> 1. NSA was authorized to collect metadata by the Bush administration
> shortly after 9/11 and this was going on uninterrupted with the full
> knowledge of the so-called "elected representatives" for some 12 years;
> public reaction: virtually none;
The full knowledge of people in power, yes. But perhaps public reaction was muted by the fact that the public wasn't kept in the loop?
[…]
> 5. During a fierce campaign of the Republican Party and their business
> paymasters to sabotage every initiative of the Obama administration, a
> libertarian schmuck in the employ of a private government contractor
> "reveals" - surprise surprise - that NSA is collecting metadata on
> telephone conversations, a fact that has been known to the so-called
> "elected representatives" for years (per item #1 above) ; public reaction:
> scandal! mayhem! bloody murder! off with their heads! rah, rah, rah
Perhaps this is why the public was never told. fear of such a reaction.
> I cannot help but see some not so invisible hand behind these "public
> reactions" orchestrated by the corporate media.
Perhaps, or perhaps the public was misled as to the relative importance of the disclosures by the fact the US government (over)reacted to the trivial disclosure. You can see how the public and perhaps even the corporate media might have got the wrong end of the stick, surely? When the US government starts hysterically reacting to the disclosures as if they actually mattered, as if it wasn't stuff everyone already knew all about? Desperately pulling strings to try to capture the fugitive whistleblower who did the deed, shrieking about it being "treason" to disclose stuff which you point out everyone (everyone who matters, anyhow) already knew.
You can see that, even if you are correct that the disclosures are of no importance, the more simple explanation for all the fuss, is that the government is making a fuss. Us plebs are just taking our cue from our leaders. Not a right-wing corporate conspiracy, rather a hysterical over-reaction by a right-wing government that thinks it has a right to a monopoly on disclosure of information and even thinks it is entitled to torture and persecute whistle-blowers (like Bradley Manning). Let's not forget the hijacking of a plane carrying the President of a South American republic, merely on the faint suspicion that he might have been trying to aid in the escape of the whistle-blower.
That then would be the real story here, the bizarre hysteria of the Obama administration. Making him a laughing stock around the world. if your premise about the disclosures being trivia is right. Or else a dangerous tyrant spying on the population of the whole world, if your interpretation of what this is about is not correct.
Either way, its a bad look.
Bill BartlettBracknell Tas