The original NSA whistle-blower was William Binney (hat-tip to Scott Creighton).:
“Long before Edward the Great made his plans, all of this was exposed on international television on RT by another NSA whistle-blower, William Binney, former NSA crypto-mathematician, who apparently didn’t lie about his background… and where was the indignation? Where were all the Stand with Willy movements?
Where was FACEBOOK on this one? Where was Reddit?
He named the Narus devises, said they were sweeping up EVERYTHING from EVERYONE so it could be used in the future if the powers that be ended up not liking you are your particular agenda.”
One might ask the same question about Anna Hazare (in India). Where was his anti-corruption movement without Facebook? And what happened to Baba Ramdev, the man who was really leading an anti-corruption movement when Western intel decided it needed to step in and take control of the movement, as it has done in so many instances of revolution?
Mind you, I usually like what Greenwald has to say, even as I have been suspicious for a long time about why he says it and have come to distrust his version of controversial events (say, on the Bradley Manning case); noticed his tendency to lift other people’s ideas (mine included); his tendency to hyperbole and misrepresentation); and his failure to disclose his past ties to the Koch-funded Cato Institute when it was ethical to do so.
Look at his enemies, I told myself, biting my lip and unburdening myself only to the one or two others who were equally skeptical of the verbose civil libertarian….. like Douglas Valentine.
Only after conscientious independent activists like Mr. Creighton at Willy Loman show up the Greenwald-Snowden act for the media event it is, does an establishment outlet admit the truth:
Business Insider now concedes what anyone with any knowledge about the matter already knows – that Snowden isn’t telling us anything new.
There have been NSA whistle-blowers before of far greater credibility, only the establishment wasn’t yet ready to give them any air time.
Meanwhile Greenwald, dubbed a second Jefferson by the hilariously obsequious EconomicPolicyJournal, manages to interview his hero Snowden, without calling him out even when he echoes Binney:
“The most important thing NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has said comes at the end of his interview with Glenn Greenwald. In the final minutes of his interview he makes clear that the infrastructure is in place to bring tyranny onto the people of the United States. Only a switch has to be flipped, he correctly calls it, “turnkey tyranny.”
As one commentator at EPJ, Dan Lind, immediately noted, these were Binney’s words:
“Wired Magazine
“The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)”
by James Bamford
03.15.12
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1
…
…
Sitting in a restaurant not far from NSA headquarters, the place where he spent nearly 40 years of his life, [William] Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,” he says.”
This mimicry and repetition of key-phrases of dissidents is one way in which the establishment co-opts the energy and attention of potential supporters.
The mimicry muddies the narrative (who said what when), diverts attention to the establishment’s chosen sock-puppet rebels, and makes sure that the status-quo is not disturbed in ways that might actually challenge the power of the elites.