CITIZENFOUR (of Pole Dancer Girlfriends etc.)

[Steve Kinney]

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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-prism-documents-authenticity/5338673

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











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