.

People are currently attempting to entomb Snowden in shit because they don't like his message...and no one has accused him of anything even remotely as serious as what Ritter was accused and eventually convicted of...and yet so many have already decided he's just another shitbag to be ignored.

My point: separate the man from the message. Scott Ritter was a deeply flawed man according to the courts, but a lot of people would be alive if his message had been allowed to stand on its merits instead of getting dragged down and erased with him.

Snowden is one thing. His message is another. As someone with personal experience in watching a good message get destroyed by attacks on the messenger, I implore you not to let it happen in this case.

I don't give a damn about Snowden, and I don't give a damn about Ritter.

I give many damns about the information they have to offer.

As should you.

===

A cleaned up version of this is here: http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18032-snowden-ritter-messenger

I finally understand those big dark circles under your eyes.

"...but that would be too simplistic. They are only errand boys for the vengeful, bloodthirsty cartel of raving Jesus-freaks and super-rich money mongers who have ruled for at least the last 20 years, and arguably the last 200 years. They take orders well, and they don’t ask too many questions. The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation’s problems would be another 100 Year War. Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear. Ho ho ho. Let’s not get carried away here. Freedom was yesterday in this country. Its value has been discontinued. The only freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness. Nothing else matters."

- Hunter S. Thompson

For years and years and years, a chorus of voices was raised against George W. Bush's so-called "War on Terror." It's a fraud, a scam, a way to push the wars, a way to screw our rights, a way to make money, etc. Here on DU, one could not swing one's dead cat by the tail without striking a thread making this argument, filled with many people agreeing vehemently.

In the last several days, with all the NSA revelations, a lot of those same voices from all those years have defended the NSA and the whole operation by claiming, in essence, "The NSA needs to do this for the 'War on Terror.'" Not just on DU, mind you, but everywhere.

So I guess the "War on Terror" is all legit and stuff now.

Strange days indeed.

Most peculiar, momma.

Hoo.

"The Apotheosis of War," by Vasily Vereshchagin, 1871

A fleshed-out version of a post I put up here yesterday.

Now We Know What We Already Knew...So Let's Do Something About It Already
By William Rivers Pitt
BuzzFlash at Truthout

Tuesday 11 June 2013

(snip)

Yes, of course, a lot of the NSA spying Mr. Greenwald appears so breathlessly surprised by has been going on for many years. I know because I've been writing about it since the PATRIOT Act. The Washington Post did an excellent, enormous report on the US surveillance state in 2010 titled Top Secret America, which included a section titled Monitoring America, which pretty much let all the cats out of all the bags on this particular subject...and yet now, all of a sudden, members of the "news" media and a bunch of other people who should know better are shocked, shocked that such things are going on. Simple truth: anyone acting all astonished by this is either oblivious, naive, or is desperately trying to sell you something.

On the other side of the coin are the people arguing it's no big deal, because it's been going on for years, and besides, it's legal, and Congress has oversight, so chill out. Invariably, these are the Obama supporters, many of whom have conveniently forgotten the president's vehement promises to dramatically scale back the assault on civil liberties he inherited from Bush and the War on Terra. Besides, didn't they mention that Congress has oversight? All is well.

Congress?! That's supposed to make anyone feel better? The Capitol dome is half-packed with outright Christian fascists, and most of the rest of them I wouldn't follow into the water...but they've got the country's back on domestic surveillance? Spare me. I'd bet my salary that 90% of Congress doesn't even begin to understand the basic details of this situation; half the guys in the House GOP still light their cigars by banging rocks together...and most of them would gleefully authorize full-spectrum surveillance of anyone not Bathed In The Blood Of The Lamb. I am not comforted.

(snip)

If this Snowden guy's revelations lead the country to an honest discussion about what has been going on in these Overly-Surveilled States of America for all these years, and if that discussion opens the way to reclaiming at least some of what has been lost, then in my opinion he did the country a service. Specifically, the country needs a long, detailed discussion of the gulf between the general public's understanding of the current laws and what those laws are actually able to do in the digital age. Beyond that, it is high time the country has a long sit-down with itself to decide what we want to be going forward, how much of ourselves we are still willing to surrender, and how much we want to get back.

In a half-assed media-tainted way, the discussion is happening, which is good. It is to be hoped that someone who understands the breadth and scope of the issues will step forward and carry the conversation to the place it needs to be. As for the White House, well, if Obama has a sad because this discussion is happening on his watch, he should have applied for a different gig...or kept all those high-flown campaign promises he made about rolling all this back. Maybe, just maybe, now would be a good time for him to deploy all those leadership qualities we've heard so much about. It's never too late to keep a promise.

The rest: http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18019-now-know-knew-do

In Defense of Raised Voices
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Friday 07 June 2013

(snip)

Hecklers have been loud in the news of late, which is somewhat charming in a way. In this age of instant online howling via Twitter and Facebook, someone heckling a speaker in person seems almost analog, a quaint throwback, and yet the act still has impact. Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK - a woman I am honored to call a friend, one of my most deeply-loved personal heroes, whose towering efforts deserve their own Brobdingnagian monument - managed to discombobulate President Obama's I-hate-drones-but-we're-gonna-keep-using-drones-probably-more-than-ever speech at the National Defense University by heckling him about the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo.

More recently, Ellen Sturtz of the LGBT rights group GetEQUAL shouted down Michelle Obama, demanding that her husband draft and sign an executive order barring sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination by federal contractors. Sturtz did this at a DNC fundraising event, which means, presumably, she paid $500 for the ability to hoot this at the First Lady during her speech before getting shuffled out the door.

For anyone who has ever spoken in public, having a heckler is like having someone put a live electrical wire to your leg in mid-sentence. You're there under the lights, you're already geeked up because you're speaking to a crowd, but you know your speech and you're in your cadence and you're doing fine, and then...gah, what? Where? Why? I was doing so well, and now I have to think on my feet?

Yup. Exactly.

Sure, one can argue that being disruptive does nothing to serve your cause. Sure, one can argue that a president's wife is not an elected official, and so should be off limits to the raised voices of dissidents in the crowd.

To which I would reply:

1. In this depleted age of canned speeches, by-rote debates, processed news and "approved" information, one raised voice in some politician's polite parlor informs the millions who hear it that they are, in fact, not crazy, and not alone in the belief that it is time to start yelling about what is wrong. As a man wisely said, big clouds condense around small particles;

2. No one, but no one, is immune to the First Amendment, especially someone who headlines cash-happy campaign fundraising events. If you speak at events to raise money for a political party or campaign, if you actively campaign, you lose the right to hide behind the argument that you should be above and beyond such petty things as politics. You are politics.

And finally, this: in America, those in power who speak from on high are not untouchable, above and beyond the petty annoyances of those they rule. Abraham Lincoln spent most of his White House time glad-handing office-seekers and folks who just wanted to meet him. Those quaint days are long lost, but this is still America. If you're going to step to a microphone or stand upon a stage to espouse a position, you'd better be prepared to hear from the people, whether you want to or not.

The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16827-in-defense-of-raised-voices

His phone will be ringing off the hook with calls from friends and allies telling him, "Congratulations, President Obama has vindicated you."

“Drone strikes. Wiretaps. Gitmo. Renditions. Military commissions. Obama is carrying out Bush’s fourth term, yet he attacked Bush for violating the Constitution,” Ari Fleischer told Politico yesterday. “He’s helping keep the nation safe, vindicating President Bush, all while putting a bipartisan stamp on how to fight terror.”

With friends like these...