RUSH: Bob Costas and pinkeye in Sochi in communist Russia. What’s the surprise? You hear about Bob Costas? Costas woke up… You’ve heard about these stories in Sochi. I know some people that are over there and the stories are being exaggerated about how bad the hotels and stuff are. Some of it’s true, but the real story at Sochi — and I’ve gotta be very careful here, folks. The real story at Sochi is going to be the American performance, the ice skating.
Some of it’s already begun. The Russian figure skaters ran rings around us. Now, the early hints are not good for the American team. We’ll just have to wait and see, and, it’s just like first day here, first, second day. But, yeah, Costas got up, and I don’t understand it. Everybody’s up in arms ’cause Costas got out there and started praising Putin.
Why is everybody surprised that NBC News would laud praise over a Soviet KGB leader, when they are his prisoner for two weeks as the televising network? Besides that, there’s not that much ideological difference anyway. People are apparently upset that Costas referred to Putin as a peacemaker. Folks, that’s right. What do you think liberals think of communists? They’re blood brothers!
The communists were the peacemakers.
We were the problem.
We were the ones stirring the drink. We were the ones stirring things up. We were the threat. Reagan’s finger was on the nuclear button. We were always the problem; Gorbachev was always the solution. So here comes Putin, and he’s a tough guy, and he’s being called a peacemaker around the world. That’s not a stretch. I got people coming to this realization. I guess it may be a bit of a positive. It may not. For me, it’s unsurprising.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So you’ve seen by now all of the other stories and some pictures coming out of Sochi. The media show up and there no door handles and half a toilet, the wall cutting the toilet seat in half. No doorknobs, no lights. The running water, if there is any, is brown. The hotels do not have lobbies. The hotels that do have lobbies, they tell you, “Do not wash your face with the water! There’s dangerous stuff in it.” You’ve heard all this.
People have been advised, “Don’t drink the water. Don’t take showers.” (interruption) What? Oh, yeah. The journalists are taking pictures of the brown water. CNN booked 11 rooms five months ago and their team gets over there, and they had one half of one room ready to go. There are rats running around, construction crews still running around, curtains falling off the windows. You’ve heard all this, right?
Well, naturally, Putin is denying it, and Putin spokesmen are denying it. Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Kozak is downright livid at the journalists for doing this. He claims that what’s going on is an effort to sabotage Russia and to sabotage the Olympics and to undermine the international image and reputation of the Russians as being a bunch of backward, dangerous incompetents that you would never want to visit.
He thinks this is a Western conspiracy to keep tourists and everybody out of Russia. He said, for example, “We have only received 108 registered complaints, and that’s nowhere near what most Olympics get. Our 108 registered complaints is nothing,” and he said, “Most of those 108 are shams, part of the conspiracy,” and then he said, “We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turning on the shower and directing the nozzle at the wall and then leaving the room for the whole day.
“We have surveillance video showing how people are sabotaging the rooms. Our showers work. People are able to take showers, but we’ve got surveillance video that shows Western journalists going in there and turning on the showers and running all the water out and all the hot water out and leaving and not taking a shower, and then reporting they never had any hot water.” So then people said, “Wait a minute you got what? You’ve got surveillance video of showers?”
Now nobody can find Dmitry Kozak.
Dmitry Kozak has been given the proverbial Putin hook.
They’ve gotten rid of the guy. They can’t find him.
Now Russian officials spoke up. “A spokesman for Mr. Kozak later on Thursday said there is absolutely no surveillance in hotel rooms or bathrooms occupied by guests. He said there was surveillance on premises during construction and cleaning of Sochi’s venues and hotels and that is likely what Mr. Kozak was referencing. A senior official at a company that built a number of the hotels also said there is no such surveillance in rooms occupied by guests.”
But Kozak said, “Hey, we’re watching you, and we see you taking showers, and we see you using our Internet, and we see you doing all this. You’re not fooling us!” So it’s just think it’s hilarious. But the KGB admits that they’re surveilling people, so they have to yank that guy, probably take him somewhere in Siberia, and then go out and deny it. By the way… (interruption) I hadn’t heard of Snowden. Is there an event for what he does? (interruption)I didn’t know Snowden was going. (interruption)
No, I didn’t that Snowden’s gonna show up. No way Snowden’s gonna show up. (interruption)Watching what? (interruption)What would Snowden show up for? (interruption)Talk to the…? (interruption) Yeah, but there’s also gonna be all kinds of authorities would grab that guy away from all the journalist friends of Snowden’s that love that guy. I don’t think Snowden’s gonna show up.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, how many of you — a classic story here. How many of you heard or heard about, either one, the NBC News report that said the first time in Sochi, after you arrive, when you turned on your telephone or your computer, you were immediately being hacked? It was Richard Engel at NBC News on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. The story went viral, all over the world.
NBC News reports every computer device being hacked by Russian authorities. That story is totally false. It turns out that that story is totally bogus. There is no accuracy to it whatsoever. Robert Graham of Errata Security (they’re in the business to guard against such hackery) calls the report “100% fraudulent,” absolutely 0% of the story. He said he was turning on a computer, connecting to a Sochi network, and 100% of the story was about visiting websites remotely.
Thus, the claim of the story that you’ll get hacked immediately upon turning on your computers is fraudulent. The only thing that can be confirmed by the story is don’t let Richard Engel borrow your telephone. Some other people said, “Wait a minute, our devices are not that easily hacked. What do you mean, turn it on and somebody can hack it?” If the Russians had figured it out, a lot of other people would have before now. There’s nothing…
But what it shows is what people are willing to believe, which I find as fascinating as the fraud. Because you almost have to have willing — or unwitting, if not willing — participants in a fraud, for a fraudulent story that every device, smartphone, computer is being hacked by the Russians and to say, “Oh, yeah. Yeah. I could buy that.” I find it fascinating what people are willing to be defrauded about or willing to be fooled by. In this case, we’ve had weeks, months, what is it, years of stories about the NSA and sweeping phone metadata.
They’re Hoovering it up. Computer companies and software companies are participating with the government to provide back doors for their servers. Everybody thinks the NSA’s reading their mail. Everybody thinks the NSA knows if they’re smoking marijuana or not. Everybody thinks this, and Obama or whoever in government wants to know what you’re doing, knows. The sad fact is that there are very few of us the government actually would care to monitor our lives. Very, very few.
But everybody thinks that their life is something the government would want to follow.
I just find it all fascinating.
I just do.
I’m fascinated by it.
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