I do not have an unquestioned respect for Edwared Snowden or those other guys who swore an oath of secrecy in service of their government and then stole piles of secrets and gave them away. I’m also not especially impressed with the uncritical crush so many people have on them for doing what they did. We’ve discussed this before in relation to State Department cables. While so many others seemed to assume that all State Department cables were evil secrets that must see the light of day, I was thinking of a number of probable State Department cables that I have reason to believe might exist that had no reason to see the light of day but where their publication would be damaging. I gave specific, meaningful examples, and these criticisms never addressed directly by anyone. All I got were stern looks, or worse, because I was not in the Cult of Wikileaks.

The following is a bit more nuanced for many people to get, so if you are already really mad at me for what I just said just stop reading and leave the room. OK, thanks, bye.

I do not like Big Brother and I object to many of the activities that the government probably engages in. If some of those activities are revealed because of Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden’s actions, and something positive is done about that, then I’ll be very glad. I’ll be very glad for Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, and Edward Snowden.

Yes, I can hold those two seemingly different thoughts and feelings at the same time.

Having said both of those things, I’m feeling good that I never jumped on the bandwagon, treating Edward Snowden like he was some sexy speaker at a skeptical convention I just met in a bar who has slipped me a Mickey. If, that is, and I’m having a hard time believing that this is the case but it may well be, the following report from Voice of Russia is true:

Edward Snowden predicts catastrophic and ‘inevitable solar tsunami’

Edward Snowden, a former CIA agent, has predicted that series of solar flares is set to occur in September of 2013, killing hundreds of millions of people.

The documents collected by Snowden offer proof that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) learned about the existing threat 14 years ago.

Ever since the world’s governments have been working secretly …, to be well prepared for what could be termed as “Solar Apocalypse”.

…Snowden said that the government has been working hard to be well prepared for September’s catastrophic solar flares, which can be fraught with fatal consequences, as scientists said – they can lead to the death of mankind.

The Central Intelligence Agency learned about the existing threat as long ago as 1999, but according to the government’s decision, this information was immediately made secret.

The documents collected by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said how terrible the solar flares’ results will be: two months will be needed for mankind to become non-existent.

…

Snowden said FEMA and the National Disaster Reduction Center of China have been taking steps for 14 years in light of the findings of Project Stargate.

FEMA’s own documents, provided by Snowden, lay out how the organization plans to round up tens of millions of the poorest Americans for housing at secure locations “to better facilitate feeding and provision of consumer goods.”

“…‘the killshot’ will shutter most of the world’s electrical systems,” said Snowden.

…

WAIT WAIT IT’S A FAKE … I interrupt this blog post to report that two guys on the internet have proven that this story is a FAKE. Here is what they say, quoted at MSN:

“The Internet is ablaze with yet another baseless conspiracy theory that only serves to distract from real cover-ups and issues of genuine significance — the hoax that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden recently warned of a ‘solar flare killshot’ set to wipe out hundreds of millions of people in September,” Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars and PrisonPlanet.com complains in an article outlining why it’s a hoax.

He pointed out, for example, that readers readily would figure out it was fictitious if they went to Internet Chronicle’s “about” section, which states the web site “is not of this earth.

Of course, I got the story from the Voice of Russia web site, not some fake web site. That, itself, is an interesting story.

This being a fake or not is really hardly the point. A gazillion people will believe it anyway, so we might as well carry on….

Humanity is about to pay a most dire price for its technological dependence.

That price, said Snowden, proved a leading factor in his decision to come forward to the press – about both the global Holocaust to ensue, as well as NSA analysts’ power, on the slightest whim, to listen to the phone calls of any person on earth. Mankind has the right to know what it will expect in the future, no matter how dreadful it will be.

I wonder what he thinks about contrails?

There’s a video that goes along with this on the Voice of Russia web page. And no, it is not the Onion.

If Edward Snowden really was thinking this was true, and if he really did act in a way that could get him executed to save humanity from …. well, from not knowing why it is destroyed, in September, by a solar apocalypse … then he is an unhinged conspiracy theorist and we should probably not trust much else of what he said.

Or, perhaps, the Russian Intelligence Agency … you know, the one with the name nobody can remember but it used to be the KGB … has simply made this story up to make Snowden look like a crazy person. If so, then it is possible that they did this as part of a deal with the CIA-NSA in order to discredit Snowden. If that is the case, then there must be something else that is part of the deal, some Russian Agents that are going to be released in exchange for this help. Or, perhaps, the CIA intents to help the Russians in a False Flag Operation to discredit Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Something involving pipelines and vodka and a secret base underneath a fake island in the Aleutians. Yeah, that’s what it is. It’s a False Flag Operation. It must be.

Or, maybe there really is going to be ….

… a Kill Shot….

For now, I’m going with this story being fake.