Refreshing to see foreign leaders not afraid to call out Obama for spying, at risk of being called racist. Americans too damaged to do same.
— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) October 24, 2013
Translation: he’s black, black, blackity black. (Thanks to reader Brian for the link.)
Aimai
You think thetes anyone who needed a translation?
Bob2
but cum-stained blue dress?
HE WAS RIGHT ONCE.
PaulW
Refreshing to see foreign leaders calling out George W. Bush for reckless warfare and invading Iraq – said by no conservative pundit ever.
Linda Featheringill
Yes, the President is black. And handsome, too. And smart. And hard working. And he has a good heart.
So?
ETA: Drudge is a flaming asshole. You can choose to be upset by him. Or not.
JPL
What does that even mean?
sherparick
Again, what Bush was doing was “protecting us from terrorists.” However, after 20 January 2009 and the arrival of the Kenyan Muslim Usurper, we all became civil libertarians!
hildebrand
Why is it that the right-wing types have nothing to offer but word salad? That tweet is opaque gibberish.
Betty
Can someone explain to me what racism has to with NSA spying?
Valdivia
@Aimai:
definitely not the 50+ people who favorited it.
Not to beat a dead horse but I do find this theater of outrage about countries spying on each other to be rather amazing. Is anyone really surprised that spying takes place and that the agency tasked with spying actually does it? What the hell is the purpose of these ‘leaks’ if not to actively damage the US with its allies?
/I know I am now walking into some dangerous ground but I sincerely don’t get it
Zam
@Betty:They’ve decided no one can criticize them if they claim that dems just call them racist for absolutely no reason.
gvg
Drudge doesn’t make sense even knowing he is racist. I hate anti logic drivel.
Baud
@Valdivia:
It’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment to spy on other countries without a warrant, I guess.
Southern Beale
So apparently Ted Cruz’s wife works for Goldman Sachs. How did I know know this?
Why is it every faux populist in the Teatard movement ends up having some connection to the fucking Wall Street oligarchs?
amk
There used to be a time when dems peed in their pants on hearing the name drudge. Now he is just another internet troll. Who gives a shyte?
kc
@PaulW:
Jesus, no kidding.
Chyron HR
So, how many times have these foreign leaders been accused of racism? It must be a lot, right? I’m sure there are plenty of examples that will be provided any minute now.
Cervantes
@Valdivia: Not to beat a dead horse but I do find this theater of outrage about countries spying on each other to be rather amazing. Is anyone really surprised that spying takes place and that the agency tasked with spying actually does it?
As you say, it’s theater. What would (e.g.) Merkel’s adversaries say if she had no comment on these “reevaluations”? Like everyone else, she has to play her part.
Cervantes
@Valdivia:
As you say, it’s theater. What would (e.g.) Merkel’s domestic adversaries say if she had no comment on these “revelations”? Like everyone else, she has to play her part.
Southern Beale
@amk:
Word.
Wasn’t Drudge the one flogging all of Breitbart’s hilariously wrong scams? Shirley Sherrod and all? You can only cry wolf so many times.
Cervantes
@Southern Beale: Why is it every faux populist in the Teatard movement ends up having some connection to the fucking Wall Street oligarchs?
He went to Princeton and Harvard Law. Anyone who thought the Cruzes were Ma & Pa Kettle wasn’t really paying attention!
eric
Why do you libtards insist on shoving the president’s blackness down conservative throats.
Kay
What I love about this insane theory that people are being silenced by the color of Obama’s skin is, they believe it.
So they say unbelievably stupid shit, belligerently and defiantly. It actually PRODS them to say anything and everything, with absolutely no filter or self-discipline, just whatever random thought runs thru their head, because they’ve convinced themselves they’re being silenced so this is brave. It’s still stupid, though.
Five year olds say anything that runs thru their head. Eventually they learn some self-discipline, so they stop doing that because there’s consequences.
There’s no consequences among this crowd. All thoughts are equally worthy of sharing. It goes even further! All thoughts MUST be shared, or they’re being suppressed, and the speaker is being oppressed.
They’ve lost the entire thread on speech. I don’t think they’ll ever get back to what they knew when they were ten years old, which is not everything demands an immediate response.
Valdivia
@Baud:
I just really can’t wrap my head around it. At what point did spying on other countries become completely unacceptable? And who the hell decided that the only country in the world who has to be totally transparent about their spying activities is the US while every other country (Germany, France, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela) can operate their spy services with the advantage of the cover of darkness. Because it does seem like all these stories are about allowing these countries to pretend they don’t spy. At all. Ever.
Are you fu****g kidding me?
Sorry for the rant. As a student of history and politics I just don’t understand how so many people all of sudden embraced this ridiculous notion.
@Cervantes:
I get that. The problem is not so much with her, its with people here being outraged that we spy on other countries.
Baud
@Kay:
Now you tell me…
Emma
@Valdivia: As I said to one of the professors I work with, I am not surprised we do it and I would be less surprised to find out other countries do it to us. Hell, considering the U.S. is the elephant in the world room, I expect spies from every nation, including Luxembourg and Andorra, to be thick on the ground around every American base, embassy, and outreach program office, not to mention D.C.
The Red Pen
@Betty:
Exactly nothing.
The reference is to a wingnut theory that liberals keep their opposition in check using (false) accusations of racism. Why hasn’t Congress impeached Obama? They are afraid of being called racist. Why hasn’t Sarah Palin actually run for elected office? She’s knows that she will be called a racist. Being called a racist is so damaging and unbearable that conservatives cower in acquiescence. Cower, is say!
This and “the NSA must have gotten some dirt on them,” is a common wingnut explanation for why “conservative” elected officials don’t pursue whatever radical course of action they deem “obvious” at the time, e.g. invading Iran, impeaching Obama, nullifying various laws, having Joe Biden exposed as an extraterrestrial… etc. etc.
debbie
One would almost think there’d been no deficit or eavesdropping whatsoever before January 2009.
cathyx
I don’t understand how this translates what he said.
Cervantes
@cathyx: Nor do I.
But let’s assume that the Administration was spying on (e.g.) Merkel and that Obama knew it. What is completely absurd about Drudge’s remark is the notion that anyone would think to call (e.g.) Merkel’s criticism “racist.”
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@debbie: And one would think Congress had nothing to do with authorizing it.
eric
Two words: “James Bond” Both sides do it. HA!
The Red Pen
@Valdivia:
I was particularly amused to read that France was also bitching, since up until 2004 it was illegal to encrypt anything in France. Doing online banking? Il est nécessaire que vous faites cela sans encryption.
Legal changes in 2004 and then 2011 now allow for eCommerce exemptions, but encryption is still tightly regulated.
Baud
@Valdivia:
Every other country.
Bob2
More of a DougJ alert than anything really since anyone who’s been paying attention to how the media function knows that they used to check Drudge first thing every morning for their ledes. TV news, print news, everyone would end up with a Drudge (and Breitbart who worked for Drudge) biased filter. And that’s a part of our media story today.
Southern Beale
Speaking of racism, did y’all see the Daily Show last night and Asif Mandvi’s bit with the North Carolina country GOP executive? It was … gah I dunno the word for it. This idiot is talking about “lazy blacks who want the government to give them everything” like YOU KNOW THE CAMERA IS ROLLING, RIGHT???! Go over to Comedy Central and give it a view.
daveNYC
@Southern Beale: An MD is a pretty good gig to have. Seven figures base (minimum), probably eight figure bonus.
Can’t imagine that causing any sort of conflict of interest with the good senator.
Belafon
I can find plenty of places that criticized Obama for NSA spying without approaching his race. It’s just that none of them are conservatives.
Valdivia
@Emma:
Exactly! It’s kind of a joke if you’re in certain watering holes in DC that 2 out of every 5 people there are certainly on the game.
@The Red Pen:
I love how they get on their high horse right? The Brazilian case, which I know better, is even more egregious, as their security state changed some, but not a lot, from the years of the dictatorship. That’s why I was hitting my head on the desk during Roussef’s UN speech.
@Baud:
biggest grin.
eric
@Valdivia: The truth is that it would governmental malfeasance NOT to spy on the US or any other country to the extent you can. Utter nonsense.
Kropadope
@cathyx: Because Republicans use the “they called me a racist” card to deflect any criticism, regardless of whether they were actually called a racist. It’s like they can’t help injecting race into everything.
Valdivia
@eric:
And for us not to spy on them.
Apropos: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=240213341&ft=1&f=
At least they accept they spy, and that they are jealous of how well we do it. Ha!
danielx
@debbie: No deficit, no eavesdropping and no domestic or foreign policy blunders either. Straight down the memory oubliette.
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix): Current wingnut view is that the last two years of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s administration were during a Democratic-controlled congress and the first six years were when congress was controlled by a bunch of RINOs. They had nothing to do with whatever fuckups occurred during that period just ain’t their fault, and whoever could have voted for that guy in the White House at the time? They never heard of him!
Gordon, the Big Express Engine
@daveNYC: it is not that much. Base is probably 400 to 500k with bonus 1 to 3x base depending on performance. Since she is in houston she is probably investment banking or private wealth management.
Note – not suggesting this is peanuts.
NonyNony
@Valdivia:
The whole point of The Great Game is that you are spying on your allies and your allies are spying on you and everyone involved in The Game knows it and everyone involved in The Game avoids going public with this knowledge because you don’t want to harm your allies and, well, you’re doing it to them too so why ramp up hostilities against a country that is your friend in so many other areas? It’s a bit like the whole “Lieberman is with us on everything except the war” excuse for not lining up behind a Democratic challenger to Lieberman.
But as you say it’s theater. Once the elephant in the room is pointed out everyone must go through their own face-saving/ass-covering motions for their own domestic political purposes. A leader of a sovereign nation can’t just shrug it off and say publicly “it’s no big deal, we have spies in their country too”. First because publicly admitting that you do that is not how The Game is played and secondly because they’d be crucified on their own altar of National Security in the next election.
As for why do it except to damage the US’s reputation with its allies? Well the only reputation that it really damages is the idea that the US Security State has its shit together enough to keep secrets secret. Since that is obviously not true, it’s a reputation that deserves to be shattered. Short term it does some damage but long term? Fat lot of nothing I suspect. The political nonsense about our own elected officials shutting down our government and threatening to default on our debt has probably done far more damage to our reputation than any revelations about spying being done on our own allies.
gnomedad
@PaulW:
You forgot the other meme: “Obama and liberals blame Bush for everything.” Your argument is invalid.
Elie
@Valdivia:
I agree. I agree– sigh
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@cathyx:
To expand on what @Kropadope said, it’s basically the wingnut idea that blacks are coddled from being called out for the dirty devils they are by tarring any criticism of them ‘racist’, and Obama being the worst offender, for not only being the worst most horrible monster in history but having the temerity to be black while doing so. They think they’re speaking truth to power by crowing about ‘reverse racism’ like this.
You have to remember, to this crowd, the worst thing ever is to be CALLED a ‘racist’, not to actually BE racist, since, you know, ‘racist’ to them is just a negative branding for what they perceive as ‘common sense’.
Cervantes
@Valdivia: The problem is not so much with her, its with people here being outraged that we spy on other countries.
But you don’t seriously think anyone here is outraged that we spy on other countries, do you?
Ash Can
@Valdivia:
@Cervantes:
Exactly. Countries spy on each other, period, and it’s been going on since the folks in one tribe got curious about what the folks in the next cave over were doing. And that obviously includes friendly countries; otherwise none of us would ever have heard of Jonathan Pollard. I can just imagine the leaders of other countries thinking “I’m glad that putz Snowden didn’t spill any of our secrets” even as they make their statements denouncing US spying. Tellingly — and by all means correct me if I’m wrong — I don’t believe that, to this date, any concrete actions (sanctions, trade restrictions, etc.) have accompanied any of the foreign denunciations. That more than anything else shows this to be the nothingburger that it is.
Ben Cisco
@Southern Beale: No thanks, I’m here in NC, and don’t need that grief.
Did Stewart manage to find a way to downplay it?
Randy P
I find it especially funny that France is expressing outrage. Isn’t it pretty much common knowledge that France not only spies on us, but uses government intelligence agencies to commit corporate espionage? Hell, I remember Jacques Chirac being interviewed about that on “60 minutes” after it came out they’d been bugging American CEOs’ hotel rooms in Paris and first class seats on Air France.
The interviewer asked him if he had any qualms about spying on friends. His reply? “Nations do not have friends, zey have interests.”
Valdivia
@NonyNony:
Totally agree.
Also important to point out that the privatization of government functions has contributed greatly to the Security State not having its shit together.
Ash Can
@Valdivia:
Sometime during Edward Snowden’s first telephone conversation with Glenn Greenwald.
Howlin Wolfe
@eric: Is this a question? Snark? Or are you a moron? I can’t tell – is your last name Erickson by any chance?
Please learn how to you punctuation or you’ll never get any respect as a troll.
Valdivia
@Cervantes:
On this website? No.
But I have seen–mostly on twitter I confess-a lot of outrage about it. It totally baffles me.
Randy P
@Howlin Wolfe: Check the calibration on your snark-o-meter
Cervantes
@Valdivia: But I have seen–mostly on twitter I confess-a lot of outrage about it. It totally baffles me.
Again, I suspect it’s theater. Why assume otherwise?
(From whom are these ostensibly outraged tweets? I don’t do Twitter and have not seen them.)
Valdivia
@Elie:
sigh right back!
@Ash Can:
Well Roussef did cancel her State visit here. But that was probably more about her election next year than anything else (she had seen a dip in her popularity because of the massive protests and the mess they have made of the building contracts for the World Cup and the Olympics). It will actually be interesting to see how quickly she turns tail and asks for help from the same NSA in terms of security for the world cup next year actually. I am sure inter agency cooperation is crucial for these events.
Valdivia
@Cervantes:
I would have to go back and find them but obviously without doing that I can say first and foremost Greenwald. Many libertarians that follow him. That is not theater I presume.
FTR–I am not a huge fan of twitter except that it gives me a good idea, in a fast way, of what is going on in a lot of websites without having to waste time reading them. Useful as information aggregation.
Cassidy
But if only he would listen to all these white, suburban
shut-insliberals, who are so much more politically astute than he is, then we wouldn’t have any more problems.CONGRATULATIONS!
@debbie: That’s really the issue. A mass outbreak of amnesia by both the GOP faithful and their media enablers. As to Douche…errr, I mean Drudge (what an appropriate name):
Yeah, OK, I’m on board.
Whoa, there we go, all aboard the crazy train. I’m getting off right here.
If this were a comment made in isolation, it would have my total agreement. However, in context it’s just dressing on Drudge’s word salad of racial animus, white privilege, and partisan shit-slinging.
Nothing of value. If Drudge ever gave a shit about “spying”, he’d have his stupid siren going off in 2005, not now.
Ash Can
@Valdivia: And Roussef should certainly get that help, of course, with no questions asked.
As I’ve said before, I’m all for fixing the crappy regulations that went into effect during the post-9/11 hysteria. But to all of a sudden be shocked over something that’s been going on for ages, both domestically and abroad, is laughable.
handsmile
@ Southern Beale
Thanks for the heads-up on that TDS segment; just finished watching it. Brilliant.
The racism that was spewing from the mouth of the Neo-Confederate county executive was so unabashed and florid that Aasif Mandvi interrupted him at one point to ask incredulously, “You know we can hear you, right?”
I have a conflicted opinion of Stewart and his Broderism: on Monday, he proved a useful tool to advance GOP hysteria/glee on the ACA roll-out, but last night his opening segment on the CNBC/Fox reaction to the JP Morgan $13B fine was ruthless and scathing. His “correspondents” (Mandvi, Jason Jones, Samantha Bee et al), however, I consistently find enjoyable/informative, their satirical style and content surpassing that of Stewart himself. One recent example was a Jason Jones segment proposing Harvey Keitel and Johnny Knoxville as far more effective spokespersons to encourage health-care exchange enrollment.
Let me recommend as well last night’s Colbert Report, devoted largely to “Stephen Colbert: I tried to sign up for Obamacare.” As so often, pure unadulterated genius. Among his questions to the healthcare navigator: “Should we scrub up first?; You know that Obamacare is coming for our guns?; Does Obamacare cover ‘bubble-yum bum'”? Tears-running-down-face funny.
Felonius Monk
Oh Noes. Matt
DrudgeDrivel farts and everyone is off to the fainting couches.mk3872
And you KNOW that Drudge and his brethren in conversamedia were OUTRAGED about NSA spying under Bush W, right? Right??
kindness
Bush43 was doing the very same spying but for the right that doesn’t exist.
Valdivia
@Ash Can:
Absolutely.
Cervantes
@Valdivia: I can say first and foremost Greenwald. Many libertarians that follow him. That is not theater I presume.
Could be theater. If one is looking for ways to criticize or punish Obama, then a little feigned outrage can be a useful weapon (provided one has the right audience for it). You’re right, in any particular case the outrage might not be feigned — there may be people who are sincerely angry about this spying (regardless of how irrelevant I might think this anger is). On Greenwald in particular: I have lost touch with him over the years and don’t want to speculate regarding his thoughts and motivations.
FTR–I am not a huge fan of twitter except that [it’s useful] as information aggregation.
I’m not sure “information” is the word I’d use, but I’m glad you’re making it work for you. It’s just not a form of communication that works for me.
Karen in GA
For wingnuts, all reactions to Obama stem from the fact that he’s black. A black man has power? “He’ll only use it to help his own kind.” Followed by “A black man giving us health coverage? Oh, no — black people don’t set up social programs to help us, we set them up to help them (even though the lazy bastards take advantage).” Laura Bush mingles with the commoners? “Look how down to earth she is!” Michelle Obama connects with normal people who aren’t part of our wanna-be aristrocracy? “She’s ghetto trash.”
Black, black, black. Just look at them, sitting there, all black like that and lording their blackity blackness over the rest of us! You just know the Obamas are thinking, “HA, WE’RE IN CHARGE AND WE’RE BLACK! YOU’RE WHITE! YOU SUCK!”
And wingnuts, solipsistic morons that they are, cannot fathom that others don’t think “holy shit, would you check out their race?!” all the time. They just think that the same way they would never vote for him because he’s black, we only voted for him because he’s black.
No concept that it’s possible to deal with people of different races as people.
I have no idea how to get through to people like that.
ruemara
@Valdivia: That’s all it is. Edward Snowden was fine with spying when it was a white conservative president. So was GG. Odd how that changes.
Cervantes
@Karen in GA: I don’t think you can. People who don’t see that “race” is not real, that it is merely a social construct and a toxic one at that; that there are no “races” but only a continuum of humanity — you can’t reach such people. They “know” too much.
(As Henry Wheeler Shaw put it, “It ain’t ignorance causes so much trouble; it’s folks knowing so much that ain’t so.”)
jonas
@Belafon: This. What’s so nonsensical about this tweet is that 98.7% of the outrage over the myriad squidtentacles of the NSA is from the libertarian/progressive left. Are Chomsky and Greenwald constantly being smeared as racists? When tea partiers start dogging on Obama for his unchecked expansion of the Security State and less for shit like this, then maybe we’ll stop calling them racist.
Cervantes
@jonas: Are Chomsky and Greenwald constantly being smeared as racists?
Chomsky is. Haven’t you heard that he’s a “self-hating Jew”?
(And despite appearances, this is not a distraction from your larger point about bad-faith criticism.)
ET
Matt really is a hack.
If this had happened under Bush 43 he would have been “HOW DARE THEY”
And sadly I don’t think he realizes what a hacktacular hypocrite he really is.
LAC
@Southern Beale:
Word…
awwww…somebody needs a rent boy to hug him. Still wearing that stupid hat, I see.
Someguy
Obama’s critics are racist. Pretty much everything they say would not be said, were he a white Republican. The Republicans were happy with a messed up health care system, domestic spying, foreign policy problems, and a screwed up economy under Bush, and BTW, the French and Germans never griped about our spying on them. There’s only one variable that’s changed here.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: On this site, Greenwald’s apparent belief that Obama is a worse warmonger/threat to civil liberties than his predecessor is sometimes chalked up to racism; ruemara implied it two comments above yours. But it’s certainly not an idea that the majority of Americans have even heard of.
Knight of Nothing
The Story of the Last
535 Years. FIFY.Cacti
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, there’s that plus his work as a “civil rights lawyer” defending the “First Amendment rights” of a neo-nazi to make to death threats and solicit murder.
Redshirt
I once worked for a freaking sailboat rental company that had ties to a French company and voila! We had a French spy working for us – no kidding. Young kid, got too drunk, admitted he was sending reports back to an agency in France.
Belafon
@Cacti: I don’t know the specifics of what you are mentioning, but the ACLU defends the first amendment rights of people all the time that I’m sure they would love to stuff in a box.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@The Red Pen:
The idea that France has any moral high ground on industrial espionage is frankly comical. They are among the world’s biggest offenders in that area. (Just chose that site at random, feel free to google for more). Worse than Russia. Worse than even China.
IMO the current hysteria comes now because it’s a “perfect storm” situation.
First, enough “normal” folks have finally started to understand just how entangled they are with the internet (and other telcos like mobile) that it’s a concern to them (some of these issues go back to at least 1993 under Clinton, but the percentage of internet users vs the general population was far too small back then).
Secondly, the post-9/11 paranoia seems to have worn off amongst the general population.
Thirdly, add to that a suddenly earnest young left willing to ride the “Obama’s worse!” wave to help amplify the noise (could have used that enthusiasm back in 2002, kids, but your concern has been duly noted) and the timing of this starts to make a lot more sense.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
Drudge is more upset by the opprobrium that attaches to openly expressed racism than he is to spying. His derivative shtick has been drowned by the screeds of those who simply make shit up and that gives him a sad. Look for him to produce anonymously sourced proof that Obama was the mastermind of a drug running ring in
MenaChicago.GregB
I remember when that brilliant, fact checking and robbed of a Pulitzer Prize journalist, Matt Drudge braved the brickbats from the establishment and the calls of racist when he boldly reported that a innocent young pure white female McCain staffer was attacked before the 2008 election by a dark black angry Obama supporter who was enraged at her McCain/Palin bumper sticker and proceeded to use his prison shiv to carve a backwards B onto her face. Backwards B for Barack of course.
He deserved awards for that brilliant, non race-baiting piece of journalistic work.
Cacti
@Belafon:
Google Matthew Hale and World Church of the Creator.
Also too, I’m fairly sure that the ACLU doesn’t defend the right to solicit murder of federal judges.
chopper
@eric:
“The US has to stop spying on everyone!”
‘Hey dude, turns out Iran got the bomb.’
“HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? WHERE WAS THE CIA??”
Cervantes
@ruemara: Edward Snowden was fine with spying when it was a white conservative president. So was GG. Odd how that changes.
This is an odd thing to say about Greenwald. US government spying (on its own citizens) was virtually all he wrote about when he first started blogging, back in 2005.
Chris
@Valdivia:
This.
The only reaction I’ve gotten about it from overseas on Facebook was from a high school classmate who now works at a French, Socialist Party affiliated think tank. His reaction: “yeah, it’s really surreal to see our government freak out like this. Does anyone believe DGSE isn’t doing the exact same thing in Washington?”
Chris
@Kay:
Even though every one of them is loudly and angrily denouncing him, media outlets all over the country are taking up their cause, and no one is being Guantamano’d for it.
muricafukyea
You know he’s running out of ideas when muckmux is posting drudge tweets. That is pretty low even by muckys’s pathetically low standards.
muricafukyea
You know he’s running out of ideas when muckmux is posting drudge tweets. That is pretty low even by mucky’s pathetically low standards.
Chris
@Kropadope:
More to the point, whether or not the “racist” accusation was in fact accurate. It’s not name calling to point out that the Obama Birther stuff only took because he was black. Or pointing out teabagger rallies with Confederate flags and racialized pictures of or insults against Obama. Or pointing out that there’s something epically racist about the Republican narrative that “oh, black people are just too stupid to know who the real racists are, they only vote Democrat because they want to stay on the plantation.” Or pointing out that in the last presidential election, the Republicans’ only black candidate was viciously lambasted for daring to object to another candidate calling his ranch “N/gg/rhead” until he meekly apologized for forgetting his place. (And that’s just what they say about black people).
I do call Republicans racist. That’s not because I want them to shut up (I know from long experience it’s only going to make them even more spitting mad). It’s because they consistently give me very good reason to believe it’s true.
boatboy_srq
@sherparick: The trouble is that Teh Terrrrrrrrists™ are all
blackbrownOther – and as of 2009 the US had ablackbrownKenyanMuslimOther person as President. So all those volk who were happy as pigs in mud that Big Gubmint was watching all thoseblackbrownOther people suddenly got all antsy about someblackbrownOther person overseeing the effort.There’s also the fact that the GOTea has proven remarkably inept at using the Interwebz discreetly, and at covering its own tracks when it uses them for prurient/unethical things. There are likely a lot of Teahadists terrified that the SBMITWH (that’s Scary Black Man In The White House) is now privy to all the highly personal emails to their mistresses/escorts/companions, all the transactions they’re advising their accountants to push to the Caymans and Bermuda to hide the funds they’re squirreling away, all the troubles they’re having with their illegal-immigrant domestic help, etc etc. Recall that they think Big Gubmint is simultaneously famously inept and oppresively omnipresent/omniscient: there’s a good chance that they’re in deathly fear for their privacy now when five years ago their Good Ol’ Boy in the WH would have merely chuckled at their indiscretions and focused on the “right kind of people” for intelligence snooping.
Chris
@Randy P:
If you’re interested in the topic, this is what you want to read – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7afrique
In a nutshell, one of the primary goals of French intelligence and diplomacy in the last fifty years has been to ensure that the former African empire remains tied to them; they’ve switched from a “British in India” model of overt colonialism, to an “Americans in Latin America” model of ruling through friendly dictators, mercenaries and intelligence operations. So you end up with a lovely nexus where French politics, French business and African regimes are all in the same boat.
Yatsuno
@muricafukyea: Herp de Durf.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
They believe it, because it’s a fact of their life personally that is a major pillar of the current conservative psychotic fit. Look back. The core of this movement are baby boomers or older. They grew up in a time when ‘nigger’ was not only accepted, it was just what you called Those People. Then Civil Rights hit, and they weren’t able to say that anymore. The younger ones grew up in the 80s, when it was conventional wisdom that blacks lived in ghettos and were hooked on drugs and young black men all belonged to gangs. You can’t say that anymore (thank goodness). From the extreme racists all the way to the ones who would be horrified by the N-Word but would rather scary blacks be kept out of their neighborhood, their whole lives they’ve been less and less able to say what they think. If they say how they really feel, they are socially punished. By now, this is a giant festering wound in their psyche, and with a black man as president they’ve finally had enough of being called racist when they say and do racist things.
EDIT – And as someone pointed out, they don’t feel racist when they act racist. Most of them just think they’re pointing out the obvious truth. That’s why it REALLY galls them.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
@Yatsuno:
Stop picking on
eemommuricafukyea.Mnemosyne
@Cervantes:
I can’t think of the nyms at the moment, of course, but I distinctly remember at least two regulars who were upset that we spy on other countries.
If you read some of the interviews with Snowden that he did with the South China Morning Post, spying on other countries is actually his original beef. He tells a very vivid story of being upset about how a Swiss businessman was manipulated into agreeing to be an informant for the US while Snowden was working for the CIA in Switzerland. The domestic stuff is incidental as far as he’s concerned, but he knew that would be the hook to get Greenwald.
The Pale Scot
@Valdivia:
The thing is because the majority of internet traffic goes thru US routers, and the NSA has infiltrated the telecommunications systems of everyone, Europe has much stricter privacy laws, It’s an opt in kind a place to hinder the great database in the sky. And Europe had those pesky episodes of fascism.
StringOnAStick
@Mnemosyne: Proving once again that young white Libertarians like Snowden have such a narrow, uninformed view of the world that they simply haven’t the education or life experience to realize that ALL nations spy on whatever they decide is worth spying on, and have for freakin’ centuries. Perhaps he was just extra incensed to find out it was being done with modern high tech capabilities against which his libertoonian Master Of My Domain And Ruler of My Independent Castle status is rather impotent. Tech is supposed to bring about the pure libertarian paradise!
Seriously, I think so much libertarian freak out is that they bought the idea of each man an independent, self sustaining island and potential king from their pre-teen sci fi years, and are completely shocked to realize they don’t control every aspect of their lives independently of anyone or anything else. How sad to reach adulthood and not understand the interconnectedness of human existence.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne: If you read some of the interviews with Snowden that he did with the South China Morning Post, spying on other countries is actually his original beef. He tells a very vivid story of being upset about how a Swiss businessman was manipulated into agreeing to be an informant for the US while Snowden was working for the CIA in Switzerland.
So you’re saying that Snowden’s “original beef” — that the US was “spying on other countries” — is something he noticed while he was “working for the CIA in Switzerland”?
Do you see the problem here?
Mnemosyne
@Cervantes:
You mean the fact that Snowden didn’t have a problem spying on other countries until he was actually doing it?
Otherwise, no, I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say. From all of the interviews I’ve seen with Snowden, his main issue is that the US is spying on other countries and the domestic stuff is a sideshow at best. The domestic stuff was how he drew attention to his primary issue, which is the US spying on foreign countries.
ETA: As far as Snowden is concerned, monitoring internet traffic in and out of Chinese universities is exactly the same thing morally as suborning a citizen of another country into becoming a spy for the US.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne: I have not seen the SCMP interviews that you mentioned so I can’t comment on them — but given Snowden’s resumé, I doubt that his “original beef” was the fact of our spying abroad.
From the Guardian:
From this (and other things) I infer that Snowden’s “original beef” had to do with some of the CIA’s methods, not the fact that it was engaged in spying (with his help).
Mnemosyne
@Cervantes:
I guess the two of us interpret that same story differently — I see it as Snowden becoming disillusioned with the entire spying apparatus, not just the process of gaining informants, and deciding to bring the entire apparatus down. He took the contracting job with the aim of exposing that overseas spying and also gathered information on the domestic stuff to make his overseas information more marketable to the Washington Post and Guardian. That’s what I mean by “original beef.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: @Mnemosyne: Spying has always involved doing sneaky and questionable stuff. This goes back to the the first time some guy from a band of hunters pretended to be lost so that he could check out the hunting grounds of a different band of hunters.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus: Spying has always involved doing sneaky and questionable stuff.
Of course.
If Snowden ever thought otherwise, he was naïve to do so.
sm*t cl*de
Well, there’s that plus his work as a “civil rights lawyer” defending the “First Amendment rights” of a neo-nazi to make to death threats and solicit murder.
Was that when GG was censured for illegally recording telephone conversations?
RaflW
Hellya!
‘Cause everyone thinks Algela Merkel is mad about spying because Obama is black.
But the truth is, she’s still mad about the Dubya backrub.
Chris
@Cervantes:
Jesus.
That was your moral event horizon, Eddie? Really? Not running guns to shady insurgents, not financing a coup d’etat, not rigging an election, not having someone assassinated, certainly not spying on Americans or disobeying the law – spying on a Swiss banker? As in, infiltrating a community that’s been one of the world’s biggest shelters for shady money for a hundred years? Do you also object to the FBI having informants in the Mafia and the CIA having spies in Tehran? What the hell are we allowed to use our intelligence agencies for, if even that doesn’t pass your tender and delicate sensitivities?
This isn’t even “first world problems” anymore, it’s full-blown “gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail” level lunacy.
Anna in PDX
@JPL: Yeah right? that was my reaction. People in the US never criticize Obama because they are afraid of being labeled as racist? Umwhat? What about his very own output? Have Gmen knocked at his door for any of his scurrilous less-than-yellow-journalism? Oh they have not? What a jerk.
Cervantes
@Chris: Exactly.
I know Snowden never exactly finished high school, etc., but even granting all that … it’s astonishing how little he appears to have known about the CIA before he joined up. (I guess it’s possible that the full reality only hit him when he became part of it.)