On Sunday June 23rd NBC’s Meet the Press’s David Gregory interviewed Glenn Greenwald, an exchange followed by the usual “balancing” act of presenting critics and accusers of Ed Snowden (and Greenwald himself). The latter, as is also usual, easily outnumbered Greenwald’s sole voice of truth and reason, but that’s par for the course on corporate media “news programs.”
The panel of establishment politicos and high national security officials included Mike Rogers (R), who chairs a Congressional security committee and Dick Durbin (D-IL), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Loretta Sanchez (D-CA/Homeland Security Committee), billed by some as a serious critic of the NSA program. As the footage shows, this proved to be grossly misplaced trust and a delusion. As befits a card-carrying Democrat, she promptly caved in, reaffirming her “patriotism” by pronouncing Ed Snowden a criminal.
We all understand that technically Snowden broke the law, and that any Congress critter that should profess sympathy for Snowden would be torn apart by the rest of the hyenas, BUT… the law, Sanchez should have said, reflects only the official game rules of the class forces in power. And that although the law may be “moral” at times, in many cases isn’t. Thus an impeccable state of law may be wholly immoral and criminal. That was the case with Nazi Germany, a state which prided itself upon the logical perfection of its laws but which implemented unadulterated evil on a monstrous scale, with the support of the majority of its population. Something similar may be said for the American South (and the entire US, for that matter) during the ante bellum, as slavery was accepted and endorsed throughout the nation, and many states prosecuted those who offered aid and comfort to runaway slaves (“stolen property”).
Incidentally, at one point the chastised Gregory (Greenwald has a mordant tongue), seeking to disturb Greenwald’s aplomb, threw him a curve that came pretty close to baiting: WHY SHOULDN’T YOU BE CHARGED FOR AIDING EDWARD SNOWDON?
The transcript follows on P2.—Patrice Greanville
I find myself unable to read articles pertaining to information provided by glenn greenwald, as visions of crush videos come to mind. So as he so ardently claims to protect free speech, the nature of the speech he is protecting in highly questionable, as he praised the legalization of crush videos by the recent supreme court decision.