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subsequent invasion of Iraq could be accurately called genocide. We talked about how the CIA knew—and was preparing for the fact—that the world was heading to a place of not just inter -country war but of intra -country war in which mass surveillance would be necessary to control populations. And about how armies were being turned into police forces to administer countries they have invaded and occupied, while the police, even in places like India and Pakistan and Ferguson, Missouri, in the United States, were being trained to behave like armies to quell internal insurrections.
    Ed spoke at some length about “sleepwalking into a total surveillance state.” And here I quote him, because he’s said this often before:
    If we do nothing, we sort of sleepwalk into a total surveillance state where we have both a super-state that has unlimited capacity to apply force with an unlimited ability to know [about the people it is targeting]—and that’s a very dangerous combination. That’s the dark future. The fact that they know everything about us and we know nothing about them—because they are secret, they are privileged, and they are a separate class . . . the elite class, the political class, the resource class—we don’t know where they live, we don’t know what they do, we don’t know who their friends are. They have the ability to know all that about us. This is the direction of the future, but I think there are changing possibilities in this . . .
    I asked Ed whether the NSA was just feigning annoyance at his revelations but might actually be secretly pleased at being known as the All Seeing, All Knowing Agency—because that would help to keep people fearful, off balance, always looking over their shoulders, and easy to manage.
    Dan spoke about how even in the United States, a police state was only another 9/11 away: “We are not in a police state now, not yet. I’m talking about what may come. I realize I shouldn’t put it that way . . . White, middle-class, educated people like myself are not living in a police state . . . Black, poor people are living in a police state. The repression starts with the semi-white, the Middle Easterners, including anybody who is allied with them, and goes on from there . . . We don’t have a police state. One more 9/11, and then I believe we will have hundreds of thousands of detentions. Middle Easterners and Muslims will be put in detention camps or deported. After 9/11, we had thousands of people arrested without charges . . . But I’m talking about the future. I’m talking the level of the Japanese in World War II . . . I’m talking of hundreds of thousands in camps or deported. I think the surveillance is very relevant to that. They will know who to put away—the data is already collected.” (When he said this, I did wonder, though I did not ask—how different would things have been if Snowden had not been white?)
    We talked about war and greed, about terrorism, and what an accurate definition of it would be. We spoke about countries, flags, and the meaning of patriotism. We talked about public opinion and the concept of public morality and how fickle it could be, and how easily manipulated.
    It wasn’t a Q&A type of conversation. We were an incongruous gathering. Ole, myself, and three troublesome Americans. John Cusack, who thought up and organized this whole disruptive enterprise, comes from a fine tradition, too—of musicians, writers, actors, athletes who have refused to buy the bullshit, however beautifully it was packaged.
    What will become of Edward Snowden? Will he ever be able to return to the United States? His chances don’t look good. The US government—the Deep State, as well as both the major political parties—wants to punish him for the enormous damage he has inflicted, in their perception, on the security establishment. (It’s got Chelsea Manning and