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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsis a edward snowden a hero? a follow-up.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/06/is-edward-snowden-a-hero-a-follow-up.htmlYesterday, Jeffrey Toobin and I taped a segment about the Edward Snowden leaks with CNNs Fareed Zakaria, for his GPS show, which will be broadcast this weekend. Youand Jeff Zucker, CNNs ratings-conscious presidentmay be disappointed to hear it didnt come to fisticuffs; it was all very polite. Jeffrey reiterated his objections to Snowdens behaviorhe broke the law, he compromised national security, he fled to Hong Kongand I repeated my argument that he has performed an invaluable public service.
Clearly, there are two sides to this issue. But, in light of the questions that have been raised about Snowdens conductand not just by Jeffrey but by other liberal writers who might have been expected to be supportive, such as Josh Marshall, of T.P.M., and Kevin Drum, of Mother Jonesits worth expanding upon a few points.
First, speculating about Snowdens motivations, his character, and his level of technical knowledge is all very well. Given the scant details we know about his life, its probably inevitable. But there may also be an element of intellectual snobbery involved, and theres certainly a lack of appreciation of the risks to which the leaker has exposed himself in going public.
Apparently, Snowden didnt finish high school. So what? When a geeky high-school dropout, such as David Karp, the founder of Tumblr, sells his tech start-up for a fortune, hes lauded as an American original. When Snowden reveals that the federal government, for seven years, has been logging practically every phone call that Americans make, some people question his technical prowess and whether he really knows how the National Security Agency works.
UTUSN
(71,100 posts)darkangel218
(13,985 posts)Is telling the truth wrong now out if a sudden??
UTUSN
(71,100 posts)darkangel218
(13,985 posts)LMAO!!
UTUSN
(71,100 posts)darkangel218
(13,985 posts)Keep avoiding the question.
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)Looks like my monitor is done broked agin.
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)What do you call someone avoiding the truth?
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)Are you going to go through the litany of rhetorical constructs, or take a nap?
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)You tell me what that poster meant and what I misunderstood.
I'm waiting.
gholtron
(376 posts)Then he fled the country to go to a communist country. I don't like the patriotic act either but there are better ways to deal with this without breaking the law. We are a nation of laws. If we start to break laws in the name that we decide what's in the public's interest, then we are doomed as a nation. I'm not ready to call him a hero. I don't see what he did to deserve that title yet.
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)You know what dear, it goes both ways!! I am faithfull to you if you are faithfully to me. Something like that!
gholtron
(376 posts)Obviously either you did not read what I wrote or you just want to rant and rave. I said that there are other options than to breaking the law. If Mr. Hero was so damn brave and did nothing wrong then why is he hiding in a communist controlled country? He said that he did not want this to be about him but yet he goes on TV and gives two interviews. He had the chance to be anonymous. He hasn't shown where the FBI has broken the law. I think he is nothing more than a thrill seeker that wants his 15 minutes of fame. Thanks to people like you, he has gotten it.
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)Last edited Mon Jun 17, 2013, 07:54 AM - Edit history (1)
Which he probably won't see ever again?
Lmao!!!
Welcome to DU btw!
delrem
(9,688 posts)I think you should appraise yourself of the experiences of other NSA leakers re. dealing with this in system. The best place to start is Catherina's post
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023030479
Please do read the post and follow the link to the several videos.
This isn't a small problem that the world is facing, that the US as so-called beacon of freedom and democracy is facing.
As the three experienced participants in the round-table explain, trying to follow the established paths of the law re. these matters quite simply doesn't work post-9/11/01. This is 7/15/13 and the problem has only gotten worse.
It's time for people to pull their heads out of the sand and look around, else find those heads cut off and the bodies taken away to be basted at the BBQ.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)we are not a nation of laws.
Quaint notion.
pnwmom
(109,068 posts)is something he did wrong -- and could turn out to outweigh the good he did in starting a debate on surveillance within the US.
usGovOwesUs3Trillion
(2,022 posts)pnwmom
(109,068 posts)and that he showed some of them -- that dealt with our spying in China -- to a Chinese newspaper.
Regardless of whether he was justified in the Verizon/Prism matters, handing over classified documents to the Chinese is a serious crime.
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)Anyone who thinks differently should step back and reconsider. There is no fuking doubt he is a HERO, if for nothing else, FOR TELLING THE TRUTH! Even the NSA supporters should agree on that.
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)darkangel218
(13,985 posts)GED is just as good as graduating a high school!! Obviously he was/is an extreamly smart guy if he worked as an IT tech for CIA.
Spare me your judgemental hypocrisy!!
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)BTW, my quote was in the original post
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)More education???
Your judgemental hypocrisy is sickening. Because the level of formal education has nothing to do with morals, honesty and the upholding of our Constitution.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Find another talking point.
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)"Common people who do uncommon things."
To me, Snowden meets that definition.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"is a edward snowden a hero? a follow-up."
...a few things become clear:
It's not about Snowden, unless he's being hailed as a hero.
It's not about Greenwald, unless he's being held up as a national treasure.
It's not about Obama, unless he's being portrayed as a liar.
Summer Hathaway
(2,770 posts)That's it in a nutshell.
truebrit71
(20,805 posts)1) He is
2) He is
3) He is
Careful, that's the closest you've been to truth and accuracy all day...
usGovOwesUs3Trillion
(2,022 posts)The system is corrupt through and through.
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)Liberals rallied around him??? Wtf??!?
Tell me you're jk
usGovOwesUs3Trillion
(2,022 posts)But I was actually referring to people who claimed to be liberal or progressive in the media.
Catherina
(35,568 posts)Which is why the machine is out in full force against him. If Martin Luther King were alive today, he'd be right under the bus with Snowden, thrown under by the same people who have no respect for constitutional rights or human rights.
Thomas Jefferson, August 1774
...
And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction (...), many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
...
(...) There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war (...) and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup (...), and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
...
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. (...) years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
...
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
TakeALeftTurn
(316 posts).
ReRe
(10,597 posts)KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)Summer Hathaway
(2,770 posts)KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)about access.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)has accessed are known so he does not have anything to hold back. He is not covered under the Whistleblower Act, in fact he is excluded. What has he revealed, it was a known fact the records was being collected for years. Snowden feeds into the needs of some but does not make him a hero.
dairydog91
(951 posts)cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
think
(11,641 posts)it's his fault.....
Vinnie From Indy
(10,820 posts)The fact is that this story has moved far beyond Edward Snowden. Many of us simply will not be distracted by these grocery store, checkout line headlines.
Cheers!
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)Ignorance is a bliss!! Isn't it?
scarletwoman
(31,893 posts)Every conversation that focuses on Snowden instead of the massive infrastructure of the Surveillance State being built up all around us is a wasteful and dangerous diversion from the core issues that we ought to be discussing.
Furthermore, the word "hero" has been tossed around so casually for so many years that it has frankly lost all meaning.
Snowden DID perform a service by bringing up the subject of the Surveillance State in such a way that the passive, slumbering masses at least blinked their eyes for a moment and said, "huh?".
And of course, it's inevitable that the establishment/media complex would quickly rise to the occasion and bring the whole machinery of the system to bear on flogging the distraction that is the person of Snowden himself.
The key questions that need to be asked have nothing to do with Snowden. The key questions we need to be asking is how such a Surveillance State infrastructure can be tolerated in a so-called democracy. And how much of our national treasure is being thrown down the ever-greedier maw of National Security and to whose benefit?
Snowden? Pfft. Maybe is he is just a stupid punk with delusions of grandeur. So what? He did what he did and got a sorely needed conversation about the Surveillance State started. Let's take advantage of what he did by having THAT conversation - the one about the Surveillance State. NOT the conversation about Snowden - which is what the PTB would prefer that we have.
bike man
(620 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Just sayin'.
dairydog91
(951 posts)Relativity, schmelativity. Flunking your exams clearly proves that he was an imbecile, and by dodging the draft he clearly showed himself to be a traitorous lawbreaker. I don't know why people make such a fuss about this "Einstein" fellow.
gulliver
(13,251 posts)...making execrably stupid, inapt comparisons. This bozo John Cassidy must be joking. He really must be. Snowden's a nerd and a high school dropout. Ergo, he's like one of these "genius" dotcom founders.
Snowden also moved to Hawaii, so I guess that makes him one of these high school dropout champion surfers too.
watoos
(7,142 posts)No, not for China, for the Carlyle Group. Obama is weakened now and he won't want to look weak, hence the involvement into Syria. He is also weakened right before the G8 summit, which, wouldn't you know is being held in Britain. The British press is all over this story.
It's pretty obvious to me, Snowden worked for a subsidiary of the Carlyle Group which is a rat's nest of neocons.
I hope we'll be able to find out eventually.
What do you think of Hong Kong/China's attitude towards Snowden? Do you think that he'll be extradicted?
watoos
(7,142 posts)Hong Kong and Britain are closely tied. This expose is being choreographed to a tee. I read that Snowden showed the Hong Kong press evidence that the US has been hacking into China.
flamingdem
(39,380 posts)I probably missed some key news. I know they don't want him to fly there.
I know the Chinese could make use of him to an extent but they will also anger the US (if we believe what we hear from Holder) if they don't pressure Hong Kong to send him to the US
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)bear in mind that Darth Cheney agrees with you.
Summer Hathaway
(2,770 posts)an arrogant, self-serving, democracy-loathing liar - and all of the other things Obama is called on this site daily - bear in mind that not only does Cheney agree with you, so does the entire Republican Party.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)democracy-loathing liar. Exaggerate much?
Summer Hathaway
(2,770 posts)when anyone raises the topic of the things Obama is called on this board on a daily basis: "Why, I never, ever saw any such thing here! I can't imagine what you're talking about."
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)A single incident would prove your case against my response.
I'll wait.
Summer Hathaway
(2,770 posts)If you are honestly going to maintain that Obama has not been called some of the most disgusting things imaginable on this site, you go right ahead.
But I'm more than happy to pass this one along as it was easy to find, because I alerted on it and have the jury results in my inbox:
"If the DNC cannot manage to curb this lying jackass we just elected then I am done with them."
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)I asked a specific question and you answered a different one. If you are going to make over-the-top categorical statements, you need to get them right. The quote was "arrogant, self-serving, democracy-loathing liar."
You can't find that quote, can you?
Adios.
Summer Hathaway
(2,770 posts)was "arrogant, self-serving, democracy-lathing liar", set off by quotation marks denoting one phrase.
You'll note there are no quotation marks around that grouping of words in my post, because the words were not a verbatim statement, but reflective of the individual insults hurled at Obama regularly on DU - thus the addition of "and all of the other things Obama is called on this site".
But it was a valiant attempt on your part to deflect attention away from the fact that Obama is consistently characterized on this site using the same words and phrases that the GOP use regularly to describe him.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)If you don't like this site you don't have to hang around.
Vietnameravet
(1,085 posts)He deserves jail..
We are at war.does anyone not get that? And in war we do have to trust the man we all elected to make the delicate balance between rights and safety..
This man took it on himself to make a decision he had no right or business doing..
Deport him and jail him..
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)personality or labeling contest. This is how we are distracted from the things that matter.
Like what our government is doing with the quazillion-dollar domestic spying apparatus it has assembled and with which it has already broken the law.
railsback
(1,881 posts)"When Snowden reveals that the federal government, for seven years, has been logging practically every phone call that Americans make, some people question his technical prowess and whether he really knows how the National Security Agency works."
Right. Purely speculative.
wtmusic
(39,166 posts)Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)History is full of people who are both.
grantcart
(53,061 posts)Clearly, there are two sides to this issue.
As that point seems to be sacrilege at DU.