No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the U.S. Surveillance State, Glenn Greenwald. New York: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc., 2014. e-book, 205 pps.


     I knew immediately upon hearing about what Ed Snowden did that he was destined to be one of my forever-heroes. Regardless of the supposed "legality" or "illegality" of his actions, he knew that we the American peoples needed to know what the N.S.A. was doing to us the American peoples as well as to everyone else all over the world. That an agency, with the approval of the rubber stamping FISA kangaroo court, could and would collect all kinds of metadata on everyone who breathes and then build a giant set of buildings to store the metadata in Utah [of all places! uh, hello National Guard I guess. I've heard that Utah is the top recruiting state for the National Guard. And it follows that Utah would provide National Guards to guard our metadata from our own selves. Bully for Utah I guess.]. So the N.S.A. wants to collect it all in the name of yet another failed ideological "war"--on terrorism this time.

     It is pathetic that there is so much overt apathy surrounding these sorts of things. The United States has been referred to as a surveillance state. I myself have called my beloved country of unloved crooked politicians and un-social justice a Spy Nation. Obummer-- I mean Obama-- no, I really do mean Obummer has gone after whistle-blowers with a vengeance. That factoid, along with some others, has helped to render him as a tool in my unasked for and perhaps unwanted opinion.

     I will pause to assure you that Glenn Greenwald-- regardless of what you may think about him or his personality personally-- has done a bang-up job in his latest book No Place to Hide. For one thing, he writes better than I do. For another, he was there. He was a part of the Ed Snowden Security "Crisis." Suppose the N.S.A. got away with what it was doing to all of us and none of us knew about it-- would it still be morally reprehensible then???

sapphoq reviews says: Hey if someone writes a book for profit, then yeah he or she should financially profit from it. I don't have a problem with that. My fear is that the end result of No Place to Hide is that folks will slip back into their various states of apathy and nothing much will change. But it does not have to be that way.
     Ed Snowden uprooted his whole life in order to deliver information to citizens of the world about what the N.S.A. and other shadowy agencies are doing to us. That really is the bottom line. Meanwhile, if there is anyone who is in direct contact with Ed Snowden, please tell him not to come back here. Promises-- especially those made by politicians and others who do not have your best interest at heart-- are for the breaking. So bro, stay in Russia or move to some other country if you feel you want to. But whatever you do, don't come back here. Sure the drones and the abilities of at least one of the U.S.A. heavy-hitting agency agents extend throughout the world and I suspect are capable of making you disappear or die. At least let them work at it a bit instead of coming back here and becoming an easier target.
     The book-- get it. Read it. Ponder it. Do some research. Then decide what if anything you are going to do. Because surely, the desire of the N.S.A. to "collect it all" ought to be at cross-purposes with our own desire to remain people with some degree of privacy.
Highly recommended.

The Faith Healers by James Randi

The Faith-Healers, James Randi.   Buffalo N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1987 and Falls Church Va.: James Randi Educational Foundation, 2011.  e-book, 687 pps.

http://www.randi.org/site/

http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesRandiFoundation

https://twitter.com/jref 


At one time, it was my endeavor to become a professional "healer" for Christ like Kathryn Kuhlman.  I thought I had the healing touch.  But nothing much ever happened there.  I even wanted to attend a local Christian Bible College.  Thankfully, Dad had more sense than I did.  This did not happen.

I wanted to be an evangelist/healer and give altar calls to crowded auditoriums and canvas tents of the faithful and wannabe faithful.  I also wanted to be a Christian Educator.  I even briefly flirted with the idea of becoming a missionary, although by that time I had adopted a dim view of what invading white people with crosses did to indigenous cultures.  My flirtation with fundamentalism was pretty near done by time I hear a preacher instruct us to "Place your hands on the radio and feel the Holy Ghost through the airwaves!"  Fortunately, I was not a person of means and I never gave any bisexual bucks to the bandits on religious television.

My aunt did though.  Aunt had multiple sclerosis and was expecting a miracle today a la Morris Cerullo but she received only the ultimate healing that death brings.  The price of false hope is expensive.


While reading The Faith-Healers, I was reminded of my youthful follies.  James Randi did his utmost to get the faith-healers in his book to produce evidence that their God heals.  None of it was forthcoming.  The evangelists were evasive, refused to correspond, accused Randi of being a Satan-worshipper, claimed that anecdotes of the so-called healed were sufficient, and so forth.  His conclusion was that the faith-healers were [and are] living a rich life off of the backs of the desperate.  Some of the desperate died.  Those who threw away their insulin needles and body braces and heart medications at the rallies and revivals and healing services died of the same conditions that they'd been told were removed.  Two or three dropped dead during the services themselves.  Awkward at best. 

The faith-healers claim to have the Gift of Knowledge.  That supposed gift enables them to "call out" people who need healing.  Before the event begins, wives and staffers and sometimes the evangelist himself walks through the audience and talks to them.  Information is then transmitted via radio frequencies and crib notes and healing cards.  There is nothing extraordinary about how a shill calls out people.  It's on the cards or the cheat sheet or being transmitted via a specially fitted receiver in the ear of the preacher.  There is no glory in that.  None at all.

sapphoq reviews says:  I watched a television program once on Peter Popoff and his techniques that he was using to deceive the people.  It was a horrifying bit of investigative journalism.  The Faith-Healers is broader in scope and even more horrifying.  Highly recommended.