"Things got rather testy during a discussion on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" Friday, after journalist Glenn Greenwald erupted at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America founder Paul Rieckhoff while talking about Edward Snowden."
Is Snowden a whistleblower or a traitor? What should the United States, what should the Obama administration do about it?
18 comments:
Sorry, no sale.
Obnoxious commercial is obnoxious.
But that's a good-looking woman.
I favor Al Gore's take:
"I hear this question all the time…I’m like most people, I don’t put (Snowden) in either one of those categories. But I will be candid – if you set up a spectrum, I would push it more away from the traitor side. He clearly violated the law (so) you can’t say OK what he did is alright. It is not.
"But what he revealed in the course of violating important laws included violations of the Constitution that were way more serious than the crimes he committed. In the course of violating important laws he also provided an important service because we did need to know how far this has gone."
Al Gore said that?
Shit.
Sexist pigs. Why didn't they let the girl talk? That had to be very humiliating for her, sitting in the middle of that, trying to appear to contribute.
It was otherwise a content-free clip. I guess the whole segment is there somewhere, but from the way this clip played out, I doubt it would have much more. For example, why Greenwald/Snowden haven't released any more of the
copped NSA data yet would be a great question to ask. If Greenwald is so convinced that Snowden is a patriot, why not release everything, or at least release a list of the information in their possession.
I don't know... whatever side we are on, traitor, whistleblower, I think Snowden should come home and face the music.
I believe it would help his cause, whatever that is, to do that.
It's hard for me to see him as whistleblower with him in hiding.
(1) Last night's episode of Star Trek TOS was "The Empath."
Surprisingly good. Lots of allusions to Christianity laced with the indifferent scientific cruelties of the Nazi regime standing in for God.
Will an under-evolved humanoid species learn altruism in time to become worthy of rescue from extinction by cataclysm?
(2) "Religion is the poeticization of ethics."
-- rhhardin
The answer to the question is, "Both".
The US ought to put Snowden on national TV, pump him full of sodium pentathol (sp?), and ask him leading questions.
Choomie ought to be behind bars while it happens.
I was on the fence about Snowden until I saw him interviewed. I now think he is a whistleblower. However, even when I was on the fence about his status, whistleblower or traitor, I understood why he did not "come home and face the music" or "man up" like girly man Kerry said. The Espionage Act makes it impossible to be a whistleblower in the intelligence community. But, more importantly, that act makes it also impossible to defend yourself in a trial because the government controls the info that can be used. A defendant has an 0-2 count and they're facing Bob Gibson, in his heyday, w/ shadows between the mound and home plate.
I endured 37 seconds and can tell the bald guy is flatly wrong. He says there is a larger issue at stake here, and he's right, but he has the larger issue wrong. He says Snowden is "hiding" in Russia. And that IS bullshit, the larger issue is a government hopelessly corrupted. Snowden would be instantly prosecuted, jailed and forgotten by an utterly corrupted system. It is the system in place that needs to be prosecuted and Snowden cannot press his case from within a deeply corrupted system. The bald guy has WAY too much faith in government behaving properly. It does not behave properly anymore. We are in fact experiencing anarchy right now. We are in liege to a corrupted government sitting pretty and doing very well for itself at the expense of the entire population, living on lies, holding us hostage and fixed into place centrally as Facehugger upon the visage of America with tentacles extending in all directions to all depths draining the lifeblood of society, burdening the country by its own weight. A parasite of the very first order of the sort seen in science fiction where you get only fleeting glimpses by flickers of faint light. God, I hate those kind of movies that rely so heavily on poor lighting and the viewers own imagination.
I fucking despise the host of that show. And Greenwald is too far left for me to comport, but the bald guy sounds like anachronism from the 40's, He is all too trusting. How cute.
And Al, Do As I Say Not As I Do, Gore is a C-science-student money grabbing penis-breath despicable skank.
In my book Snowden is hero. Here's why.
I put myself in his shoes and take a walk of a mile. Good job, great career, bright future doing what he likes. Sees egregious Constitutional violations all around and feels he must act, thinks long and hard, knows what will happen to him, and he acts.
The best I could do in that situation is quit. Extricate myself from the situation to separate myself from the things damaging to my self-perception of purity.
Shut up. Stop laughing. It's not funny.
I actually do think that when it comes to a job. I did have a job that expected me to lie and I did quit because of it. It's a moral thing. I don't care if you think that it's silly, but I actually do think and feel God is watching me, right here with me, inside me in fact, abiding all my mistakes and suffering with me, and although I have a potty mouth, I cannot have a job like that. It would wreck me as a person. But quitting is all I can do. I hate myself sometimes for being such a coward. I am just not that brave.
Snowden however turned his entire life upside down. Wrecked what he had, all the good things he had, gone, because he could not brook what he became part of. From my point of view that is heroic. He didn't want to go to Russia. Not by a long shot. But he knew he would have to leave and go somewhere and Russia is how it turned out, because he sees what happens to whistleblowers, and so do we. We see it in the VA scandal. We see it earlier in the women Clinton raped. Their lives are ruined while Clinton skates, and skate he does, and skates very well, his corrupted Party protecting him, our corrupted media advancing him, he performs flying axils while the women all around him are destroyed.
And we all saw what he was even before he was ever elected.
We want people we elect to high office to be better than ourselves but we keep electing people who are worse than ourselves because of our misplaced loyalty to party that can operate in no other way.
We create layers of government that we already know cannot operate in no other way.
Snowden was morally cornered, he had no other choice. A brave choice. One I could not make myself, and that is why I admire him. He is a good man. Better than myself And our government is absolutely packed with people who are not good. Worse than ourselves. We need far less government and a lot more people like Snowden willing to upturn their comfortable lives in attempt to set things straight, an apparent lost cause.
If proving that the US government is illegally spying on its own people doesn't count as whistleblowing, I'd love to know what the heck does.
Congress ought to give the guy a medal.
Good grief, this thread has me stunned in to silence. I won't comment because of the risk of insulting folks I like. Lets leave it at I think all y'all need to review Snowden's entire career life and motivations before you award him a medal. Ultimate question: did his actions actually stop anything?
I think all y'all need to review Snowden's entire career life and motivations before you award him a medal
Uh, no. You're thinking of a Lifetime Achievement Award.
When considering whether someone deserves a medal for an action, you consider the action. For example, if you're wounded in combat you get a purple heart, even if you beat your wife and drink too much.
Snowden revealed that the US government was engaged in a criminal conspiracy against its own people. That's medal material. The guy could diddle kids while snorting cocaine off a dead man's balls -- he'd still deserve a medal for ratting out the NSA.
Revenant...I repeat my last question/sentence:
Ultimate question: did his actions actually stop anything?
You are talking to a whistle-blower, twice , within the federal government, who did effect change, and never revealed himself. The third time I was revealed, inadvertently, (SES bureaucrats do NOT like being revealed breaking federal law) and had to protect myself...and more importantly, protect my subordinates, which I did completely. I retired taking any blame with me. At no time did I go to a foreign news outlet or a domestic one either ...they cannot effect change. They merely garner you narcissistic publicity. I went to people I knew had the courage and integrity to effect change, and they did. Look hard enough and you can find them.
Snowden barely looked at all, and dumped his revelations, which if you think they are slightly complete, you are comical, and ran to the nearest opposition media outlets. He made Bush (the DHS folly) and Obama look like idiots, of course, given he had not clue himself except how to garner publicity.
Special Forces wanna be dropped from Army rolls before completing any training (e.g, he was recycled until found unfit). The reason he could be hired for high level work in the federal bureaucracy is because the SES leadership has no knowledge, not a whit, and thus believe any blarney. Do you REALLY think we actual functional military civil service grade DoD types are that stupid at the working level? Or the uniformed NCO grades? Please.
Snowden was a clown, less than a punk, and has had his 15 minutes.
Next.
Let me say it another, simpler way:
If a "whistle-blower" makes head lines he/she has failed.
In almost every case such instances are efforts taken long after the time to moderate behavior and stop malfeasance has passed. Seldom is any change per se the result because what is revealed is already history.
In my remark at 22 June 10:17 PM where I said if anyone believes Snowden's release was complete they are "comical" ... I apologize for the poor choice of words. I was trying to relate my personal amusement at the conception that Snowden effected any change or managed to reveal everything. The reality is that the nature of the beast in DC is such that ordinary folks can seldom know enough to stop it these days until it is already passe'.
Just as a question, which is more threatening: NASA collecting meta data on Angela Merkel's phone calls or the IRS targeting conservative groups.......I have the sneaking suspicion that the NY Times would be less welcoming to an IRS whistleblower than a DOD one. That suspicion is probably an unworthy one, but ever since Jill Abramson left I worry about the integrity of the Times.
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