Feinstein and Rogers: No Clemency For Snowden 504
Ars Technica reports, probably to no one's surprise, that U.S. elected officials are unlikely to start seeing Edward Snowden as a righteous whistleblower rather than a traitor to the U.S. government. From the article:"[Sunday], the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and her House counterpart, Mike Rogers (R-MI), both emphasized there would be no mercy coming from Washington. 'He was trusted; he stripped our system; he had an opportunity—if what he was, was a whistle-blower—to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say I have some information,' Feinstein told CBS' Face The Nation. 'But that didn’t happen. He’s done this enormous disservice to our country, and I think the answer is no clemency.'"
Redux (Score:4, Interesting)
he had an opportunity - if what he was, was a whistle-blower - to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say I have some information
Plausible deniability by Congress. "We didn't know". It's like Reagan and Iran-Contra. People said he didn't know. I figured there were two possibilities. Either he knew or he didn't, and I'm not sure which was worse.
Re:At which point (Score:4, Interesting)
I doubt voting will solve the problem, they will just lie and say they won , probably like they have done for a century anyway. Damn, all they do is lie and cheat people out of their rights to make things more convenient to their ambitions. Why choose between two liars? Vote for someone, just not a Repub or a Dem. Its easy!! Even a nut would be preferential to a lying thieving confidence man.
I appreciate the sentiment, but am starting to think that maybe it is time to stop voting as long as there are only lesser evils to choose from. We're encouraging them. I think Russel Brand is a bit of a douche, but this editorial [newstatesman.com] strikes me as rather spot on.
Re:At which point (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in Czech republic, one office worker reported corruption on Ministry of the Environment to the Prime Minister. The only thing that happened was that the office worker was fired by the end of week. So he gave all the evidence to media and now he's a senator (sponsored in the elections by Pirate Party, Greens and Christian Democrats).
Re:clemency? (Score:4, Interesting)
...eventually they will be the ones asking for clemency.
I hope you're right, but I really worry that U.S. citizens are no longer up to the challenge of holding a politician's feet to the fire. Maybe it's our news networks colluding with politicians on damage control. Ayway, Nixon spied on another political party and it was somehow a bigger deal than the NSA spying on everyone.
NSA = Gladys Kravitz
You're assuming that U.S. citizens have the power to hold a politician's feet to the fire. Personally, I think that's something we lost, no, gave away when we let our politicians "protect" us with things like the PATRIOT act. The U.S. is really a fascist state that now caters to corporations, who are the real constituency of the U.S. government. The rest of us amount to the same as red blood cells in the body. We carry nutrients for the corporations. We happy to do so as long as we can get the latest smart phone and access to Facebook.
Re:At which point (Score:3, Interesting)
He'd be kept quiet one way or another.
Agreed. To fix Feinstein's quote: "He’s done this enormous service to our country, and I think the answer is no clemency."
I understand why he can't be offered clemency by the overseers of the system he has revealed. But the state is insular, the security apparatus more so. To suggest that whistleblowing within the ranks would have produced the sort of system review that's been going on is intentionally naive on her part.
Snowden did what any honest president with a backbone could have (legally) done upon learning about the overreach of the US security apparatus. Reveal the key abuses, start a public dialog about how the abuses came to be, and initiate reforms to correct the abuses. It's hard to remember, but this is the course of action you would have expected from Obama's pre-election rhetoric. He was for transparency and reigning in the constitutional abuse brought on by the war on terror.
The difference between a president and an underling doing it is that the underling is not authorized, and therefore by definition is revealing state secrets, and his mechanism is solely public pressure. Snowden has accomplished the first two objectives (reveal and start a public dialog). It's up to us to push the third.
Re:clemency? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bingo, that is the thing people don't realize. If there isn't a corporate sponsor (like in the case of the Tea Party), what happens with any grassroots movements more specific than a few Facebook posts is what happened with Occupy -- a concerted, blitzkreig strike removing them off the board.
People forget the US is a police state. There are no knocks on the door like the Stasi; the door is kicked down, and the target wakes up with a taser pointed at their eyeball. In fact the city I live in has building codes requiring large windows in all new structures so a police sniper has a clean shot to at least 85-90% of the building from outside.
Americans can outvote what's in power just like East Germans had the power in the 1960s to out-vote the Stasi and the building of the Berlin Wall.
Occupy was America's Tienanmen Square. No, it wasn't anywhere near as brutal, but it doesn't take much for anyone living in the US to disappear into the private [1] prison system. There is no real way for people to protest. Take it to the street? It gets kettled. Take it to a park? Most parks are privatized, so people get rounded up wholesale for trespass. Take it to Facebook? Anything gets infiltrated and sabotaged, similar to how the Tea Party started out with legitimate grievances, but then got taken over and is now just another corporate mouthpiece. Even Occupy got overrun with anti-US Arabic propaganda towards the end (not many Americans use "down with the zionists" as a political slogan.)
It isn't a matter of won't, but can't. The US congress has a lower approval rating than "blue waffles" [2] for crying out loud.
Europe shouldn't feel contempt... it is pity. The problem is that a revolution is -impossible-. A UAV piloted by a mercenary from the Middle East (it won't be an American doing the dirty work) lobbing a few cans of VX gas at a few towns and farms, and the so-called "gun behind every blade of grass" would be lining up to surrender en masse, just like the Iraqis did in Desert Storm.
[1]: Yes, private, with its own lobby and campaign funding so only people who dish out maximum sentences stay in office come DA and judge elections. The two private prison corporations are some of the few stocks which have seen anywhere near Apple's prosperity with regards to prices. Not as earth-shattering, but doubling every few years.
[2]: NSFW, google the reference on an empty stomach.
Re:clemency? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:clemency? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what I would say too.... if I had a target on my back. If he has disclosed everything, there is no reason to take him out.
Alan Rusbridger said they were still sifting through the data. Up to now nothing has been published that would put lives at risk. And they are very conscientious about how they publish. One would assume Snowden has handed over the whole lot. And he has promised Putin not to release any embarassing stuff while he is in Russia...
Re:At which point (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, I have an idea for a great social experiment! It seems like a lot of people are in the same boat as you; thinking that in the best case, voting is some sort of pointless endeavour, and in the worst case it's part of the actual problem. How about throwing a wrench in the entire system by coming up with a way to "democratically" selecting (via technology) which non-"Repubmocrat" candidate that EVERYONE will vote for in the next election?
I'm not too familiar with American politics, so please forgive me if this can't possibly work, but one idea would be to have some sort of app for your Android or iPhone device which determines (based on location) what non-"Repubmocrat" political parties and representatives are in your area, and would give you the option of specifying your preference(s), if any. However, in the back-end, everyone's preferences are compared (and perhaps compared to other external sources, like results from some of the more official political polls, like Gallup). Based on all of this information, popular opinion, etc., one representative would be selected in region such that their chance of winning against the "Repubmocrat" reps in that region is maximized.
This, of course, would all be completely transparent (everyone would know at any one time who the leading candidates were, how their support was faring against the "Repubmocrat" competition, etc) and would be ongoing months before an actual election. News outlets would pick up on it, talking about this popular app which young kids were downloading and which was going to select everyone's vote for them. This news would get even more people (and older people) interested, and app downloads would increase exponentially. Meanwhile, "Repubmocrats" would catch wind of what was going on and would probably download the app themselves to see what the fuss was about. Upon seeing that an election was busy being decided and they aren't even on the candidate list, they would undoubtedly react badly, raving about how the app was a tool of "The Terrorists" to undermine the democratic process and must be stopped, and this reaction would piss off (even more) those that take the app seriously, further solidifying their resolve in actually showing up on election night and voting for the app-selected candidate.
The weeks leading up to the election would be pure chaos, with repubmocrats panicking and shitting cinder-block-sized bricks all over the place, while the 3rd party candidates are suddenly thrust into the spotlight, further increasing their visibility to everyone. Front-page newspaper captions like "Is This Your Next President?" (showing the leader of some currently-unknown political party) might even jar some grandmas and grandpas out of their usual behaviour and might get them thinking about voting for somebody other than a Repubmocrat. The app would of course make available all media related to this fallout, to keep users interested and coming back to the app to see what the latest developments were. Facebook stock would plummet.
The circus would go on until the day of the election, with more scandals, accusations, false promises, lies and tension than usual. This would be a time of pure hell for the American political establishment and all of the corporations that back it, but for everyone else (including the world at large) it would be the best show on earth. John Stewart and Stephen Colbert would have a goldmine of new story ideas; enough to last them until the following election 4 years hence.
On the day of election, the app would remind everyone to go vote and would give them the candidate to vote for. Something magical might happen then and all of the people who used the app might actually show up at polling booths and for the first time in who-knows-how-long vote in a totally new political party which will be impervious to corruption and will transform the US back into a land of rainbows and ponies. Or, maybe the existing tyrants in Washington will find some way to rig the election, preserving their power,
Re:clemency? (Score:4, Interesting)
Rumor has it that Snowden has some sort of dead man's switch that triggers the immediate release of all the files, unredacted, if he is harmed or imprisoned.
That would make him even more of a target, by people that would like everything released immediately and unredacted. Such as the Russians.
Re:clemency? (Score:5, Interesting)
that's what 'they' want you to think. 'you need us! don't disband us!!'
oh, none of us who are aware of thre reality would weep any tears if the tsa, nsa and even cia went away tomorrow.
all these are the evil sides of our government. we would do VERY well without any/all of them. our everyday lives would not be impacted even the tiniest bit, other than the COST SAVINGS and enhanced privacy we once thought we had.
all those opaque cant-see-thru orgs have no reason to exist other than TO exist and keep themselves in power. blech! the american public (and world public) has had enough of this BS!
WE WANT A NEW NEW DEAL.