Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Señor Assange, teléfono, la línea dos,” the intercom chirped in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

“Gracias amigo,” Assange replied. “¿Quién es?”

“Un hombre de Rusia.” Russia? Who on Earth…no bloody way. Assange got excited. He picked up line two.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Assange…do you know who this is?” It was Edward Snowden, but Assange could tell it was best not to mention that on the phone.

“I do. Thanks for contacting me. How are you fairing?”

“I’m a little depressed about how difficult life can be, but I’m trusting it’ll get better. You?”

Assange grinned. “Same old, same old…reading…writing…lecturing via satellite from this humble abode. My hosts are still gracious, thank God.”

“Good, mine too.” It was phenomenal to hear from Snowden. Assange had never spoken with him before, and during his purgatory in the Moscow airport, there was plenty of interference run by those against him from contacting WikiLeaks for protection. Luckily, Amnesty International had gotten to him first bringing more press with them. “I was hoping we could talk.”

“By all means,” replied Assange. “Tell me something good.”

“During my tenure at Big Brother, I saw, read and heard mostly tame stuff. The overwhelming majority of people were just people, and that rule extended across international boundaries. I would estimate 99% of all info I perused was simple, bill of rights material…”

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?” asked Assange.

“Exactly,” Snowden continued, “very little illegal business and no terrorist activity…until, I began monitoring some of the larger players, Monsanto, Dow Chemicals, GE, big oil, big banks, the government, and especially our military. Suddenly, it was like opening the door to a perverted version of reality. Not only were they often conspiring in illegal behavior, it appeared to be the norm. Suppressing information from the public, bribery, confidence scams, eliminating competition and even murder was commonplace. It was as if they considered themselves immune to any kind of accountability so long as they worked together in secret.”

Assange empathized. “I’m only too aware.”

“When I was younger, I heard a song called ‘Power Corrupts’ by some folk singer named Rob Getzschman. I laughed at his generalizing, what a naïve dude! He clearly didn’t know how America worked. We’re the good guys! My family was a perfect example. We always obeyed the rules, we always stayed the course, and we were always rewarded for doing the right thing, military or otherwise. All the families I was raised around held this same ethic of American exceptionalism, and I was rigid in my agreement…but then working for Big Brother showed me what happens behind the curtain, and my world was split in two: the 99% who just want to live their lives and the 1% who want to control them, at whatever the cost.”

“Well, ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely,’” quoted Assange. “Lord Acton was a lord after all, and 1887 was a banner year for the Bank of England considering the Rothschild’s joined forces with the DeBeers diamond mines of South Africa then...”

“I don’t want any part of it,” Snowden cut him off. “The glimpse I had was Earth shattering, and I will not play their game. It’s not stable, and their culture of lying knows no bounds. They will protect their lifestyles by any means necessary. It goes against humanity…it goes against nature.”

Assange felt for Snowden. He was clearly still in the middle of a breakdown, but at least he was coping.

“Do you know what nature does to forests?” asked Snowden.

“Tell me,” Assange urged.

“Plants compete for sunlight, and eventually you get a handful of massive trees that dominate the landscape. Life still adapts beneath them, and while less is able to grow, what does survive gets protection from the trees. It’s like a trade-off. This goes on for hundreds of years, sometimes thousands…until the tree dies. Then it falls and destroys much of the life beneath it, but even then, the sun shines where it couldn’t before and creates new life, and the process starts all over.” Snowden paused, breathing fast.

“Go on.”

“Our leaders have spent their load. The tree is dead, but instead of letting it fall, they’re propping it up with 2x4s called ‘quantitative easing’ and chains called ‘strategies of tension,’ and balloons called ‘drones.’ They’re hoping against hope that they can keep this tree from falling…they’re hiding the condition of the tree…they’re keeping the public from seeing it, and anyone who tells the People, ‘hey, that tree is dead!’ is silenced by threats, defamation or even death.”

Assange stared the floor. “So what’s the answer?”

“The only way the People can evolve is if they know the tree is dead.” Snowden paused again. “I have some leaks for you.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The Snowden story had the president riveted. Sure, on the outside he was terse and agitated, and his statements resembled his stance on Bradley Manning, but inside…the sleeper was awakening. Stay alive son. Get somewhere safe and stay alive.

When Snowden reached Russia for political asylum (oh, the irony) protocol was to cancel the G-20 summit meeting with President Putin after he refused to cooperate with US authorities on Snowden’s extradition. Vlad “the dad” was protecting a kid with unrestricted access to the US intelligence honeycomb, very precarious to American interests. The CIA enlisted Snowden’s real father to facilitate some form of pressure (basically emotional blackmail) on the young whistleblower. So far, nothing had worked, and the media portrayed Russia as an enemy once again.

The president set up another meeting with Putin, but this time, he had an ace up his sleeve. Before their official press gathering that would be subject to body language experts and general speculation, Air Force One made an unofficial stop in the Russian countryside for an actual discussion away from the media frenzy.

“Are you sure you want to do this Mr. President?” asked SS#1. “We’re practically naked out here in the middle of the Soviet Union.”

The President smiled, “It’s called Russia now hoss, you better catch up on modern geography. Seriously though, I don’t believe Mr. Putin wants to start WWIII…or IV or whatever it is we’re up to now.”

“The Cold war was III, the current Information war is IV, and I'm not worried about Putin as much as his dissent out here in the wild east.” SS#1 wore no smile. “The Cossacks didn’t just disappear, you know.”

“Well, I’m willing to trust my man Vlad with that. He’s been around awhile, and he understands the virtues of more options.” The sound of aircraft resonated through their feet. On the horizon, three massive helicopters appeared moving slowly toward them.

SS#1 checked his mic: “All right guys, the golden goose is a sitting duck on the pond, so be on high alert and ready for immediate evac.” The helicopters touched down a thousand feet from them. Several troops formed a double line from the center chopper. Putin marched out.

The secret service formed an arc behind the President. “Hold your position boys. All eyes on the goose. Be prepared for anything.”

The President walked forward with his interpreter, as did Putin with his. WOW, thought the president, it’s go-time. They shook hands and met each other’s gaze, neither looking away. After some quick introductions, and an understanding that the interpreters would help guide the conversation with accurate translations (as objective as possible) by double checking each other, the President opened up first.

“Mr. Putin, I’m in a bit of a bind with the current US government. The status quo has me nailed down for it’s agenda, but I’m doing my best to work with them. The Republicans are running me around with their obstruction, but I’m letting them for now. The American people are fed up and subject to propaganda of all kinds, but I’m trying to fight for them too. All in all, it’s a lot of work, but I’m learning.” The Russian translator spoke in Putin’s ear, while the other nodded along, listening for inaccuracies of any kind.

He continued, “I’m gonna shoot you straight.” The Russian translator paused, unsure of what to say. “Whoops,” the president’s translator quickly filtered his metaphor. “Sorry about that. I mean to say, I know your leaders have been lied to by our leaders many times in the past, but I’m here to level with you. I’d like to work with you in a way that helps both of us and our countries.”

Putin uttered one word. The president’s translator asked, “how?”

“I’m going to suggest war with Syria using their chemical weapons cache and crimes against their own people as precedent.” Both translator’s eyes widened. The translation continued.

“I will then attempt to enlist my government and any in Europe that want in on the action so we can go in there and take out a corrupt regime.”

Putin’s poker face showed nothing, but he listened.

“My strategy is this: if I clang the bells of war, I’ll be pre-empting all of the war mongers in congress, most of whom don’t like me. This will force them to choose to support me and go against their party policy or fight me and look like hypocrites. Likewise, the American people will be equally divided, but all-in-all, those in favor of war will be far less, and those against war will make a mighty noise. Furthermore, my own soldiers will come ‘out of the closet’ with a massive opposition to any more war in the middle east. The only people in favor of this kind of action will be the status quo, so it’ll look like I’m aiding and abetting their agenda, but that in itself will expose them to the public…and then here’s where you come in.”

Putin smirked.

“I want you go on record that we should not go to war, but open up talks with the Syrians to avoid any more bloodshed. Why? Your history of human rights violations will be forgiven by many, my people will realize how much they have in common with you and your people, my government will be caught in the middle trying to figure out whom to support without pissing off their task masters and the Syrian government will have to work with both of us to avoid being ousted from power. But most importantly: I will ‘agree’ with you, and the fear of war will be subverted by an agreement to work together for peace instead of violence.”

As the translator continued, Putin’s smirk faded.

“The press will call me a hypocrite, a liar, a puppet. They will say you ‘owned’ me or I caved, but in the end, there will be no war, and you will ‘help’ me achieve it.” The president paused. “I offer this plan with the utmost respect for you, your people and the rest of the world, in hopes that we can all get along and stopped being sidetracked by the corporate interests who profit from war. I’d really like to see this happen in my lifetime. Does this sound interesting to you?”

When the translator finished, Putin took a big breath and exhaled through clenched teeth. “Da.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

NSA WHISTLEBLOWER ALERT!!!
Edward Snowden is a 29-year-old who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton as an infrastructure analyst for NSA in Hawaii. He was also a systems engineer, systems administrator, senior adviser for the Central Intelligence Agency, solutions consultant, and a telecommunications informations system officer.

Snowden:
“When you're in positions of privileged access like a systems administrator for the sort of intelligence community agencies, you're exposed to a lot more information on a broader scale then the average employee and because of that you see things that may be disturbing but over the course of a normal person's career you'd only see one or two of these instances. When you see everything you see them on a more frequent basis and you recognize that some of these things are actually abuses. And when you talk to people about them in a place like this where this is the normal state of business people tend not to take them very seriously and move on from them.

“But over time that awareness of wrongdoing sort of builds up and you feel compelled to talk about. And the more you talk about the more you're ignored. The more you're told its not a problem until eventually you realize that these things need to be determined by the public and not by somebody who was simply hired by the government.

“NSA and intelligence community in general is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can by any means possible. It believes, on the grounds of sort of a self-certification, that they serve the national interest. Originally we saw that focus very narrowly tailored as foreign intelligence gathered overseas.

“Now increasingly we see that it's happening domestically and to do that they, the NSA specifically, targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyses them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that's the easiest, most efficient, and most valuable way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government or someone they suspect of terrorism, they're collecting you're communications to do so.

“Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector, anywhere…I sitting at my desk certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a Federal judge to even the President.

“I think that the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model. When you are subverting the power of government that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy and if you do that in secret consistently as the government does when it wants to benefit from a secret action that it took. It'll kind of give its officials a mandate to go, 'Hey tell the press about this thing and that thing so the public is on our side.' But they rarely, if ever, do that when an abuse occurs. That falls to individual citizens but they're typically maligned. It becomes a thing of 'These people are against the country. They're against the government' but I'm not.

“I'm no different from anybody else. I don't have special skills. I'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what's happening and goes, 'This is something that's not our place to decide, the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.' And I'm willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity of them and say, 'I didn't change these, I didn't modify the story. This is the truth; this is what's happening. You should decide whether we need to be doing this.'

“If I had just wanted to harm the US, [I] could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon. But that's not my intention. I think for anyone making that argument they need to think, if they were in my position and you live a privileged life, you're living in Hawaii, in paradise, and making a ton of money, 'What would it take you to leave everything behind?'

“The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. People will see in the media all of these disclosures. They'll know the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society. But they won't be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests."

“And the months ahead, the years ahead it's only going to get worse until eventually there will be a time where policies will change because the only thing that restricts the activities of the surveillance state are policy. Even our agreements with other sovereign governments, we consider that to be a stipulation of policy rather then a stipulation of law. And because of that a new leader will be elected, they'll find the switch, say that 'Because of the crisis, because of the dangers we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power.'

“And there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it.

“And it will be turnkey tyranny.”

How does the Military Sell a War to a President?

If We, the People allow it, Syria will be the military's first "drone only" war. Our soldiers will experiment with murdering Syrians like they were playing CALL OF DUTY. They are selling it to Obama with lines like this:



1. Least amount of American casualties within war theatre EVER.

2. Little to no destruction of foreign investments or collateral murder.

3. Less cost to taxpayer than previous actions.

4. We'll get it right this time, we've had plenty of practice.

5. YOU will be the president remembered as cutting edge WINNING.



Warriors are gonna make war, and the president who doesn't help them earn their paycheck has...problems. What other ways could Obama get the military a paycheck without killing?