{"id":23443,"date":"2014-05-02T17:01:45","date_gmt":"2014-05-03T01:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=23443"},"modified":"2014-05-02T17:01:45","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T01:01:45","slug":"the-munk-debate-worlds-in-collision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/02\/the-munk-debate-worlds-in-collision\/","title":{"rendered":"The Munk Debate: Worlds in Collision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The much-touted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.munkdebates.com\/\">debate<\/a> on NSA spying sponsored by Canada\u2019s Aurea Foundation between Michael Hayden and Alan Dershowitz on one side and Glenn Greenwald and Alexis Ohanian had few surprises &#8212; except for the surprise appearance of Edward Snowden in a video made for the occasion. In it, Snowden explains the power and scope of the National Security Agency: Hayden and Dershowitz spent the rest of the hour and a half or so denying that the pervasive surveillance described by Snowden and Greenwald even exists.<\/p>\n<p>It was a case of worlds in collision \u2013 the truth presented by Greenwald\/Ohanian and the outright lies of Hayden and Dershowitz. The latter never laid a glove on Greenwald, in spite of their tortured attempts to do so, while Glenn got Hayden good when he attributed Hayden\u2019s contention that we might have stopped the 9\/11 attacks if the NSA had its programs in place at the time: Hayden, Glenn averred, was merely covering up his own ineptitude on 9\/11, when he was in charge at Ft. Meade. If a cartoonish \u201cKa-POW!\u201d appeared over Hayden\u2019s head at that point I wouldn\u2019t have been surprised. Another Haydenism: \u201c\u2019Collect is all\u2019 doesn\u2019t mean collect it all!\u201d That provoked a few startled laughs.<\/p>\n<p>The debate cannot even be called a debate because the two sides simply were not talking about the same subject. Hayden-Dershowitz refused to discuss the actually existing NSA spying programs. Dershowitz, instead, insisted on taking what he called a \u201cmiddle position,\u201d which would involve \u201csome rights violations\u201d in the name of the \u201cgreater good.\u201d Hayden, for his part, completely denied that the NSA\u2019s surveillance system was violating anyone\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTrust me,\u201d said Hayden \u2013 and the audience laughed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The much-touted debate on NSA spying sponsored by Canada\u2019s Aurea Foundation between Michael Hayden and Alan Dershowitz on one side and Glenn Greenwald and Alexis Ohanian had few surprises &#8212; except for the surprise appearance of Edward Snowden in a video made for the occasion. In it, Snowden explains the power and scope of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-23443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23444,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23443\/revisions\/23444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23443"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}