-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 10/27/2014 05:14 PM, Andy Isaacson wrote:

On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 09:59:35PM -0400, Steve Kinney wrote:

...

In my mind the sudden appearance of that momentarily almost-famous "pole dancer girlfriend" of Snowden's is of a piece with the rest of The Snowden Affair: It raises more questions than it answers, and adds more reasons to suspect a double game.

Whut.

This, for starters: http://globalresearch.ca/nsa-deception-operation-questions-surround-leaked-p... Questions raised by anomalies and inconsistencies present in the original reports of The Snowden Affair and the PRISM documents have not been resolved.

You know, the people who are involved in these stories are actually humans, with real lives, families, and friendships. If you watched CITIZENFOUR without realizing that, I am terribly sorry for your inability to releate to others on a human level, and I'd recommend that you talk to someone with a more mainstream level of emotional intelligence about these issues.

We have not physically met any of the players in this game; all we have to go on is propaganda, that is, stories created for the purpose of persuading us to adopt certain beliefs and perspectives. Propaganda is not necessarily a bad thing, nor does it always indicate deception: But to take the story presented at face value and proceed as if one has positive knowledge of the events depicted is at best a hazardous approach: Particularly when a story originates inside agencies whose stock in trade includes deception and manipulation of friend and foe as routine daily missions. My take on The Snowden Affair is deliberately contrarian. Every press outlet in the world takes the story at face value and questions nothing about its basic premises; the only permissible disagreement is whether one should be "for or against" Ed Snowden. Jumping on either bandwagon contributes nothing. In this situation, the more inconvenient a question is to the basic premise of the story, the more valuable it may be to our understanding of the substance and meaning of the story.

While Snowden is the object of significant official pressure, the rule of law is still respected at least occasionally in the USA, and Lindsay is not accused of any crimes. There's no reason to suppose that she would be prevented by USG from traveling, and any such restriction would be front-page news. (I'm not disputing that surreptitious tracking of her and others is quite likely to be occurring, of course!)

Your insinuation that Snowden could not have had a girlfriend before his trip to Hong Kong is baffling and inexplicable; he was leading a perfectly normal life for someone in his position. Both social and economic documentation of their relationship exists.

I never insinuated that Snowden "could not have had a girlfriend." What I have said is that the absence of any indications of a particular girlfriend other than three words spoken by Ed Snowden, raised the question of whether that particular person did exist. Now we do have fairly persuasive evidence of her existence, to integrate into our interpretation of The Snowden Saga - if we remain interested enough to bother.

(And your bringing up of her hobbies in this context seems to betray a kind of naiive mistrust on your part; a majority of my friends who are atheletic and in the 25-35 age bracket have tried out pole or other circus arts. It's fun!)

In The Snowden Saga, Lindsay initially existed only as three words spoken by Ed Snowden when describing the way of life he sacrificed to undertake his heroic quest: "Pole dancer girlfriend." The appearance of a person named Lindsay in the new film, along with the story that he met her in a bar in Japan and that she followed him to Hawaii, is the first corroborating evidence that this person ever existed. Now she appears as the most influential person in Ed's life during the time frame when he decided to abandon his entire way of life and become a fugitive facing life in prison for the sake of a Holy Quest. Questioning whether Ed Snowden was really a free agent, vs. an unwitting agent exploited by a U.S. (or other) intelligence operation, is obviously out of bounds. So that's what I do. To date, nothing that well informed members of the public did not already know or confidently guess about the capabilities and activities of the NSA has been revealed by any of the releases attributed to Snowden. I also see that every supposedly controversial legal or policy issue raised by The Snowden Affair was already settled in the intelligence community's favor, in Courts and Congress, years earlier: The most genuinely controversial document released was the first one, an order demanding Verizon's call records; that was a fight the intelligence community was well prepared to win and they did so handily. Anyone who studies the history and current activities of the intelligence community learns early on that final answers are very elusive. Insiders describe the intelligence world as a "wilderness of mirrors." Elaborate and long-running deceptions are business as usual: Familiar examples include the complete British control of German intelligence networks in England during World War II, Soviet placement and maintenance of high level double agents inside the CIA during the first Cold War, and numerous false flag operations by everybody, such as Israel's failed Lavon Affair. Observers inside the intelligence services are little better off than those on the outside when it comes to getting the straight story: Histories created for internal consumption by outfits like the CIA routinely gloss over controversies and endorse falsehoods. In today's world it is not possible to stop leakers from leaking. But it is very possible to create controlled leakers of one's own, and use them to pull public attention away from the genuine article, saturate relevant press resources, and keep legal and legislative overseers busy chasing after one's own chosen allegations and indiscretions. If Ed Snowden did not exist, it would be necessary to create him. I have no reason to believe that Ed Snowden is anything other than what he appears to be: An idealist who has been used as a means to an end. This leaves the question, used by whom and for what ends? One can choose a side to take and adjust one's beliefs accordingly, or leave questions that do not yet have answers open. That is why I thought the LeGuin quote was very appropriate in the present context: "Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven." :o) Steve -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.14 (GNU/Linux) iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJUTvCRAAoJEDZ0Gg87KR0LX+4P/iGUW0n3vLooFPBIDKvLSCi0 1S8W9wM42AOlF/fR0elkgSi83qlfOEqrpTow0sQMFXDbA4drwfQLpQlLHZdQp6Wk tunG9OpcbLlKEFotxWYx2SrhihAqWSpPrhccEriT7+9FzvaaraeObRZKZqxoM+Tz ZsJTzV6Hk3IUJeTXPSoeFr1RCtFrUpI6IhK49iltKMJA2T43q74oRI9R/TV0B8vB pKXjdutQQnIyuf0CVjKl7kwIzu3/BYjETGJ/N/N77gjnQEIYtHBB5E7tQdkzEFE3 nvPJEOCkRrFbWqLGYQyDweuwX/R/COLPIBK7F4eLOttColx/nH5jSQIV/yz6Nu4i HFMKCAGUgrS+fZeWeth2RcK1V1UP5kC8ysxWGRbATNUSW0uDfZmonu9C6vrmVBE1 P7R/3+Yz/2MFxz7x+C1KN6s/ivX9FAyhBvFcdgsCFv0Q4X2lI9PHXNSBKfcevFDg q84Xla5dFkYOtoyW0qINcJCi8HueCS9c3MhOWirVmafam/zStlGgL3dO9ltKfwio jYX/RMx15GnMBfKkWZzd856PIz9xms+qbXJg69+4+IWBcGM+NrGN7eZQYI+zzgEn +xjoZ3xRjQcwayZ/mA8NBCKUkapXCcmcvYoZ8DzWKadeEW/5aEMMrf1C10OVI2Jb JHkl1gYWmgXKl/Q2erVc =iLU2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----