All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 10, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:43
December 10, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
No, no, no, no.
I was not making that up.
It's in The Guardian, the UK Guardian, it's in the New York Times.
The National Security Agency has infiltrated computer games like World of Warcraft.
They're posing as players, as fellow tech bloggers and gamers.
And they're trying to apprehend terrorists who might be polite.
That's what they say.
And they're spying on people as they play as contestants in these games.
And my tech blogger buddies are livid.
I mean, they feel violated like you can't believe it.
And this is a far cry, folks, from this is not your father's NSA.
It wasn't that long ago.
The NSA was listening into what Khrushchev and Brezhnev and Gorbachev were saying.
And now the NSA is playing computer games at 14-year-old boys trying to ascertain personal data and terrorist strategies.
And I'm told Edward Snowden, by the way, is the source for this.
It's the latest in the UK Guardian.
And supposedly the morale at the NSA is at an all-time low because of all these leaks that Snowden has done.
And people inside the NSA feel very, very depressed that their techniques are now known, having been widely disseminated.
To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear.
Situation was clear.
Their current surveillance efforts were lacking something.
The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks wasn't enough.
What it really needed was a horde of undercover orcs.
That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games according to secret documents disclosed by Edward Snowden.
The files were obtained by the UK Guardian are being published in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica.
The agencies, according to the documents, have built mass collection capabilities against the Xbox Live Console Network.
Oh, folks, if you believe this, I don't know.
There's this part of me.
All you can do is laugh at this.
No, we're not through with the sound bites from the Mandela moment.
No, no, we've got, you just sit there and hang in there, folks, and be tough.
Be patient.
We've got, you know, hordes.
We have got loads yet to come.
But I just, I'll get some of the stuff out there to let you know what's coming.
The NSA has built massive collection capabilities against the Xbox Live Console Network, which has more than 48 million players.
Real-life agents have been deployed into virtual realms from those orc hordes into World of Warcraft to the human avatars of Second Life.
There were attempts to recruit potential informants from the game's tech-friendly users.
So the NSA is infiltrated the gamers spying on them, attempting to recruit them to become spies.
And these little tech bloggers are beside themselves.
I kid you not.
Now, that's the UK Guardian version of the story.
Here's the New York Times version.
NSA spying on virtual worlds online games.
World of spycraft.
One of the most extraordinary things revealed in the documents disclosed by Edward Snowden is the surveillance of video games like World of Warcraft by Western spy agencies, not limiting their activities to the earthly realm.
American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the world, according to newly disclosed classified documents, fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly and move money or plot attacks.
The documents show that intelligence operatives have entered the terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes, and supermodels.
But the takeaway is the gamer community, if I can call it, this is a serious bunch of people.
They take what they do here very seriously.
They are into this.
And the idea that Obama would be spying on them, that's the tipping point, folks.
They think they're already upset the NSA spying on them anyway.
Via Apple, via Google, via Facebook, if all that's true.
They can't believe Obama would do that.
He was Mr. Hopenchange.
Obama was going to stop that kind of thing.
It was Bush that did that stuff.
And now here's Obama doing it, making Bush look like a piker.
And the Obama NSA has infiltrated the gamer network now, spying on them, posing as contestants, and probably beating them, too.
All under the guise of trying to catch terrorists and track the movement of illegal money and so forth.
Oh, folks, it's just delectable.
Along the same lines.
Oh, before I get to what's going on in San Francisco, can I read you a story?
The headline, man leaps to his death in shopping mall after girlfriend insists on more shopping.
For real, here's the story.
It's from China.
38-year-old man, Chikom man, leaped to his death after an argument with his girlfriend, who insisted they continue shopping.
Cameras captured Tao Shao and his girlfriend in a mall in Zuzhu, Jiangzhou Province, East China, where they had reportedly been shopping for five hours or so before he hit his limit.
Eyewitnesses said that Tao Shao could be heard telling his girlfriend they already had more bags than they could carry, but she insisted on hitting one more store where there was a sale on shoes.
An eyewitness said he told her she already had enough shoes, more shoes than she could wear in a lifetime, and it was pointless to buy any more.
She started shouting at him, accusing him of being a skin flint, of spoiling Christmas.
It was a really heated argument.
The argument continued until Tao Shao threw the bags on the floor and himself over the balcony, dropping seven stories to his death and smashing Christmas decorations on the way down.
He was killed on impact.
A spokesman for the mall said, yeah, we got his body out of here really quickly.
Actually landed on one of the stalls below and then fell to the floor.
So although the store was damaged, it meant that he didn't hit anybody.
It's a tragic incident, but this time of year can be very stressful for many people.
I guess so, if Tao Shao threw himself over the balcony along with his wife's shopping bags, suicide is indeed what was happening here.
What, Mr. Snerdley?
I don't know if she got the shoes or not.
She probably went continued shopping.
Now, what we don't know is, because it says here, the argument continued until Tao Shao threw the bags on the floor and himself over the balcony.
Now, it's hard to throw yourself over the balcony.
Now, this is a translation thing.
So, what really happened?
Did Tao Shao grab the bags and the weight of the bags took him with them, or did he commit suicide?
Did he throw the bags over in a fit of shopping rage?
Five hours.
That's almost two football games.
Five hours.
And he had reached his limit.
She wanted to hit one more store because of sale.
He threw all the bags over, and there were more bags than they could carry.
Don't forget, it's earlier part of more bags than they could carry.
I'm kind of happy to know that ChiComs have this kind of money, but that's another thing.
So Tao Shao throws himself overboard.
I guess in Western parts he jumped and throw himself overboard.
I mean, I'd like to see that.
Or did the weight of the bags take him?
Did he get maybe hand get caught in a handle?
Bags weighed a lot and the bags took him.
Maybe it wasn't suicide, as it appears.
Oh, no, wait, the headline, man leaps to his death.
So he was driven.
He was driven to suicide by shopping.
It's a tough world out there.
The tough world.
And that just goes to show you.
I mean, look at how long ago would it have been in China?
Guy says that's enough, that's enough, and they would have gone home.
San Francisco, folks, you just have to love this.
You just, I do.
I take a brief timeout.
I'll give you a little hint.
Residents of San Francisco are livid at the employees of Apple and Google and Facebook.
They are livid at them.
You see, Apple and Google and Facebook actually have buses that collect key employees every morning in their neighborhoods, big charter, but not little yellow school buses.
I mean, big charter buses with Wi-Fi on them and everything and take them to and from work so that they don't have to drive, so that they don't get in accidents, they can work in transit, live in San Francisco, like Google's in Mountain View.
So whatever the link, Apple's in Cupertino.
They pick up some employees, not all, of course, key employees.
These employees happen to be paid well above the average or mean salary in San Francisco.
That's just a little hint.
If based on what I've said, if any of you have just even a little hint of understanding of capitalism, you will know already what the problem is by what I've told you.
Don't be distracted by the bus.
Don't be distracted by that.
That's just an interesting part of the story, the way these companies get their key people to work.
The people of San Francisco are protesting at the bus stops.
They are protesting the employees.
And I will explain why.
It's San Francisco, folks.
When we come back, don't go away.
History, Bob, things are getting a little ugly in San Francisco.
A Google bus that was transporting employees out of the city to the headquarters in Mountain View was halted by protesters yesterday.
Google employee posted a photo from inside his bus, and a reporter posted a photo from outside the bus.
And what's going on here is that some residents in San Francisco are upset with the wealth of Google employees.
And you know why?
Because the wealth of Google employees.
And by the way, it's not just Google.
I mean, Apple does this.
I understand Facebook buses their key employees back and forth.
This story here focuses on the Google employees and the fact that lots of people in San Francisco mad at them because they make so much money, which in turn is making housing prices unaffordable for many people.
And it is altering the city in ways that people don't like.
For example, these young employees at Google.
Here's a headline.
This is businessinsider.com.
How Google's buses are ruining San Francisco.
It's becoming common practice.
Silicon Valley-based tech firms, Apple, Google, Facebook to shuttle their employees to and from work on Wi-Fi-equipped private luxury buses with cushy leather seats.
What does cushy leather seats have to do with this?
Nothing.
It just illustrates how irritated the reporter is.
But Rebecca Solnit, that's S-O-L-N-I-T, Rebecca Solnit.
I wouldn't want that woman to be turned loose at a shopping mall in China.
Rebecca Solnit recently argued these buses are partly to blame for gentrification, mass displacements, and increasing housing costs.
There are more than 1,700 tech companies in San Francisco.
They employ about 44,000 people.
Now, not everybody rides the buses, but those who do are making the housing hunt in San Francisco increasingly more difficult.
Oh, yeah.
At the actual open houses, only Google people show up, and they look like nothing but a bunch of ragtag students.
And they show up with endless checkbooks and resumes and other documents.
They pack the open house, they end up buying it, and they don't care what it costs.
They start bidding against each other, and the asking price ends up way down there, and what it's sold for becomes a bidding item.
And therefore, these young employees who have more money than they need are paying more money than they should and causing prices and housing values to skyrocket for everybody else.
And they are livid about it.
And there are three stories on it.
And I frankly love it.
Liberal versus liberal, spy versus spy.
This is stuff a mad magazine.
Upset at wealth.
I mean, isn't it, I mean, here you have, I'm sure all of these people think of themselves as good liberals.
They're socially conscious.
They're probably all for gay marriage.
San Francisco, they're probably all devoted to human rights, civil rights, liberal rights, whatever else.
But some of them are really doing well financially.
And that has become the focal point of rage and anger.
It just isn't fair.
And those people, not only does the company send them buses to and from work, but they pay them so much that normally priced houses can't be found anymore.
Because these people who don't even have any appreciation for how much money they're getting.
They're just bidding things up and they don't care what it costs for anybody else.
I just love it.
I have to tell you, in several neighborhoods throughout San Francisco, rent has gone up between 10 and 135% over the past year.
More people and small businesses are also facing evictions because they're getting ousted by tech executives and employees.
In short, the city by the bay has become increasingly unaffordable and the rising costs of living are driving out a lot of people.
Here's a quote from Rebecca Salnit.
Sometimes the Google bus just seems like one face of Janice-headed capitalism.
It contains the people too valuable even to use public transport or drive themselves.
So there is resentment that they're even on the bus.
There is resentment that these people are so highly valued that their businesses wouldn't dare put them on BART.
The people they work for wouldn't dare put them on a bus of mass transit.
They wouldn't trust it.
That's for the plebes.
That's for everybody else.
So the dividing lines of liberalism.
See, even in liberalism, there is inequity.
Even in socialist enclaves and utopias like San Francisco, what we have, we got blue on blue.
Blue on blue.
Remember that, Bobby Venton in the 60s?
So even in these liberal utopias, there is anger over income inequality.
And there's anger over the fact that these really high-valued employees, their companies who are supposedly the great stewards, wouldn't dare put them on mass transit.
That's for the nobodies.
But the people really important and really special, they're taken care of.
But this is not supposed to happen in San Francisco.
There isn't supposed to be anybody more special than anybody else other than Dianne Feinstein and Boxer.
They can be more special because they're liberal politicians.
But amongst the general population, everybody's supposed to be equal.
Everybody's supposed to be compassionate.
Everybody is supposed to be hoping to get along.
Everybody is supposed to not want any more than anybody else has.
Everybody is supposed to understand everybody else's problems and be sensitive to them.
And here come these new, young, unappreciative employees making more money than they need and deserve, driving prices up for everybody and being driven around on luxury buses with cushy leather feet.
And the hippies are left to the tenderloin and they just not digging it, man.
Okay, one more thing here on Blue on Blue in San Francisco before we get to your phone calls.
The people who are upset at this, and I, again, folks, this is the kind of thing that liberals don't think will ever happen in their neighborhoods because there will be total compassion and everybody will be sensitive to everybody else and nobody will flaunt.
Even if they have more, they won't flaunt it.
But here, the Google and the Apple and the Facebook employees are flaunting it.
First, luxury buses with Wi-Fi.
Next, high salaries.
And they're bidding up the price of real estate while everybody else is suffering and they're laughing all the while.
That's not supposed to happen in Utopia.
There isn't supposed to be that kind of insensitivity.
Nobody's supposed to laud over anybody else how much more they have than everybody else.
And so the have-nots are not taking this lying down, sitting down, laying down, or otherwise silently.
They have concluded, they have figured out that these buses, the Apple, the Google, the Facebook buses are using public transit stops to pick up their employees.
And they have figured out that these companies are not paying for that.
They're just piggybacking.
And so, the protesters say that Google and other companies that pick up and drop off their employees on public streets should pay for the privilege of using public bus stops.
And thus, they are demanding.
They are demanding that these companies pay $500 million a year.
$500 million a year to use public transit bus stops to pick up their special employees.
$500 million a year.
But where do they want the money to go?
To the mayor's office, to the county, to the city government, where it will obviously be redistributed fairly and freely.
And the people who are the have-nots will then get their share of what these special employees are getting.
Half a billion dollars for using a bus stop.
This is from a protester flyer.
Tech industry private shuttles use over 200 San Francisco muni stops approximately 7,100 times every day in total Monday through Friday without permission or contributing money to support public infrastructure.
If the tech industry was forced to pay for every illegal use, these are the people that welcome illegal aliens.
These are the people that are happy to pay for somebody else's addictomy operation.
These are the people that are mandating everybody use plastic bags.
No, banning plastic bags and plastic water bottles.
Now all of a sudden, Google and Apple already paying for their nose in taxes.
Now the little protesters, you can't use public bus stops without paying us $500 million your payout.
Now, but the great thing is, this is not supposed to happen in Utopia.
Everybody's supposed to be equal, but then it isn't.
So the ones who have way more than everybody else, they're not supposed to flaunt it, but they are.
They're rubbing the have-nots' nose in it.
And the have-nots aren't able to live where they want to live, they say, because these unappreciative young whippersnapper employees who have no appreciation are bidding up the prices for everything.
If the tech industry was forced to pay for every illegal use of these bus stops for the past two years, they would owe an estimated $1 billion.
That's in a protest flyer going around.
And of course, they want the money to go to the government, where somehow they think they're going to end up getting their share of it.
They're not entitled to a dime.
Not a dime.
So it's a war on public transit, in a sense.
It's public-private transit.
I wonder if the bus drivers, the Google bus drivers, I wonder if they're union.
I wonder who owns the buses.
Do Google and Apple own the buses or do they charter the buses?
Maybe the protesters could cause the owners of the buses not to permit them to be used, the strike.
Maybe the bus drivers are not union, and maybe that's the real reason for the protests.
Who knows?
That's not the real reason.
The real reason is the haves and the have-nots exist.
People's, these leftists, their whole worldview is being just blown up right in front of their faces.
It's usually, see, the Reagan's and the Limbaughs and the Pat Buchanan's and people like that who would do things like this.
Not their fellow leftist citizens, not people that work at Google or Apple.
My God, we love those places.
I think it's just classic, folks.
Just classic.
Okay, let's go back to the phone.
No, let's go to the phones.
We haven't been there yet.
Do you know I haven't even officially introduced the program yet today?
We've had two hours that have started.
I have never said greetings, welcome, Rush Limbaugh program, phone number, none of that.
I mean, this has been a day for the stick to the issues crowd.
I mean, this is nirvana for you.
I mean, from the first syllable, we were into the issues.
And by the way, we still have some really great sound bites from the Mandela, sorry, the Obama Memorial, the Opening Act.
The Mandela Memorial has been termed the opening act for Obama by Christiana Manpur.
So we have more soundbites from Obama's opening act.
But people have been on hold for a long time.
We're going to head now to the phones to Mount Airy, North Carolina.
George, your first.
Great to have you.
Hello.
Rush, it's an honor to talk to you on radio today.
Thank you, sir.
I'm calling about, obviously, Nelson Mandela.
I've been doing a lot of history of South Africa.
I travel with people from the United States to Robin Island on a yearly basis.
And we do a lot of history of, you know, Nelson Mandela and so forth.
You travel to Robin Island on a yearly basis, you see?
With people from America.
From America, yeah.
I'm a former South African living in the United States.
All right, okay.
So anyway, but what a lot of people do not know is, and when I go to Robin Highland and we walk around there and we go to his cell, a lot of people do not know why is it that Nelson Mandela went to jail for 27 years.
So, you know, I tell people.
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Wait, this is a great point if you're going to say what I think you're going to say.
Now, this is key because you're saying most people don't know why he was in jail for 27 years.
You know what else they don't know?
What he could have done to get out during that whole period that he refused to do.
See, that's why I called and I was like, you know, I've listened to your radio stations a lot of years, and I'm like, you know, when I go to South Africa, the first thing I know, people are going to say, but why is it that he went to jail?
Yeah, okay, so why was it?
So most Americans believe that he went there for his political views.
No, they think he went there because he was black and because of apartheid.
Another party.
You know, I grew up in a party here.
I got a lot of black friends living in South Africa.
And, you know, people do not really know why he went there.
And, you know, and I tell everybody, it's because he was incarcerated not for his political views, but for the involvement of 23 different acts of sabotage.
Did he want to overthrow a government?
Call it terrorism.
He was in prison for acts of terrorism that I would not renounce.
Yes.
And, you know, I mean, people just do not understand that, you know, he was caught by the police with his fellow conspirators, and they were in possession of 48,000 Soviet-made anti-personal mines and 210,000 hand grenades.
You know, it is just, can you imagine if Martin Luther King would have done something like that?
It just people do not really understand, but why is it that the end of this?
Well, you know, the thing is now, George, given everything happening right up, people may not want to know it now.
Correct.
I know you're telling the truth.
Did Mandela's group ever tied to killings?
Correct.
They were.
Winnie Mandela.
Well, she did the necklacing, yeah.
One of the punishments, the ANC, well-known, was to put a tire.
They were unpunished.
They just threw out the case, and Winnie went free.
But then, you know, it was such Nelson Mandela was so embarrassed because of the case in South Africa then that he actually divorced her.
Yeah.
No, when I said punishment, I didn't mean against him.
What Winnie Mandela would do, necklacing was a technique of keeping people in line in the ANC.
They'd put an empty tire around somebody's neck loaded with gasoline and light it.
Correct.
And it was called necklacing.
Yes.
And this was what Mandela's group did.
Winnie was doing this while he was in prison.
Yes.
But did Mandela, before he went to prison, did he engage, he and his group engage in anything that caused people to die?
Or did he just have possession of the Soviet grenades and mines?
No, they were in possession of that.
Now, they did plan a lot of things in Corse Esueze in KwaZulu.
I grew up in KwaZulu, so that was also another wing of the ANC that actually grew in the Durban area.
I remember all of this now.
It's all coming back.
The stuff going on in the 80s and early 90s.
I remember this like it was yesterday.
But here's the thing.
Nelson Mandela was in jail 27 years.
In prison, Robin Island.
He could have gotten out.
They offered him every year an opportunity to be released, and all he would have had to have done was seriously renounce terrorism.
And he wouldn't do it.
No.
And that is why I also called is because I think Mandela was a great political figure in South Africa.
Everybody liked him.
And he was a great speaker, just like President Obama here.
And that he always talked in South Africa about denouncing violence.
Talk the talk and walk the walk.
But this has been my problem with Mandela.
How can you be against violence, but you yourself was involved with so much hate and violence?
George, here's the thing.
You've run up against something that happens worldwide involving leftists in the media, and that is fairy tales are created around them.
And the primary point with Mandela, 27 years in jail, black apartheid.
Okay, so you build a story.
He was put in jail because he was black, because he was apartheid, because the white leaders were racists.
And that's it.
I mean, that's that.
And then anything Mandela does after that premise is established makes him a hero.
Even if he renounces violence or even if he sponsors violence because it would be justified given those circumstances.
But fairy tales are built around leftist heroes, like the Kennedys.
I mean, you can't believe the fairy tales around leftist heroes in this country, you could write books about.
It's just what the left does.
Everything they do, they have to camouflage and mask who they really are and what they really believe.
And that's why what's happening now is happening.
Now, Mandela did have some great human traits.
I mean, there's no question that when he got out of this, he was not bitter.
He was not, he did say some really thoughtful, brilliant, pithy things when he got out.
And he invited his jailers to his inauguration, for example.
So he did.
But the point is now he's been martyred, and even all of this truthful news may be stuff that people just don't want to hear.
I'd rather think of Mandela as the way I'm hearing about him in the media than I don't, that just confuses me.
That makes me think about things I don't want to think about.
So that's the real question is, when you go to Robin Island on these tourist trips, is there a picture of Obama in the jail cell?
No, there's absolutely nothing in there.
Well, there will be.
Before all, you would just watch your next trip.
There'll be a picture of Obama actually being in the cell.
That'll be the next thing.
Back after this, folks, don't go away.
Thanks for that.
That's helpful.
If you people only knew the stuff thrown at me literally seconds before the microphone goes live.
For example, hey, let's be straight here.
The South African government of de Klerk and Botha, which is how the Reverend Jackson pronounces his name.
I have to tell this, this is, I've been looking for this guy, and I would love to find the Nightline footage.
There was, in the midst of all this, the apartheid movement coming under national or worldwide scrutiny and the divestment movement.
I mean, it was hot and heavy, folks, in the mid to late 80s.
Nightline went over there.
Ted Coppel did a town meeting, and after the town meeting, they interviewed somebody in the government of P.W. Bota, Peter Bota, who was the prime minister, the head honcho of Zoo Africa prior to F.W. de Klerk.
And this spokesman, I have never forgotten this guy.
I can see him the way he spoke.
Koppel would ask him a question.
Well, what about the brutality?
And this guy would say, literally, this is how he sounded.
Mr. Boethe is, of course, fatuto.
And he smiled, he had rotten teeth and just the weirdest looking guy.
And Mr. Boethe, the guy's name was Peter Bota.
Mr. Boethe, that was just, it's one of those things, you know, I student voices and the way people sound and speak, and I've never forgotten this.
And I've been looking, Google searching, trying to find this guy and that footage just to relive it, just to play it for you, because I'm not even doing it justice.
This guy was in utter denial of what was going on.
Mr. Abu Ta is an angel.
Mr. Abu Ta doesn't know what you're talking about.
Mr. Buota.
And then they'd cut the Reverend Jackson.
Let me tell you, this Botha guy, and hell with this Botha guy, this Botha guy.
It was just intense.
But the South African government, they were not angelic.
I mean, there was a war going on with the ANC.
They engaged in their own acts of violence, trying to put down the anti-apartheid movement.
I don't want anybody concluding here just because of what the prior caller said about Mandela, that there weren't some justifications in trying to take on this apartheid government.
But I take a break now, and we still have an hour left to go, and you don't want to miss it.
We've got to go back to the opening act for Obama.
Look, folks, for what it's worth, Mandela was convicted of 196 acts of terrorism.
He never engaged in things that caused people to lose their life, but he did terrorize, sabotage government institutions, installations.
▲
Export Selection