Showing posts with label glenn greenwald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label glenn greenwald. Show all posts

Friday, February 6, 2015

How MSNBC Has Failed The Viewers - and it's not just Morning Joe

photo 1421404662078.jpg

Previous Related Posts:
Joe Scarborough Attacks Unite Blue
Morning Joe Quarterbacking for Chris Christie
Krystal Ball Freaks Out Over Obamacare Website
MSNBC Ratings Fall as Hosts Go Emoprog
MSNBC Chooses Tea over Truth in Sacking of Martin Bashir
Chuck Todd Admits Truth Isn't Part of his Job Description
The Uppity Stranger ~ Chuck Todd's Book Slams President Obama
President and Malia Obama: Chuck Todd's Book is "Sad"
Chuck Todd Shills for Mitch McConnell
David Gregory Has Man-Crush on Paul Ryan

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've been watching MSNBC ever since it first appeared on my local cable TV. I was a huge fan of Keith Olbermann, and sad when he was asked to leave the channel. I won't go into all that here ~ read this article for some background. Keith is still a TV icon to the Left because he would stay on a story for weeks after it was dropped by other networks, and he never backed down in his attacks on rival Fox News, especially Bill O'Reilly. While obviously his personality was too strong for some, and maybe too strong for cable news, he wasn't just a mouthpiece for a bunch of talking points like say, cough, cough, Joe Scarborough, cough.

I will always miss Keith's commentaries, but I got over it and became a fervent MSNBC watcher again during President Obama's 2012 campaign. I loved their "Lean-Forward" message, and Rachel Maddow's speech to the Tea Party about all the things that weren't going to happen now that Mitt Romney had failed as a candidate.

But just after the election something changed. Time and again from 2013 till now, MSNBC has disappointed their main viewership, made up of Democrats and Liberals like myself who voted for Barack Obama. It's not just one thing, it's an accumulation of wrong-headed mistakes. If I had a dollar for every time someone on Twitter told me to turn off MSNBC and boycott them, I would have a chunk of change.

The bottom line is this: MSNBC has forgotten who their demographic is. In their quest to steal from Fox and CNN, they think they have to become a right-center network. But in doing so, they are offending the very people who have stuck with them since before Keith Olbermann got the boot.

A little background on the long decline of MSNBC:

From PoliticusUSA
MSNBC’s decline can be traced back to one decision. At the time, when he let Keith Olbermann walk out the door, MSNBC boss Phil Griffin believed that his network’s brand was strong enough to replace the former 8 PM host. Griffin was wrong.

After Lawrence O’Donnell had failed, Griffin put Ed Schultz in the 8 PM slot. Griffin shuffled Schultz off to the weekends because he believed that MSNBC could attract more young viewers by developing several clones of Rachel Maddow’s successful 9 PM show. Phil Griffin decided to go wonky with Chris Hayes at 8, which led to many former MSNBC viewers leaving and not coming back.

Hayes has been a disaster at 8 PM, and viewer demand for Schultz was so strong that the blue collar populist was put back on to the weekday lineup at 5 PM.

MSNBC was floundering, and Griffin made things worse by caving to Sarah Palin and the right by defacto firing Martin Bashir for some blunt comments that he made about the former half term Alaska governor.

Bashir never has the audience that Olbermann did, but his removal from 4 PM sent a message to MSNBC’s viewers. Lean Forward was just a marketing slogan. When push came to shove, MSNBC easily caved to right-wing pressure.


Martin Bashir was fired after reading a historical document about slavery on the air in response to Sarah Palin, who had tossed slavery into her word salad about GOP oppression caused by President Obama. Bashir was disgusted with Her Royal Stupidity misinterpreting history, and he made a choice to speak some serious truth so she would understand the demeaning tortures that real slaves in the South had to endure.

While it's true that some details of the history lesson were distasteful (so-to-speak), the far-right on Twitter spread the untrue story that Bashir had told Palin to "eat sh*t" on the air. The Tea Party kept the pressure on until the President of MSNBC, Phil Griffin,fired Martin Bashir.

Phil Griffin has a long history of pandering to the Right:







Griffin is known for having "pets" at MSNBC, and they know who they are. Take Joe Scarborough, please. He did an interview last year, after the firing of Bashir, explaining his relationship with Griffin:

Via Mediaite
Appearing on Steve Malzberg‘s NewsMaxTV show Wednesday, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough spoke out about the controversy surrounding his colleague Martin Bashir...
. . . Malzberg asked Scarborough why MSNBC hadn’t suspended Bashir or publicly reprimanded him. Obviously hesitant to comment on internal matters, the Morning Joe host suggested that, much like how Fox chief Roger Ailes doesn’t allow his hosts to attack each other, MSNBC’ers are unable to do the same.
However, he did say:
Every time something horrific is said like that, I go in and I talk to Phil Griffin, who I’m good friends with. And I say, Phil, this is unacceptable. Either they apologize for it or I’m going to bring it up myself.

Personally, I can't stand "Morning Joe" and I usually only see clips of it on Twitter. But apparently it started out to be MSNBC's one right-leaning show to "balance" the rest of the network. Maybe that would work if the namesake of the show had an ounce of humility and a willingness to learn from others. Unfortunately, Joe Scarborough is a loud-mouth bully who dominates not just sidekick Mika, but anyone else who shows up in the morning.

Last year, Scarborough verbally attacked the large and growing Democratic and Liberal-leaning Twitter group Unite Blue, of which I am a member. He called our members "freaky fringe haters" or something like that, never thinking for a minute he was shooting himself and MSNBC in the foot. Somehow he thought it was a good idea to attack the very demographic that was keeping his job available to him, since Dems and Liberals watch most of the other shows.

That display of arrogance should have been enough to get him fired like Martin Bashir, but we soon found out that "pets" get to stay, and the feelings of a huge group of Democrats don't mean very much to Phil Griffin, compared to someone important like the Tea Party's Sarah Palin.

But Lean Forward, right? LOL.

BINGO!







For a long time many have called for Joe Scarborough to be fired to save the rest of the network, but instead, Griffin tried him out on the night shift last week, in place of Maddow and Chris Hayes. It's unbelievable.





This recent article warning of impending doom at the network makes no mention of Joe Scarborough, choosing to blame mainly Chris Hayes, and warning that Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid may be on their way out. Looks like he wants to "save the pets" while kicking off the strays.

From The Wrap
January ratings revealed double-digit declines compared with January, 2014 in all ratings measurements. During the day, MSNBC was down 20 percent in viewers and 37 percent in the advertising-coveted 25-54 demo. In primetime, it fell 23 percent in viewers and 39 percent in demo.

From Politico
In October, MSNBC President Phil Griffin said the network was "experimenting" with new ways to regain momentum, spawning widespread speculation that he planned to make significant changes to the lineup. Ronan Farrow's show, which debuted last year and has received dismal ratings ever since, is one program that is widely believed to be up for removal. On Tuesday, it brought in just 11,000 viewers in the demo.
An MSNBC spokesperson declined to comment on the Tuesday ratings.


But Morning Joe isn't the only problem at MSNBC. Even the mainstays of the network seem to lean some other direction besides Left.

Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, for all the good they do night after night, often go a little nuts and out of step with ordinary liberals out here in the heartland, to the point that real Democrats just turn them off. This has become more of a cumulative effect since the 2012 elections. Yes, they have a right to their opinions, but if you want to know why the ratings are so low, look back over the past two years at topics that may seem unimportant in the scheme of things, but which made viewers angry enough to boycott MSNBC.

I love Rachel Maddow and I really enjoy her show. She is witty, entertaining, funny, and at her best, her show has the spirit of Keith Olbermann.

But unfortunately she sees herself as a "War Historian," and whenever President Obama seems to be on the verge of doing something with American firepower or diplomacy anywhere in the world, Maddow goes berserk. I remember the first time I went "click" on her show. She was saying that President Obama had every right to intercede in Syria, but that he needed to ask permission from Congress or he might get us trapped into another war in the Middle East. It still makes me go "huh?" She sounded just like the nuts on Fox who didn't want that uppity President to do anything like any other President who has ever lived.

And what's worse, Maddow seemed to have no sense of irony that the Congress she was suggesting he ask for "permission" is the same wingnut Congress she reported on every night as a bunch of warmongers obsessed with guns and Benghazi. He was supposed to ask them? She even invoked the Constitution, which is right up there with Sarah Palin!

Some people forgot to watch her show after that. Oh, and they were really mad at her. Some of them still are. Some viewers just aren't coming back.










There are some problems with Chris Hayes too. His chirpy, giddy and cerebral persona were more appropriate for his Saturday morning show "Up," but Griffon thought he could save their prime-time lineup and attract the younger demographic. It was soon apparent that it didn't work out that way. I think he means well and much of his reporting is excellent, such as his work during the Ferguson marches.

What I didn't expect was that he would become the sudden champion of an out-and-out traitor to the United States, Edward Snowden, the Russian "patriot" defector.

Viewers didn't leave the show because Hayes criticized the NSA. Viewers just got fed up with MSNBC's elevation of Snowden's partner/mentor/witness/whatever Glenn Greenwald as some kind of hero journalist and paragon of virtue who wants to save the world. The real Greenwald is a raging Anti-Government Libertarian and Near-Anarchist who calls the President an "Imperial Emperor" (just like the rightwing nutjobs) and thinks anyone with allegiance to any country is a "statist." After a few weeks of Greenwald worship, Chris Hayes figured out that most Democrats don't like him, but by then Hayes was like a little boy whose balloon got deflated all of a sudden by criticism on Twitter and the falling ratings.











DUH!






Griffon can blame Ronan Farrow, Joy Reid, or anyone else he likes for low daytime ratings. But he should look at his pets, for instance the ever-exasperated Andrea Mitchell and the ever-smarmy Chuck Todd. Day after day since the last election they have been going into hysterics over President Obama's "Optics" - "Why is he playing golf" or "Why is he going out for dinner?" "Why is he drinking coffee?" "Why doesn't he care?" "Why is he on vacation?" - stuff no one ever said about George W. Bush or any other President in history.










Krystal Ball from "The Cycle" is another problem. She is so far-left, she is nearly to the right of Rand Paul sometimes. She's not that horrible sometimes, but other times, she is. I don't hate her, but I don't watch her anymore either.

Ball went on a crazy tirade about the Obamacare website back when it was having problems, helped along by some whining by then MSNBC fixture, Ezra Klein - who wanted background music while waiting on the phone. Of course now that the same website is enrolling millions of new people into health insurance,and yes, Krystal Ball does seem to take pride in that - NOW. But back at the beginning, Ball certainly helped the Far-Far Right by slamming ACA Obamacare because it wasn't working automatically.

Considering that just this week, two years after Ball and Klein attacked the Obamacare website, my own state of Tennessee just turned down Medicaid expansion again due to Obamacare haters in the GOP, it was never a good thing that Krystal Ball decided to attack ACA from the left. Maybe MSNBC has chosen to forget this wrong-headedness, but it's harder to forget here in a red state.






She also praised Libertarian Nutcase Rand Paul as "courageous, and begged Hillary Clinton not to run for President. . Last year, she said President Obama's State of the Union "depressed her." What. The. Hell? Is it any wonder that viewers sometimes wonder whose side she is on?













Last year, Chuck Todd wrote a book about President Obama called "The Stranger," which the President and his daughter mocked just before Christmas as "a sad book." Todd is famous for stating that he had no obligation to report "the truth" about Obamacare to the GOP - that tells you all you need to know about his life as a "journalist." He replaced the lame David Gregory, another Phil Griffin favorite, on NBC's Meet the Press, and I'm sure the ratings have plummeted even more. Todd also turns up frequently on MSNBC shows such as Morning Joe and Hardball to discuss "Lame Duck" or "Weak" President Obama. What Democrat wants to hear that stuff day after day? Not this one!



My point here is that there are many problems with MSNBC, and they are so deep it may not be fixable with Phil Griffon at the top. Unfortunately he seems to be tone deaf to the viewers, and incapable of firing his pets. They can turn the network into another version of Fox News and probably lure some wingnut viewers if that's what they want, but it would be a shame to see the network of Keith Olbermann go completely down the toilet.













Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Questions Remain about the #Snowden Interview

photo Corbis-42-15205872.jpg

The Inside Snowden interview on NBC didn't put anything to rest so the debate continues about whether the man is a Heroic Patriot, a conniving Putin-Loving traiter or merely a naive Wikileaks dupe. We may never know the whole truth, but interviewer Brian Williams didn't help shed any light because he avoided hard questions such as "Did Glenn Greenwald first suggest that you should steal documents? and "How many lies did you tell in order to get hired at Booz Allen?"

Instead, Williams let his subject ramble on about his sad life as an exile trapped in a foreign land by the United States, as if Joe Biden put him on that plane to Moscow and buckled his seatbelt for him. If you read the quotations below, it is clear that Snowden isn't really "trapped" in Russia.

So Snowden got to say whatever he felt like saying, and the Snowdenistas thought that was just wonderful, as their tweets of support display. But to most people who have followed this story from the beginning, as well as some who knew nothing about him, Snowden's behavior and statements seemed overly rehearsed, slightly arrogant, possibly dishonest, naive (or faux-naive), and maybe just a little crazy.

My previous post about #InsideSnowden:
Snowden Jumps the Shark with NBC Interview

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Snowden said he didn't hurt anyone with his release of documents, and many took him to task for that, since obviously Snowden's actions have reverberated around the globe. But the U.S. can hardly give a public list admitting the damage done to their intelligence capabilities, and Snowden knows this.

Michael Leiter, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, on NBC

I find it naive and pretty gravely mistaken, this belief that what has already come out, (Snowden) can't identify a single individual who was hurt, hence there's been no harm. I think the way the U.S. intercepts information about Syria and Iraq, these terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, how the U.S. intercepts information about the Syrian military, the Russian military, the way the U.S. protects its spies overseas from operating and not being covered by foreign powers - I can't give you the names of people who have been harmed by that, but I think it's really hard if not impossible to say that there hasn't been harm. I think he's both mistaken and naive.

Former National Security Agency director Michael Hayden on CBS "Face the Nation"
"Unquestionable, irreparable, irreversible harm," Hayden said Sunday morning, responding to an interview that Snowden did last week — the former NSA contractor's first in the year since he leaked the documents.
. . . "There is no way that the United States can reveal — without creating far greater harm — what it is we have lost," Hayden said. "What is it he wants us to do? To go out publicly with a list of all of the terrorist targets now that we're no longer covering because of the information that he revealed?"

One of Snowden's casualties might be the security service TrueCrypt that he used for his documents, starting with the so-called "Crypto-Party" in Hawaii before he fled to Taiwan. As of yesterday the website had stopped working all of a sudden. The CIA is probably deconstructing the whole operation:
Forbes: Encryption Tool Endorsed by Snowden Abruptly Shuts Down
TrueCrypt has, for more than a decade, been the program of choice for many security-conscious people, even Edward Snowden. In December 2012, Snowden organized an event – called a CryptoParty – in Hawaii where he talked about how one can use TrueCrypt to keep information safe from prying eyes; a business traveler might use TrueCrypt to protect sensitive files when traveling to make sure that if the computer gets stolen, someone can’t go through their files without the password to unlock them. Today’s advisory comes as a shock to the security community, though no one has been able to confirm its authenticity so far.
. . . The user interface has a similar warning added to it; “WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure.” A quick analysis of the software did not reveal any malicious behavior, though a deeper dive could perhaps provide different results. Older versions of the software would ask users to consider making a donation at the end of the installation process, but this request has since been removed. Additionally, the user manual is no longer included with the software. It seems this new version can only be used to decrypt data and migrate existing encrypted storage volumes, not create new ones.

Snowden insisted to Brian Williams that he was "trained as a spy" in the interview, and indeed he has called himself a spy before in a Guardian UK article, but
National Security Adviser Susan Rice says Snowden was NOT a spy
"He was not trained as a spy," Rice said. "We have no idea where that assertion comes from. And has Edward Snowden done damage? He's done immense damage to the national security of the United States in ways that I wish I could describe in public but I cannot. But indeed the revelations, the illegal unauthorized revelations of Snowden have given our enemies, particularly terrorists, including al-Qaeda, insights into how we gain information and intelligence on them that have enabled them to change the way they operate and be much more difficult to track. That's just one example."

And someone with even more knowledge chimed in to debunk Snowden - a real spy:
Actual Spy Blows Snowden's Bullshit Cover Story
Actual former spy Lindsay Moran (also author of the book Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy), who has actually supported Snowden's actions felt compelled enough by the stink of Snowden's attempt to hitch his wagon to true American heroes that she came out to call him out.
I think he's really, unfortunately giving amunition to his detractors and his critics here, because to me this reads as this kind of typical spy-wannabe claims. For sure he didn't go through the tradecraft training and paramilitary operations training that everybody who's in the clandestine service which is the operative branch of the CIA did.
. . . His claim that he used aliases, I find that very dubious. He wasn't in the Directorate of Operations, he wasn't a human collector of intelligence, and I have never before heard of someone who was in an IT or analyst position using aliases that way or operating the way that actual spies did.
. . . The kind of training that you receive to become a spy is very specific. It's tradecraft training, it takes place at the CIA's top secret training facility, and it's not offered to analysts and certainly not to IT specialists.
(Author of the article for The People's View, Spandan Chakrabarti, adds: If all it takes for him to go off the deep end like this is someone calling him a low-level hacker - that is, if his skin is this thin - just exactly how easy is he to manipulate? And was Snowden - motivated by ego, spotlight and revenge - manipulated by Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras and the gang to steal the information he later revealed? Was there more than just information falling into "journalists' " laps? I think you have to ask that question.

Snowden also said he had "no contact" with the Russian government and he is "not a spy" - meaning, I presume, "their spy" given his insistence that he is, indeed, some kind of spy. On the other hand, Snowden isn't in much of a hurry to leave Russia, which is a bothersome detail. His story is that he is stuck there, the victim of the United States Government which revoked his passport. But wait . . .

Michael McFaul, former Ambassador to Russia, via NBC
Why Moscow, why was he there? I note the passive tense, the structure of the sentence, right? "I was stopped in Moscow." But he wasn't stopped in Hong Kong with the same status of passport, I remember that very vividly. So when he (Snowden) is saying "Ask the State Department," well I used to work for the State Department when he showed up in Moscow so I found that very mysterious. If they let him get on the plane in Hong Kong without a valid passport, then why was he forbidden from going on, and who was forbidding him? Right?
Russia's a sovereign country, let me tell you, (after) two years of living there as an Ambassador - they do things their own way. They abide by their own rules and their own laws, and if they want to give him the ability to fly on to Havana they most certainly could have done that. So that was the first piece that struck me.
The second piece was his discussion of his relationship with the government... "I have no relationship to the Russian Government." Well, that's just not true. You don't get to go on a call-in show with the President of Russia and have no relationship with the Russian Government. And by the way, just to remind you, on that call-in show, he asked somewhat naively, "Mr. Putin, do you listen in to telephone conversations of Russian citizens?" But (Snowden) told (NBC) "I know they have a very professional service." So that's rather strange to say you have no relationship to the government yet that kind of interaction happened.
. . . And I would just remind the viewers that his lawyer, when he arrived - Kucherena is his name - somebody well-known to us, is very close to the Russian Government.









Bob Cesca found "13 Bizarre Things in the Snowden Interview" among them this gem:
NSA can observe people drafting a document online and "watch their thoughts form as they type." Let's assume for a second this is true. Reading your thoughts (IEEEEE!!!) is a hyperbolic internet-age method of essentially describing a wire-tap. A police detective can get a court order to have a suspect's phone tapped and listen to that suspect forming thoughts on the phone, too. But to call it a "wire-tap" is too ordinary and familiar, so Ed went with mind-reading.
and more importantly this:
Snowden said he destroyed his documents before going to Russia. This is really strange. I have no idea whether he really destroyed his NSA files, but he did in fact meet with Russian officials in Hong Kong, when he reportedly celebrated his birthday at the Russian consulate. Did he still have his documents at that point?
Earlier, he said his goal was to fly to Latin America, so why did he anticipate being in Russia to the point where he destroyed his documents to prevent Russians from acquiring them? These are all follow-up questions that a journalist who was informed about the details of Snowden's timeline would've asked. Williams was not and therefore did not.

From Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare:
Snowden—earnestness and all—utterly failed to explain certain stubborn, inconvenient facts that make it hard to accept him as the figure he claims to be. Some of these facts he did not challenge at all, as they are too clearly true to brook contest. Some he challenged only weakly. And some Williams did not bother to ask him about at all. The result is a haze over the noble portrait the fugitive paints of himself.
. . . You see, Snowden explains in the interview, the law he violated doesn’t allow the defense he would want to put on. So he’d likely be convicted and serve a very long prison sentence—to which we learn he is not quite so eager to subject himself as Greenwald once admiringly thought. Snowden, of course, explains that he has an entirely selfless reason for not wanting to spend decades in prison. It’s not that he fears it, you understand. But it might scare other whistleblowers out of following his example. Whatever the reason, when push came to shove, Snowden chose not to martyr himself but to flee.
And where did flee? He ran to Moscow. On this point, Snowden’s explanation is particularly obtuse. Ask the State Department why he’s there, Snowden suggests. He was just trying to transit through Russia. It wasn’t his fault that he got stuck in Moscow; this happened because the U.S. government revoked his passport.
The passport revocation is not, in fact, why Snowden is stuck in Moscow. For one thing, the government revoked Snowden’s passport before he ever left Hong Kong. Moreover, it does not mean that he must stay in Moscow. It’s at most the reason why he has a choice between remaining in Moscow and coming back to the United States and facing arrest and lacks the option of finding non-Russian safe haven. He chooses, in other words, to remain in Moscow because he prefers the protection of the dictator there to trial at the hands of his own government.

But WHY did he want to go to Russia in the first place? Iceland and other countries were begging him to be their guest. Well, maybe his relationship with Russia goes back further than he will admit. That's the interesting question posed by John Schindler of 20Committee:
When did Snowden go over to the Russians? by John Schindler
. . . What can be dismissed out of hand is the notion that, while staying in Hong Kong a year ago, Ed met with Russian spies – sorry, “diplomats” – at their consulate there and, all of a sudden, decided to hop a flight to Moscow. Espionage simply does not work that way, folks. We can only guess at what was on Ed’s mind, but those who know the Russian “special services” understand that such a scenario is so implausible that it can be ruled out altogether. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) simply does not allow American intelligence personnel they’ve just met to jump on a flight to Mother Russia. That never happens.
. . . Letting Edward Snowden move to Moscow was a major decision for the Kremlin, one with huge political ramifications. We can be certain that such a decision was not made by a mid-grade SVR officer in Hong Kong, neither was such a choice made quickly by the Russians, particularly under a president who understands counterintelligence very well. The reality is that Edward Snowden’s relationship with Russian intelligence, whatever it exactly is, predated his arrival in Moscow on June 23, 2013, probably by a considerable margin. It did not begin in Hong Kong, but before, possibly long before. It cannot be ruled out that the SVR (or possibly GRU, Russian military intelligence, which is a formidable espionage service its own) initially dealt with Ed in a false-flag operation, masking their true identity for a time, but experts who are acquainted with Russia’s “special services” understand that the Official Narrative, that Ed just up and moved to Moscow, cannot be true.

While Snowden tried to exude an air of honesty, he failed on several counts:
From Nick Morgan, a body language expert, via Business Insider:
"As a body-language expert, I'd say this is a disingenuous performance, which surprised me."
. . . The pitch of Snowden's natural voice is probably a tenor, Morgan said, "and the pitch [during the interview] is lower to sound more authoritative. The result, to me, is fake ... manufactured."
. . . A particularly telling moment came when Brian Williams asked Snowden, "What is your relationship with the host government?" Morgan, who didn't previously know that Snowden's Moscow lawyer is a Putin loyalist linked to the FSB, was struck by Snowden's lack of eye contact and the slowing of his voice as he denied having any relationship with the Kremlin.
"He was obviously lying," Morgan said.
. . . "I wouldn't trust anything the man said," Morgan told Business Insider. "There is something else going on here."

But you don't have to be an expert to see through Snowden's facade:
From "Edward Snowden: Hipster Whistleblower" by Christine Sisto
I could not shake the feeling that Snowden is pretty pleased with himself. And I do not mean “pleased” in the way he intends when he says that he is “comfortable” because he can “sleep at night” knowing he did the right thing for his country. He seems pleased with himself in a pompous way. He reminds me of a hipster traipsing around Brooklyn, superbly proud of himself for having a dictionary-like knowledge of the different varieties of kale, knowledge he obtained in college while seeking a degree in women’s studies.
. . . In conclusion, to those who herald Edward Snowden as a whistleblower-god among men, I would say, be careful about what you believe from this guy.

Snowden's attention-seeking and avoidance of consequences are all we need to know according to James E. Lukaszewski of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
. . . rather than find ways to safely return to the United States and face the consequences of his actions, he has become a media celebrity, complete with advocates, defenders and even co-conspirators who are all in the public view.
Snowden’s NBC interview with Brian Williams is one more step in the Snowden Effect, canonizing the conspirator and minimizing the damage done, while expanding his image as a patriot.
At this writing, the country seems split on the patriot-vs.-traitor question. Neither view can be confirmed until he shows up to face his fate here in the United States.
Two things come to mind. What would a real patriot do (“WWRPD” on a bright red wrist band)? And the example set by Nathan Hale, who was executed as a U.S. spy by the British during our Revolutionary War. “I only regret,” he famously said, “that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
In Snowden’s case, his reframing language is on blaming, demeaning and insulting the United States as the causal factors for what he did. Frankly, I would prefer a little regret from him and his zealous America-hating supporters.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, May 29, 2014

#Snowden Jumps the Shark With NBC Interview - Updated

photo 1ce2d5f3-0268-47c4-87af-aa5a74395f9b.png

Brian Williams of NBC is the first major network news person to interview Edward Snowden in Moscow. Reviews are mixed so far, but I think it's safe to say that a wider audience isn't going to work out too well for the ultra-spy-in-exile. The more he talks the deeper the hole, so to speak. As this interview was obviously timed to coincide with the release of Glenn Greenwald's book about Snowden, it may not have the boost in sales that they were looking for.

Snowden seems to be jumping the shark, although I'm sure the Libertarian Wikileaks Anonymous crowd will swoon over his sexy snake-oil voice and geek-martyr persona.

Previous Related Posts:
Snowden Can Make Himself "Unrecognizable"
Critics Go To War Over Sourpuss Glenn Greenwald's Book
All Hail the Snowden Pulitzer
Crime or Punishment? Snowden Remains Stuck in Moscow Airport
Snowden: Messages from Moscow
Edward Snowden Releases NSA Secrets
Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain

~~~~~~~

Selected Quotes from #InsideSnowden
. . . when they say I’m a low-level systems administrator, that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’d say it’s somewhat misleading.
~~~~~~~
I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word, in that I lived and worked undercover overseas, pretending to work in a job that I'm not, and even being assigned a name that was not mine.
But I am a technical specialist. I am a technical expert. I don't work with people. I don't recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I've done that at all levels from, from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top. Now, the government might deny these things, they might frame it in certain ways and say, "Oh well, you know, he's -- he's a low level analyst."
~~~~~~~
I think it's important to remember that people don't set their lives on fire. They don't walk away from their extraordinarily, extraordinarily comfortable lives for no reason.
~~~~~~~
I think the most important idea is to remember that there are times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law.
~~~~~~~
I have no relationship with the Russian government at all. I've never met the Russian President. I'm not supported by the Russian government. I'm not taking money from the Russian government. I'm not a spy.
I personally am surprised that I ended up here. The reality is I never intended to end up in Russia. I had a flight booked to Cuba onwards to Latin America, and I was stopped because the United States government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in the Moscow airport.
~~~~~~~
If I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE: One part of the interview has been debunked today by the NSA:

From the Interview:
Snowden: I actually did go through channels, and that is documented. The NSA has records, they have copies of emails right now to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks from me raising concerns about the NSA’s interpretations of it – legal authorities. I reported that there were real problems with the way the NSA was interpreting its legal authorities. And I went even further in this, to say that they could be unconstitutional, that they were sort of abrogating our model of government in a way that empowered presidents to override our statutory laws. And this was made very clear. And the response was, more or less, in bureaucratic language, was, ‘You should stop asking questions.’

The U.S. Government Replied today by releasing one email exchange from Snowden, which they say is the only one received asking questions of the General Counsel to the NSA:
Read Snowden's Email and NSA Reply Here

From ABC News:
The NSA said in statement that Snowden’s email “did not raise allegations or concerns about wrongdoing or abuse, but posed a legal question that the Office of General Counsel addressed.”
“There was no additional follow-up noted,” the NSA said. “There are numerous avenues that Mr. Snowden could have used to raise other concerns or whistleblower allegations. We have searched for additional indications of outreach from him in those areas and to date have not discovered any engagements related to his claims.”
Snowden told NBC News that he also raised his concerns with his co-workers and superiors, many of whom he said were “shocked” at the programs he described. In December 2013, Snowden similarly told The Washington Post he brought his misgivings to four supervisors in two departments.
“I asked these people, ‘What do you think the public would do if this was on the front page?’” Snowden told the Post. “How is that not reporting it? How is that not raising it?”
In the Washington Post report, an NSA spokesperson said the agency had not found “any evidence” to support Snowden’s claims about raising concerns internally. Then, the NSA did not note the email it published online today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Responses to #InsideSnowden













~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On Snowden's Persona







































~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From Russia, With Love













~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Snowden Has Fans - "He's a Patriot!"













~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He's a Spy, Dammit!

























~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What about Glenn Greenwald?





















~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

John Kerry's Opinion



















~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What Does Snowden Watch on TV?
 











Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Snowden Can Make Himself "Unrecognizable" According to Greenwald

photo 43b2cc2c-585d-48ad-a86f-a4c49d7a18fb.jpg

Previous Related Posts:
Critics Go to War over "Sourpuss" Greenwald's Book
All Hail the Snowden Pulitzer
Snowden Evolves into Max Headroom
Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

According to the Greenwald-Poitras book about Snowden, the man can change his appearance like a chameleon. This has led to some levity on Twitter.

Book Quote Via Business Insider
While in Hong Kong, Edward Snowden claimed to be able to change his appearance such that he would be unrecognizable.
According to an excerpt Glenn Greenwald's new book, Snowden made the claim when discussing concern about leaving the Mira hotel without being noticed by reporters:
I conveyed these concerns to the lawyers. "Does he have any ideas how to prevent that?" one of them asked.
I passed the question on to Snowden.
"I'm in the process of taking steps to change my appearance," he said, clearly having thought about this previously. "I can make myself unrecognizable."











Via Instagram
photo snowdendoll.png








Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)