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Snowden’s Ride, Part 7: Citizen Greenwald, The National Alliance and The Underground Reich

The Turn­er Diaries and Hunter, Nation­al Alliance books

 

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COMMENT: We’ve cov­ered Eddie “The Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den’s exploits in numer­ous pre­vi­ous posts: Part IPart IIPart IIIPart IVPart VPart VIPart VII, Part VIIIPart IXPart X, Part XI, Part XIIPart XIII.) Users of this web­site are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to exam­ine these posts in detail, as it is impos­si­ble to do jus­tice to the argu­ments in those arti­cles in the scope of this post.

Suf­fice it to say, for our pur­pos­es here, that Snow­den’s activ­i­ties are–quite obviously–an intel­li­gence oper­a­tion direct­ed at Barack Oba­ma’s admin­is­tra­tion at one lev­el and the Unit­ed States and U.K. at anoth­er.

We note that the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with Snow­den, as well as Fast Eddie him­self, track back to the far right, Nazi, white suprema­cists, Holo­caust deniers and ele­ments and indi­vid­u­als involved with the Under­ground Reich. Again, PLEASE exam­ine the pre­vi­ous posts on the sub­ject, as there is no way to flesh out this line of inquiry in this post. 

Ser­pen­t’s Walk: Fore­casts a Nazi takeover of U.S. in mid-twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, after WMD ter­ror­ist attacks.

In past dis­cus­sion of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s leak­er of choice, Guardian jour­nal­ist Glenn Green­wald, we not­ed that he has pro­fes­sion­al­ly net­worked with the Koch broth­ers fund­ed Cato Insti­tute. Green­wald’s pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions include far more odi­ous rela­tion­ships.

Green­wald launched his own legal busi­ness, rep­re­sent­ing “unpop­u­lar clients,” includ­ing neo-Nazis. 

In our last post, we high­light­ed Green­wald’s five-year long rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Matthew Hale, head of the World Church of the Cre­ator.

In addi­tion to Hale, Green­wald also rep­re­sent­ed a con­sor­tium of neo-Naz­i/White Suprema­cist groups, includ­ing the Nation­al Alliance. (See text excerpts below.)

Being sued for incit­ing two white suprema­cists to attack Lati­no day-labor­ers, they were rep­re­sent­ed by Green­wald. It was Green­wald’s con­tention that he was moti­vat­ed by the need to pre­serve the free speech rights of these groups. (See text excerpts below)

A num­ber of points to con­sid­er, in con­nec­tion with Cit­i­zen Green­wald’s activ­i­ties:

  • As is the case with his five year, pro-bono rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Matthew Hale, Green­wald’s work on behalf of cold-blood­ed Nazi killers gives the lie to his pre­tens­es of being a friend to human­i­ty.
  • Green­wald ratio­nal­ized his work on behalf of Nation­al Alliance et al as defend­ing impor­tant prin­ci­ples of free speech. The Nation­al Alliance’s books are explic­it­ly intend­ed as moti­va­tion­al instruc­tion for mur­der and ter­ror­ism! It is this “right” that Green­wald defend­ed!
  • In the con­text of the point above, we note that The Turn­er Diaries was the ide­o­log­i­cal cat­e­chism used by the Nazi ter­ror group The Order, best known for the mur­der of Den­ver talk show host Alan Berg. The Turn­er Diaries was also the blue­print for Tim­o­thy McVeigh and com­pa­ny in the Okla­homa City Bomb­ing. (See text excerpts below.) The actu­al mas­ter­mind of the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, accord­ing to ATF infor­mant Car­ol Howe, was Andreas Strass­meir. Strass­meir was a “for­mer” Bun­deswehr offi­cer and the son of Chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl’s chief of staff. Andreas’ grand­fa­ther was one of the char­ter mem­bers of the NSDAP under Hitler. The resem­blance between Strass­meir and “John Doe #2” is strik­ing. “John Doe #2 was an indi­vid­ual seen in the com­pa­ny of Tim­o­thy McVeigh and nev­er appre­hend­ed. (See pho­tos at right.) 

  • The head of the Nation­al Alliance and author of Turn­er Diaries–William Luther Pierce–appears to have had fore­knowl­edge of the 9/11 attacks. (See text excerpts below.)
  • The cli­mac­tic episode of The Turn­er Diaries is a low-lev­el, sui­cide aer­i­al attack on the Pen­ta­gon which occurs on the Ger­man “Day of Destiny”–November 9th. A Ger­man would write that date as–9/11! (See text excerpts below.)
  • The Turn­er Diaries were also the source of oper­a­tional inspi­ra­tion for Dr. Lar­ry Ford, who col­lab­o­rat­ed with the CIA’s assis­tance to the apartheid regime’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram named Project Coast. Ford may have been involved with the milieu behind the anthrax attacks. (See text excerpt below.)
  • Anoth­er of Pierce’s nov­els–Hunter–is ded­i­cat­ed to Nazi/White Suprema­cist assas­sin Joseph Paul Franklin and is specif­i­cal­ly intend­ed as an instructional/motivational man­u­al for racist killers! (See text excerpts below.)
  • Accord­ing to for­mer mem­ber Thomas Mar­tinez, The Order (inspired by The Turn­er Diaries) received fund­ing from Ger­man fam­i­lies in South Amer­i­ca. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Also accord­ing to Mar­tinez, William Luther Pierce–head of Cit­i­zen Green­wald’s client The Nation­al Alliance–met with Ger­man Nazi Man­fred Roed­er, described as the head of the rem­nant of the Ger­man Nazi Par­ty. This after Roed­er trav­eled to Brazil to meet with Josef Men­gele, among oth­ers. Green­wald cur­rent­ly resides in Brazil. (See text excerpt below.)

“The Day the Blog­gers Won” by Eric Boehlert; salon.com; 5/19/2007.

EXCERPT: . . . . His work was at times polit­i­cal in the sense that he took on unpop­u­lar clients in free speech cas­es that spot­light­ed the prac­ti­cal ten­sions between the rights of indi­vid­u­als and the col­lec­tive urges of the com­mu­ni­ty. In 2002 he defend­ed a stri­dent anti-immi­gra­tion group, Nation­al Alliance, in a New York civ­il rights law­suit after two Mex­i­can day work­ers were beat­en and stabbed on Long Island by two men pos­ing as con­trac­tors in search of labor­ers. The vic­tims claimed that the anti-immi­gra­tion rhetoric of Nation­al Alliance, which urged racist vio­lence against Lati­no immi­grants and oth­er racial minori­ties, was part­ly to blame for the beat­ings. Green­wald argued that the case rep­re­sent­ed a mis­guid­ed attempt to impose lia­bil­i­ty and pun­ish­ment on groups because of their polit­i­cal and reli­gious views. A fed­er­al judge threw out the case. . . .

“Anti-Immi­grant Groups Can’t Be Held Liable for Attack” [AP]; First Amend­ment Cen­ter; 9/16/2002.

EXCERPT: A fed­er­al judge has dis­missed a civ­il rights law­suit that held sev­en anti-immi­gra­tion orga­ni­za­tions part­ly respon­si­ble for the bru­tal Sep­tem­ber 2000 attack on a pair of Mex­i­can day labor­ers.

But work­ers Israel Perez and Mag­daleno Estra­da can still pur­sue civ­il rights claims against the two men con­vict­ed of beat­ing them, U.S. Dis­trict Judge Joan­na Sey­bert ruled on Sept. 13.

In her deci­sion, Sey­bert said the sev­en groups did not vio­late the two immi­grants’ civ­il rights by mak­ing anti-immi­grant state­ments. A lawyer for one of the groups, the Farm­ingville-based Sachem Qual­i­ty of Life, praised the rul­ing. . . .

. . . Perez and Estra­da were beat­en and stabbed by Christo­pher Slavin and Ryan Wag­n­er in Sep­tem­ber 2000. The pair had posed as con­trac­tors look­ing for day labor­ers.

Both attack­ers were con­vict­ed of attempt­ed mur­der, and sen­tenced to 25 years in prison. . . .

. . . . The news­pa­per also report­ed that the law­suit claimed that the phi­los­o­phy of white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions — includ­ing the West Vir­ginia-based Nation­al Alliance and Amer­i­can Patrol in Sher­man Oaks, Calif. — urged racist vio­lence against Lati­no immi­grants and oth­er racial minori­ties. News­day report­ed that Brew­ing­ton said the group’s urg­ings prompt­ed the attacks.

“The law­suit was a very dan­ger­ous attempt to start impos­ing lia­bil­i­ty and pun­ish­ment on groups because of their polit­i­cal and reli­gious views,” Glenn Green­wald, a Man­hat­tan attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the Nation­al Alliance and oth­er groups, was quot­ed by Newsweek as say­ing. “If you can be liable for the actions of oth­er peo­ple who hear your views, then you would be afraid to ever express any views that were ever uncon­ven­tion­al.”

 “Jew­ish Defense Orga­ni­za­tion Dossier on Glenn Green­wald”; scribd.com.

EXCERPT: This is what tran­spired: In Sep­tem­ber 2000, two local racist skin­heads posed as home­build­ing con­trac­tors to lure two Mex­i­can day labor­ers to a ware­house where the white suprema­cists stabbed and near­ly beat the immi­grants to death. One of the assailants was tat­tooed with swastikas.The oth­er had a tat­too on his stom­ach of a skin­head men­ac­ing a kneel­ing Jew. Perez and Escamil­la were Mexican/Chicano day labor­ers resid­ing in Farm­ingville, New York. Escamil­la was blud­geoned by Slavin until he lost con­scious­ness; Perez too was clubbed by Slavin and was stabbed sev­er­al times by Wag­n­er. Escamil­la even­tu­al­ly regained con­scious­ness, and both plain­tiffs man­aged to escape. They were aid­ed by a pass­ing motorist who sum­moned the police.

“In Sep­tem­ber 2001, Perez and Escamil­la com­menced the present action under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1985, 1986, and 1988, and state law, with the fil­ing of a com­plaint signed by Brew­ing­ton, alleg­ing the above acts of vio­lence by Slavin and Wag­n­er. The­com­plaint also named as defen­dants sev­en advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions (col­lec­tive­ly the“organization defen­dants”), describ­ing them as asso­ci­a­tions that advo­cat­ed hatred against var­i­ous groups on the basis of, inter alia, race, nation­al­i­ty, or reli­gion andal­leg­ing that Sachem, a Farm­ingville-based asso­ci­a­tion, “advocate[d] hatred and­in­tol­er­ance against immi­grants, and in par­tic­u­lar, day labor­ers” The com­plaint alleged that defen­dants had con­spired to deprive plain­tiffs and sim­i­lar­ly sit­u­at­ed immi­grant­la­bor­ers of, inter alia, their Fifth, Thir­teenth, and Four­teenth Amend­ment rights to trav­el, to enjoy equal pro­tec­tion of the laws, to “be free from badges and inci­dents of slavery,“and to “be free from assault and bat­tery moti­vat­ed by racial prej­u­dice”. It alleged that Slavin and Wag­n­er had “act­ed with the sup­port of “the orga­ni­za­tion defen­dants and that the assaults by Slavin and Wag­n­er con­sti­tut­ed overt acts in fur­ther­ance of the con­spir­a­cy.”

“Neo-Nazis and 9/11” by Jack McCarthy; Coun­ter­punch; 10/29/2001.

EXCERPT: . . . . Upon perus­ing his speech­es from 1998–99, I dis­cov­ered that Pierce, who heads the so-called ‘Nation­al Alliance,’ did indeed utter some most inter­est­ing (pre‑9/11—if not prophetic—remarks about Osama bin Laden and bio-ter­ror­ism. The run­ning theme in Pierce’s com­men­taries is—to para­phrase his hero Hitler—that Osama Bin Laden’s warn­ing to Amer­i­ca is ‘I Am Com­ing.’ And so is bio-ter­ror­ism.

In one chill­ing com­men­tary Pierce, (after not­ing that Bin Laden and the rest of the lost gen­er­a­tion of angry Moslem youth had it with their par­ents’ com­pro­mis­es and were hell bent on revenge against infi­del Amer­i­ca) issued this stark, prophet­ic warn­ing in a 1998 radio address titled, ‘Stay Out of Tall Build­ings.’ ‘New York­ers who work in tall office build­ings any­thing close to the size of the World Trade Cen­ter might con­sid­er wear­ing hard hats . . .’ Pierce warned. . . . [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. . . .

The Turn­er Diaries; “Andrew Mac­don­ald;” Bar­ri­cade Books, Inc. [SC] 1996; Copy­right 1978, 1980 William Pierce; ISBN 1–56980–086–3; p. 201.

EXCERPT. . . . I con­ferred pri­vately with Major Williams of the Wash­ing­ton Field Com­mand for more than an hour on the prob­lem of attack­ing the Pen­ta­gon. The military’s oth­er major com­mand cen­ters were either knocked out on Sep­tem­ber 8 or sub­se­quently con­sol­i­dated with the Pen­ta­gon, which the top brass appar­ently regards as impreg­nable. And it damned near is. We went over every pos­si­bil­ity we could think of, and we came up with no real­ly con­vinc­ing plan—except, per­haps one. That is to make an air deliv­ery of a bomb.

In the mas­sive ring of defens­es around the Pen­ta­gon there is a great deal of anti-air­craft fire­power, but we decid­ed that a small plane, fly­ing just above the ground, might be able to get through the three-mile gaunt­let with one of our 60-kilo­ton war­heads. One fac­tor in favor of such an attempt is that we have nev­er before used air­craft in such a way, and we might hope to catch the anti-air­craft crews off their guard.

Although the mil­i­tary is guard­ing all civ­il air­fields, it just hap­pens that we have an old crop duster stashed in a barn only a few miles from here. My imme­di­ate assign­ment is to pre­pare a detailed plan for an aer­ial attack on the Pen­ta­gon by next Mon­day. We must make a final deci­sion at the time and then act with­out fur­ther delay.

Novem­ber 9, 1993. It’s still three hours until first light, and all sys­tems are ‘go.’ I’ll use the time to write a few pages—my last diary entry. Then it’s a one-way trip to the Pen­ta­gon for me. The war­head is strapped into the front seat of the old Stear­man and rigged to det­o­nate either on impact or when I flip a switch in the back seat. Hope­fully, I’ll be able to mange a low-lev­el air burst direct­ly over the cen­ter of the Pen­ta­gon. Fail­ing that, I’ll at least try to fly as close as I can before I’m shot down.

Thus end Earl Turner’s diaries, as unpre­ten­tiously as they began. His final mis­sion was suc­cess­ful, of course, as we all are remind­ed each year on Novem­ber 9—our tra­di­tional Day of the Mar­tyrs. . . .

“Cal­i­for­nia Doc­tor’s Sui­cide Leaves Many Trou­bling Mys­ter­ies Unsolved” by Jo Thomas; The New York Times; 11/03/2002.

EXCERPT: . . . . After his death, Detec­tive Ray said, the author­i­ties learned that Dr. Ford had been a con­sul­tant to Project Coast, which has been accused of cre­at­ing weapons for use against ene­mies of apartheid. They also dis­cov­ered that he had held extreme racist views and had once told a girl­friend that to under­stand him, she should read ”The Turn­er Diaries,” the anti-Semit­ic and white suprema­cist nov­el, pop­u­lar among far-right groups, that was pros­e­cu­tors say inspired the Okla­homa City bomb­ing.

Over the years, Dr. Ford made a num­ber of trips to South Africa. His lab­o­ra­to­ry assis­tant and con­stant com­pan­ion, Valerie Kesler, says she trav­eled there with him at least six times.

Speak­ing through her lawyer, Ms. Kesler said that Dr. Ford had once car­ried a vial in his vest pock­et and hand­ed it to a South African offi­cial at the air­port. Dr. Ford, she remem­bered, was extreme­ly ner­vous through­out the flight. Years lat­er, she said, she real­ized that the vial held lethal bac­te­ria, endan­ger­ing every­one on the plane. . . .

1988: Neo-Nazi Group Founds Pub­lish­ing House, Pub­lish­es Book to Inspire White Assas­sins; His­to­ry Com­mons

EXCERPT: . . . .William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi Nation­al Alliance (see 1970–1974) and the author of the inflam­ma­to­ry and high­ly influ­en­tial white suprema­cist nov­el The Turn­er Diaries (see 1978), over­sees the cre­ation of a pub­lish­ing firm for the Alliance, Nation­al Van­guard Books. It will pub­lish a num­ber of works, most promi­nent­ly a reprint of The Turn­er Diaries and Pierce’s sec­ond nov­el, Hunter, which tells the sto­ry of a white assas­sin who kills minori­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­ra­cial cou­ples. He ded­i­cates Hunter to Joseph Paul Franklin, con­vict­ed of the sniper mur­ders of two African-Amer­i­can men (see 1980). Pierce will lat­er tell his biog­ra­ph­er that he wrote Hunter as a delib­er­ate moti­va­tion­al tool for assas­sins, say­ing, “From the begin­ning with Hunter, I had this idea of how fic­tion can work as a teach­ing tool in mind.” In 2002, the Cen­ter for New Com­mu­ni­ty will write, “Like The Turn­er Diaries, the book has inspired sev­er­al real-life acts of racist ter­ror” (see Jan­u­ary 4, 2002 and After). In 1991, Nation­al Van­guard will expand into releas­ing audio­tapes, which by Decem­ber 1992 will spawn a radio show, Amer­i­can Dis­si­dent Voic­es. In 1993, it will begin pub­lish­ing com­ic books tar­get­ed at chil­dren and teenagers. . . .

“The Turn­er Diaries, Oth­er Racist Nov­els, Inspire Extrem­ist Vio­lence” by Camille Jack­son; South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter Intel­li­gence Report; Fall 2004, #115.

EXCERPT: Few works of fic­tion have moved read­ers to action quite like The Turn­er Diaries. Writ­ten under a pseu­do­nym by William Pierce, late founder of the neo-Nazi Nation­al Alliance, the bloody race-war nov­el has been dubbed the “bible of the racist right” by the FBI.

Pub­lished in 1978, The Turn­er Diaries has fueled some of the last two decades’ most infa­mous out­breaks of extrem­ist vio­lence, includ­ing Tim­o­thy McVeigh’s bomb­ing of the Mur­rah Fed­er­al Build­ing in Okla­homa City. Although The Turn­er Diaries may be the most famous such nov­el, it is nei­ther the first nor the last nov­el­ized ver­sion of dire con­spir­a­cies and dras­tic solu­tions.

Pierce told his sem­i­nal sto­ry through two years of diary entries by his white-suprema­cist hero, Earl Turn­er. Turn­er car­ries out orders for the Orga­ni­za­tion, an under­ground group strug­gling against the Sys­tem — an anti-white, anti-gun U.S. gov­ern­ment that con­tin­u­al­ly puts more restric­tions on its cit­i­zens.

Using “det­o­na­tors, timers, ignit­ers and oth­er gad­gets” built by Turn­er, the Orga­ni­za­tion spawns vicious war­fare between blacks, Jews and whites as it takes over the coun­try, city by city.

Despite Pierce’s stilt­ed prose — a holdover, maybe, from his career as a physics pro­fes­sor — the vio­lence is unfor­get­tably vivid. Turn­er describes slic­ing the throat of a Jew­ish shop own­er “from ear to ear,” mur­der­ing a Wash­ing­ton Post edi­tor with two shot­gun blasts, and watch­ing starv­ing blacks bar­be­cue and eat white chil­dren.

By the nov­el­’s end, Turn­er is work­ing for an elite sur­vival­ist group called the Order and plot­ting a sui­cide mis­sion — fly­ing a crop-duster plane strapped with a war­head into the Pen­ta­gon, the Sys­tem’s last remain­ing mil­i­tary strong­hold. “Two-thirds of the troops around the Pen­ta­gon are nig­gers,” Turn­er writes in his jour­nal, “which should great­ly enhance my chances of get­ting through.”

Pub­lished by Pierce’s own Nation­al Van­guard Press, The Turn­er Diaries did­n’t exact­ly rock­et up the best-sell­er lists when it first appeared. But Pierce cer­tain­ly got through to Bob Math­ews.

A neo-Nazi fol­low­er, Math­ews orga­nized a real-life group called The Order, based on Pierce’s fic­tion­al Order, which com­mit­ted a series of armored car heists and plot­ted seri­ous racist vio­lence before ambush­ing and mur­der­ing Jew­ish radio talk show host Alan Berg in 1984. . . .

Broth­er­hood and Mur­der by Thomas Mar­tinez; Google Books; p. 234.

EXCERPT: . . . .The per­former also said ” . . . Some very old Ger­man fam­i­lies [in South Amer­i­ca] were giv­ing Bob [Matthews, leader of The Order] some mon­ey.” . . .

. . . For exam­ple, as long ago as 1978, Man­fred Roed­er, who head­ed the rem­nants of the Ger­man Nazi Par­ty, trav­eled to Brazil, where he met with Josef Men­gele and oth­er Nazi lead­ers. Imme­di­ate­ly after­ward, Roed­er trav­eled to the Unit­ed States, where–according to the ADL–he met with Dr. William Pierce, among oth­ers. . . .”

Discussion

13 comments for “Snowden’s Ride, Part 7: Citizen Greenwald, The National Alliance and The Underground Reich”

  1. Good research here today! Dave you’re doing a good job on this for the sim­ple rea­son that, in the US, those who come across your research may be inspired to start using their crit­i­cal think­ing skills again to arrive at a “hap­py” medi­um btwn your research and what the Amy Good­man zom­bies dish out. Cheers.

    Posted by frosty the snowjob | July 20, 2013, 2:11 pm
  2. @Frosty the Snowjob–

    I’m not sure that “hap­py” can be used here.

    The cen­tral point (also under­scored in the pre­vi­ous post on G‑wald’s pro-Nazi efforts) con­cerns just WHAT the hell some­one who is sup­pos­ed­ly con­cerned with the wel­fare of human­i­ty is doing active­ly assist­ing folks like this?

    He did so for years and much of his work was pro bono!

    Note, in par­tic­u­lar, that he defend­ed Nation­al Alliance’s “free speech” capa­bil­i­ties.

    Their works are specif­i­cal­ly, explic­it­ly and VERY suc­cess­ful­ly intend­ed to inspire mur­der and ter­ror­ism.

    Snow­den, who backed cryp­to-Nazi Ron Paul for Pres­i­dent, must be judged in the same con­text.

    Eddie the Friend­ly Spook thinks we should elim­i­nate social secu­ri­ty, go back to the gold stan­dard and embrace high unem­ploy­ment as a nec­es­sary part of cap­i­tal­ist cor­rec­tion.

    He can NOT be tak­en seri­ous­ly when he claims to be act­ing out of altru­is­tic con­cerns.

    He clear­ly does NOT care for the wel­fare of oth­ers.

    These peo­ple are not as adver­tised.

    Thanks for pay­ing atten­tion to this web­site.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | July 20, 2013, 2:56 pm
  3. Clear­ly this is very dis­tress­ing news to any­one fol­low­ing this sto­ry, but I have to ask one thing to clar­i­fy my think­ing, and please don’t be upset at the ques­tion.

    Since you, Dave, have been try­ing admirably to get peo­ple to pay atten­tion to NSA spy­ing and skull­dug­gery for years, and final­ly peo­ple are pay­ing atten­tion to it now, even though through a despi­ca­ble source accord­ing to these reports, can’t we at least be hap­py that it’s final­ly hap­pen­ing? I grant you it’s bar­gain­ing with the dev­il. Yes, it is hurt­ing the US’s rep­u­ta­tion and hurt­ing our alliances, but how can that be avoid­ed in any case giv­en the treach­er­ous state of affairs we find our­selves? There will be some trau­ma inevitably involved in the process of reform­ing this coun­try. At least most Amer­i­cans are final­ly wak­ing up and fac­ing the truth about our­selves. Isn’t that what we want­ed to hap­pen? Isn’t this the “one great shock” that Mil­ton May­er says nev­er hap­pens to mobi­lize the pub­lic in the evo­lu­tion of fas­cism? How else would you see it hap­pen­ing?

    Posted by jg | July 20, 2013, 3:23 pm
  4. @JG–

    You have missed the point. Grant­ed, the 13 pre­vi­ous posts embody a long, detailed and com­pli­cat­ed line of analy­sis.

    How­ev­er, I have under­tak­en to fash­ion it and present it at great incon­ve­nience to myself, and for free at that.

    This is a “psy-op.” I com­pared it to the U‑2 inci­dent. Eddie Snow­den is a fas­cist and a spy. “Spy” rhymes with “lie.” Don’t for­get it.

    This “U‑2, II” is being done to, among oth­er things, destroy Oba­ma.

    It will do dam­age to U.S. eco­nom­ic infra­struc­ture, our inter­net busi­ness, in par­tic­u­lar.

    It will also dam­age U.K.

    The assault on the Echelon/Menwith Hill oper­a­tion began from the far right and fas­cist ele­ments years ago.

    Fas­cist ele­ments have been using anti-gov­ern­ment themes with great suc­cess for some time–witness the suc­cess of the “Truthers.”

    Wit­ness the suc­cess of Ron Paul–Ed Snow­den’s can­di­date of choice.

    Wit­ness the suc­cess of obvi­ous­ly fas­cist ele­ments at get­ting air-time on Paci­fi­ca radio. Lis­ten­ing to Paci­fi­ca’s pub­lic affairs pro­gram­ming could be com­pared to digest­ing an audio ver­sion of “Der Sturmer,” while sit­ting in a North Kore­an prison camp in 1951.

    Paci­fi­ca broad­casts Al Jazeera, run by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

    When the Naz­i­fied GOP gets back into power–and that is part of the goal of this psy-op–you can kiss your ass good­bye.

    The econ­o­my will be delib­er­ate­ly sabotaged–the rich will sur­vive very nice­ly, thank you, and every­one else will eat it raw.

    Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare will be gut­ted. The poor and minori­ties will be dis­en­fran­chised. Ulti­mate­ly, they will be kind­ly, gen­tly elim­i­nat­ed through “Clause­witz­ian eco­nom­ics.”

    Peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties will be “mer­ci­ful­ly” ter­mi­nat­ed, as they were in Nazi Ger­many’s T‑4 pro­gram.

    The Nazi and Islam­o­fas­cist ele­ments employed by the Under­ground Reich will enjoy more oper­a­tional lee­way than ever, and they will make full use of that.

    Why do you think a Nazi son-of-a-bitch like Ron Paul wants less sur­veil­lance?

    A hor­rif­ic, dev­as­tat­ing inci­dent will be allowed to hap­pen, result­ing in a war we can’t afford and that will ter­mi­nal­ly sap the Unit­ed States’ remain­ing resources.

    This to pre­vent elec­toral back­lash to the cir­cum­stances I have set forth above.

    As far as the Amer­i­can peo­ple “wak­ing up”–what a joke!

    After 9/11 hap­pened, the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids revealed the fund­ing infra­struc­ture of Mus­lim Brotherhood/Al Qae­da to be pro­found­ly tied to GOP/Grover Norquist/Karl Rove/Bush fam­i­ly.

    Talat Oth­man, a direc­tor of Harken Ener­gy, friend and pol­lit­i­cal advis­er to both Georges Bush and a man who gave a Mus­lim bene­dic­tion at the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion inter­ced­ed with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary O’Neill on behalf of the insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als raid­ed on 3/20/2002.

    This was in a full page arti­cle on page A‑4 of the Wall Street Jour­nal on 4/18/2002.

    No one blinked.

    Do a key word search on the inter­net. How much cov­er­age has there been?

    Who is talk­ing about it?

    The House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions rec­om­mend­ed that the Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­gate David Fer­rie and the anti-Cas­tro Cubans in New Orleans as being con­spir­a­tors in the assas­si­na­tion of the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. That’s who Jim Gar­ri­son was after.

    No one blinked.

    Bot­tom line: the Amer­i­can peo­ple mis­take their love of com­fort for love of free­dom.

    Cheers,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | July 20, 2013, 5:03 pm
  5. So sad but so true! Secret pris­ons, extra­or­di­nary ren­di­tions, kid­nap­ping, tor­ture, spy­ing, con­trol of the media …. None of this is new and it should not come as a sur­prise to any well informed Amer­i­can. As a Latin Amer­i­can I have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed these things since the 70’s so when the inter­net came along I inno­cent­ly tried to warn every sin­gle Amer­i­can I encoun­tered through this medi­um think­ing these things were hap­pen­ing all over the world because the Amer­i­can peo­ple were unaware of them. Sad­ly I dis­cov­er this was not the case. The Amer­i­can peo­ple sim­ply did­n’t care! So why are Amer­i­cans now so shocked and con­cern about these things? Is it because its WRONG to tor­ture or spy on some­one or because the US gov­ern­ment is now doing it to them! There­in lies the rub! As I said to many Amer­i­cans long for 911: “You should be con­cerned with US for­eign pol­i­cy because any­thing and every­thing your gov­ern­ment does to oth­er peo­ple around the world it will even­tu­al­ly do to you!” That is why 911 did not come as a sur­prise to me or many peo­ple in Latin Amer­i­ca. The moment we saw those tow­ers fall we knew the chick­en­hawks had sim­ply come home to roost.

    It’s not a mat­ter of “wak­ing peo­ple up”. Amer­i­cans are awake! They just don’t want to see! Thy want selec­tive moral­i­ty. It’s ok to tor­ture, kill, spy and kid­nap oth­er peo­ple in oth­er coun­tries so that I can pre­serve my way of life AS LONG as my gov­ern­ment does­n’t do it to me, but that’s not the way it works! A liar is a liar and if he lies to some­one else he will lie to you as well.

    That is why I was so wor­ried towards the end of the Bush pres­i­den­cy. By that time I knew the Amer­i­can peo­ple were unwill­ing and/or unable to stop the fas­cist take over of Amer­i­ca and I was tru­ly fright­ened for human­i­ty as a whole but then some­thing extra­or­di­nary hap­pened. The agen­da was mov­ing very quick­ly up until 2007 when the US began nego­ti­a­tions with Poland for the estab­lish­ment of a mis­sile defense sys­tem with­in their ter­ri­to­ry. I will nev­er for­get the Euro­pean con­fer­ence when Putin stood up and in no uncer­tain terms told the US and Europe there would be war if they did not desist in their efforts to estab­lish a mis­sile sys­tem so close to the Russ­ian bor­der. Angela Merkel sat there with her mouth wide open and the look on her face gave me the impres­sion that up until that point Ger­many and the fas­cist under­ground thought Rus­sia was their ally.

    Through your FTR pro­grams I have learned the under­ground reich infil­trat­ed Rus­sia after WWII just as they infil­trat­ed the US. This is some­thing I had nev­er con­sid­ered but it cer­tain­ly helped me under­stand and put into per­spec­tive the whole Gor­bachev era. Now I am won­der­ing: “Where and how does Putin fit into all of this?” Is he tru­ly anti-fas­cist? And if so, how did he man­age to get into pow­er?

    Posted by Shibusa | July 21, 2013, 8:18 am
  6. Also, to Shibusa and oth­er fel­low Spit­fireList afi­ciona­dos, who would like to learn more about Rus­sia:

    http://справедливая-россия.рф/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Just_Russia

    There you go. I’m sure they’re not the only decent par­ty in the Duma, but they are the biggest of them by far. =)

    Posted by Steven L. | July 21, 2013, 1:33 pm
  7. Excel­lent reply, Dave.

    Posted by jg | July 22, 2013, 1:54 am
  8. As far as Putin is con­cerned, have you seen the online ver­sion of TAAS late­ly? It reads just like a Koch Broth­ers hand­out. Cli­mate denial, and all the rest of the Right wing pro­pa­gan­da. Think, Oil and Gas inter­ests? It is amaz­ing.

    Posted by jg | July 22, 2013, 1:58 am
  9. Get­ting stranger...
    This arti­cle is packed full of wierd com­par­isons (Ein­stein to Snow­den) and appeals to Ger­man shame etc.
    It looks like Snow­den’s door to Ger­many is still open:

    Patrick Cock­burn
    Sun­day 21 July 2013

    Ger­many should hon­our its debt and offer NSA whistle­blow­er Edward Snow­den asy­lum

    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/germany-should-honour-its-debt-and-offer-nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-asylum-8722923.html

    (Excerpt)

    “The only per­son in Europe to see Snowden’s fate both in terms of polit­i­cal moral­i­ty and in the con­text of the his­to­ry of the US and Europe, is Rolf Hochhuth, the Ger­man author and play­wright. He pre­sent­ed an elo­quent peti­tion to Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel ask­ing that Snow­den be giv­en asy­lum.

    Hochhuth points out in the peti­tion that where gov­ern­ment is both accuser and per­pe­tra­tor “the accused has no hope of jus­tice”. He added that if Snow­den returns to the US he faces years in prison, but if he stays in Rus­sia he will be per­ma­nent­ly muz­zled.

    So, why should Ger­many of all coun­tries offer asy­lum to an Amer­i­can? Hochhuth writes that “more than any oth­er, the Ger­man peo­ple are oblig­at­ed to hon­our the right of asy­lum because, begin­ning in 1933, our elite, with­out excep­tion from the Mann broth­ers to Ein­stein, sur­vived the 12-year Nazi dic­ta­tor­ship pure­ly because oth­er coun­tries, with the US as the great­est exam­ple, offered asy­lum to these refugees.”

    Hochhuth empha­sis­es that he is far from being moved by any auto­mat­ic anti-Amer­i­can­ism, but is moti­vat­ed by mem­o­ry of what the US did for Ger­many in the past. He remem­bers news­reel of when the Amer­i­cans lib­er­at­ed Buchen­wald in 1945 and saw Eisen­how­er in tears as he wit­nessed his GIs bull­doz­ing mounds of corpses. “They could not under­stand how we Ger­mans could have been capa­ble of such acts. Yet what was America’s answer? Through their air­lift they res­cued Berlin from Stalin’s grasp.”

    Hochhuth argues that the US has changed, say­ing “no nation remains last­ing­ly great”. It might be dif­fi­cult to sus­tain a charge of trea­son against Snow­den in the US, but he could still receive mul­ti­ple 10-year sen­tences, under the Espi­onage Act, for reveal­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. Hochhuth cites with approval George Bernard Shaw’s some­what self-regard­ing bon mot: “I am held to be a mas­ter of irony. But even I would not have had the idea of erect­ing the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty in New York.”

    In its pur­suit of Snow­den the US gov­ern­ment has giv­en sub­stance to his accu­sa­tions about an over-mighty and uncon­trolled secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus. The sov­er­eign rights of inde­pen­dent states have been trod­den down as read­i­ly as the rights of indi­vid­u­als. Hochhuth asks Merkel whether “you know of a sim­i­lar act over a Euro­pean state which con­sid­ers itself sov­er­eign, an act by which for 12 hours orders from the US pre­vent the plane of a South Amer­i­can pres­i­dent con­tin­u­ing its flight?”

    Aside from Hochhuth, there is some­thing neutered and pro for­ma about the response of Europe’s lead­ers to Snowden’s rev­e­la­tions despite ini­tial expres­sions of shock and anger. The British may have been sub­ject­ed to less intense sur­veil­lance, but even if that were not so it is doubt­ful that they would care. Almost every sig­nif­i­cant act in Britain’s for­eign pol­i­cy over the past 30 years has been geared to strength­en­ing its sta­tus as America’s great­est ally.

    Con­cern for human rights and lib­er­ty is at its height when the abus­es hap­pen in Beng­hazi, Alep­po or Homs, but it ebbs to noth­ing when the abuse is clos­er to home or involves US cit­i­zens.

    “It is the high­est moral duty of Ger­many to give asy­lum to Edward Snow­den,” con­cludes Hochhuth’s peti­tion, “[because] we as no oth­er Euro­peans are duty bound in the light of our shame­ful past!”

    Posted by Swamp | July 22, 2013, 5:47 am
  10. http://www.thenation.com/letter/greenwald-conservativelibertarian-mole

    Inter­nal memo Well, what do you know? Maybe there is a San­ta?

    Posted by Dave Emory II | July 23, 2013, 2:32 pm
  11. @“Dave Emory II”–

    This pre­cise let­ter to the “Nation” was includ­ed in the pre­vi­ous post on Green­wald’s pro-Nazi efforts.

    https://spitfirelist.com/news/snowdens-ride-part-6-why-did-glenn-greenwald-represent-neo-nazis-pro-buono/

    On a relat­ed note, your com­ment (which I trashed) about Green­wald being Jew­ish and, there­fore, your con­clu­sion that this was an “Israeli” gam­bit of some kind could be seen as the equiv­a­lent of this:

    Green­wald is also gay. Bradley Man­ning, who being is cham­pi­oned by Green­wald, is also gay.

    So is Peter Thiel, whose Palan­tir firm is almost cer­tain­ly the devel­op­er of the PRISM soft­ware, at the epi­cen­ter of much of this affair. Thiel is also the pri­ma­ry bankroller of the Pro­vo, Utah-based Super PAC of cryp­to-Nazi Ron Paul, who was Eddie the Friend­ly Spook (Snowden)‘s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice.

    Like Green­wald, Thiel also net­works with the Koch Broth­ers-found­ed Cato insti­tute.

    If one were to use the same fal­la­cious thought process–I’m avoid­ing the term “big­ot­ed” here–that you used to con­clude that Green­wald’s Jew­ish back­ground indi­cat­ed an Israeli author­ship of this, one might con­clude that this whole affair was some sort of “gay intel­li­gence oper­a­tion” or con­spir­a­cy.

    Cheers,

    Dave Emory I

    Posted by Dave Emory | July 23, 2013, 6:38 pm
  12. Yet anoth­er sug­ges­tion that Snow­den may go to Ger­many; I sub­mit only the para­graph below which is the most rel­e­vant:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/23/snowden-asylum-america-international-law

    Edward Snow­den’s fear of fly­ing is jus­ti­fied
    Snow­den is a refugee, not a spy. But Amer­i­ca has his­to­ry when it comes to forc­ing down planes in defi­ance of inter­na­tion­al law

    Geof­frey Robert­son
    The Guardian, Tues­day 23 July 2013

    (Excerpt)

    “That, no doubt, is why Snow­den can­celled his tick­et to Cuba a few weeks ago, fear­ing the flight would end in Flori­da. Rus­sia has, in effect, pro­vid­ed him with tem­po­rary asy­lum (there is no legal mag­ic about stay­ing air­side – he is in Rus­sia) so he might be best advised to accept the gag and enjoy Moscow’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty. Until, per­haps, a new gov­ern­ment in Ger­many after its Sep­tem­ber elec­tions offers him a plat­form if he turns up as a refugee, where­upon he could take a tramp steam­er to Ham­burg.”

    Posted by Swamp | July 24, 2013, 9:44 am
  13. Peo­ple change. Some­times too much:

    The Dai­ly Ban­ter
    iPad Hack­er Released From Jail, Par­ties with Glenn Green­wald, Pub­lish­es Neo-Nazi Screeds

    Bob Cesca on Octo­ber 09, 2014

    Way back in 2010, a so-called “white hat” hack­er named Andrew Auern­heimer, known online as “Weev,” exploit­ed a secu­ri­ty loop­hole on Apple’s iPad and acquired the names of 114,000 AT&T cus­tomers who sub­scribed to the iPad 3G data ser­vice. Fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion, Weev, who had “stolen” (his words) the user data was pros­e­cut­ed and con­vict­ed. To his cred­it, Weev informed AT&T of the secu­ri­ty flaw and the com­pa­ny quick­ly but­toned it up. But back in April of this year, Weev’s con­vic­tion was over­turned because he was evi­dent­ly tried in the wrong state (New Jer­sey). He was sub­se­quent­ly released from Pennsylvania’s Allen­wood Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Com­plex on April 11, 2014. The indict­ment remains, but the con­vic­tion no longer stands.

    Dur­ing his time in jail, Weev appar­ent­ly became a neo-Nazi, com­plete with a tat­too not unlike Edward Norton’s tat­too in Amer­i­can His­to­ry X — a giant swasti­ka on his right pec­toral. After his release, he post­ed a series of racist and anti-Semit­ic remarks on a web­site called The Dai­ly Stormer, a white-suprema­cist site not to be con­fused with The Dai­ly Caller, The Dai­ly Beast or The Dai­ly Ban­ter. Via Gawk­er, here are some choice pas­sages:

    I’ve been a long-time crit­ic of Judaism, black cul­ture, immi­gra­tion to West­ern nations, and the media’s con­stant stream of anti-white pro­pa­gan­da. Judge Wigen­ton was as black as they come. The pros­e­cu­tor, Zach Intrater, was a Brook­lyn Jew from an old mon­ey New York fam­i­ly.[...]

    The whole time a yarmulke-cov­ered audi­ence of Jew­ry stared at me from the pews of the court­room. My pros­e­cu­tor invit­ed his whole syn­a­gogue to spec­tate.[...]

    They took con­trol of our sys­tems of finance and law. They hyper­in­flat­ed our cur­ren­cy. They cor­rupt­ed our daugh­ters and demand­ed they sub­ject them­selves to sex work to feed their fam­i­lies. These are a peo­ple that have made them­selves a prob­lem in every nation they occu­py, includ­ing ours. What’s sad­dest is that we are the enablers of this prob­lem. The Jews abused our com­pas­sion to build an empire of wicked­ness the likes the world has nev­er seen.

    No gray area there. Weev clear­ly hates Jews, African-Amer­i­cans and any­one he per­ceives as “anti-white.”

    Oh, and in addi­tion to his con­ver­sion to the neo-Nazi cause as well as his seem­ing­ly pro­lif­ic online hate speech, Weev attend­ed a par­ty in New York soon after get­ting out of jail. The par­ty was held by none oth­er than Glenn Green­wald and Lau­ra Poitras to coin­cide with the cer­e­mo­ny in which the duo received the Polk Award for their report­ing on Edward Snow­den and the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency.

    Unless he crashed the par­ty, he was obvi­ous­ly an invit­ed guest. But for a moment let’s assume Green­wald didn’t know Weev was invit­ed. Long before the par­ty, Green­wald had pre­vi­ous­ly defend­ed Weev in The Guardian back in March, 2013, months before the author/reporter rose to inter­na­tion­al acclaim. Indeed, Green­wald named Weev as a “hack­tivist” who was being wrong­ful­ly per­se­cut­ed by U.S. author­i­ties.

    Just this week alone, a US fed­er­al judge sen­tenced hac­tivist Andrew “Weev” Auern­heimer to 3 1/2 years in prison for exploit­ing a flaw in AT&T’s secu­ri­ty sys­tem that allowed him entrance with­out any hack­ing, an act about which Slate’s Justin Peters wrote: “it’s not clear that Auern­heimer com­mit­ted any actu­al crime”, while Jeff Blag­don at the Verge added: “he cracked no codes, stole no pass­words, or in any way ‘broke into’ AT&T’s cus­tomer data­base – some­thing com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­firmed dur­ing tes­ti­mo­ny.” But he had a long record of dis­rup­tive and some­times even quite ugly (though legal) online antag­o­nism, so he had to be severe­ly pun­ished with years in prison.

    For a moment, let’s set aside the whole neo-Nazi thing. Let’s also not re-lit­i­gate the past in which Green­wald, dur­ing his law-prac­tice days, defend­ed a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent neo-Nazi. The fact that Green­wald con­tin­ues to blur the line between hack­ing and activism is utter­ly baf­fling. The man­ner in which he ratio­nal­ized Weev’s actions is a gross illus­tra­tion of gra­tu­itous spin and dan­ger­ous over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion.

    ...

    Fur­ther baf­fling is the idea that hack­ers like Weev are some­how treat­ed like free speech mar­tyrs, yet tele­vi­sion hosts like Bill Maher and author Sam Har­ris are exco­ri­at­ed by Green­wald and his pub­li­ca­tion, The Inter­cept, as racists and big­ots mere­ly because they cit­ed empir­i­cal evi­dence crit­i­cal of Islam — a far, far cry from Weev’s unapolo­getic Nazism.

    Why is the swasti­ka-adorned Weev, who Green­wald hailed as a per­se­cut­ed “hack­tivist,” not sim­i­lar­ly ripped to shreds for lit­er­al­ly being a Nazi who said Jews “made them­selves a prob­lem in every nation they occu­py, includ­ing ours”? It’s near­ly impos­si­ble to imag­ine a rea­son­able expla­na­tion for this glar­ing incon­sis­ten­cy. Sim­ply put: Green­wald and his self-right­eous dis­ci­ples want it both ways. But either free expres­sion, how­ev­er unpop­u­lar, is wor­thy of defend­ing or it’s not.

    The ques­tion over whether or not Wee­v’s 10 year sen­tence was appro­pri­ate giv­en the nature of the crime is an inter­est­ing top­ic wor­thy of debate giv­en his deci­sion to take the stolen infor­ma­tion to Gawk­er. Anoth­er relat­ed top­ic wor­thy of debate is the role going to prison may have played in his deci­sion to turn into a Nazi and get a giant swasti­ka tat­tooed on his chest, although it may not be a very inter­est­ing debate since Weev kind of sound­ed like a Nazi before he was sent there:

    The Guardian
    Secu­ri­ty alert: notes from the front­line of the war in cyber­space
    The bat­tle for con­trol of cyber­space is turn­ing nasty, with young hack­ers, pirates and activists fac­ing long prison sen­tences. We report from the front­line

    Jon Ron­son
    Fri­day 3 May 2013

    A short, hand­some man bounces out­side the colos­sal cour­t­house on Wal­nut Street, Newark, New Jer­sey. He’s doing it to keep warm – it is freez­ing today – and also because he’s fired up. His name is Andrew Auern­heimer, but he’s known across the inter­net as “weev”. His 20 or so friends are young and pale, as if they spend too much time indoors. One, a good-look­ing woman, starts cry­ing.

    “I’ll miss you, dar­ling,” he says, hug­ging her. “Don’t cry on me now. It’s all right.”

    Today is Andrew’s sen­tenc­ing. He has about an hour of free­dom left. “Let’s read some Keats,” he announces. He opens his tablet: “ ‘Poets and fanat­ics will be known…’ ” Ten min­utes lat­er: “I’m going inside. Let’s roll.”

    Now we’re in the ele­va­tor. I hear his girl­friend say, “As Bill Hicks said, ‘Hitler had the right idea. He was just an under­achiev­er.’ ” Then she adds, “I’m being face­tious. You should not kill any­one.”

    ...

    After his death, I became aware of lots of oth­er Aaron Swartzes out there – hack­ers and pirates and activists fac­ing prison for their ide­ol­o­gy of inter­net free­dom. It felt like a con­cert­ed world­wide pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al effort to sub­due a move­ment. So I began approach­ing them. I decid­ed to con­tact only those peo­ple fac­ing immi­nent impris­on­ment or tri­al. What in their lives had led them to that moment? How were they deal­ing with it?

    Some of them ignored me. I sup­pose if I were fac­ing prison, para­noid that pros­e­cu­tors would be scru­ti­n­is­ing my every care­less word, I’d have ignored me, too. But Andrew Auern­heimer emailed me back right away.

    Now he stands up. Judge Wigen­ton asks him if he has any­thing to say. “I did­n’t come here today to ask for for­give­ness,” he begins. “The court should be mak­ing amends to me for the harm and the vio­lence inflict­ed on my life. Many gov­ern­ments that have tried to restrict the free­dom of the inter­net have end­ed up top­pled.”

    Sev­en­teen days ear­li­er. I’m eat­ing lunch with Andrew. He’s telling me a sto­ry. “I had a friend,” he’s yelling. “He was one of the most bril­liant engi­neers I knew. He stepped into an alley and got beat­en up by four black dudes. He got brain dam­age. This guy, who was shrewd and bril­liant, is not going to be shrewd and bril­liant any more. I under­stood then that I would be total­ly OK with 100,000 peo­ple dying to pre­serve my one friend who was bril­liant.”

    Con­sid­er­ing Andrew’s bleak future, I thought I’d take him some­where fan­cy for lunch while I inter­viewed him. So I chose the ele­gant, wood-pan­elled Cafe Sabarsky on Man­hat­tan’s Upper East Side. I have come to regret this deci­sion because of his propen­si­ty to say incred­i­bly offen­sive things in a very loud voice. Fel­low din­ers are glanc­ing at us.

    “Wow,” I whis­per. “You’d be fine to let 100,000 peo­ple die to pre­serve one espe­cial­ly clever per­son?” I’m talk­ing in a point­ed­ly qui­et way in the hope that he gets the mes­sage and adapts his voice accord­ing­ly. “Where does that come from?” I whis­per. “It’s com­plete­ly irra­tional.”

    “It’s not com­plete­ly irra­tional!” he shouts. “Soci­ety is dri­ven for­ward by a very small num­ber of inno­va­tors. I don’t care about peo­ple who have noth­ing but con­tempt for inno­va­tors. I have no sym­pa­thy any more for the dregs of soci­ety. I don’t care if they live or die.”

    Andrew Auern­heimer was born in the Ozark Moun­tains of Arkansas in 1985. He grew up in a “crap­py house in rur­al Mis­souri”, hence, he says, his san­guine atti­tude towards prison. “Aaron was this wide-eyed, naive, lib­er­al kid,” he says. “I think that’s why it hit him so hard. He thought he was from a spe­cial class of peo­ple that this just does­n’t hap­pen to. I’ve always known the gov­ern­ment is out to get peo­ple like me. I’m poor and white and dis­af­fect­ed.”

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 10, 2014, 11:11 am

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