Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy
Last edited Sun Jul 28, 2013, 02:51 PM - Edit history (1)
Typically eloquent Noam Chomsky, speaking this weekend at the Geneva Press Club:
My own opinion is that Snowden should be honored. He was doing what every citizen ought to do, telling. [Applause] He was telling Americans what the government was doing. That’s what’s supposed to happen.
Governments as I mentioned before always plead security no matter what’s going on. The reflexive defense is security. But anyone who’s looked at– first of all, you take a look at what he exposed. At least anything that’s been published, it’s not any kind of threat to security, with one exception, the security of the government from its own population. And in fact if you look at anyone who’s spent any time poring through declassified records– I have, I’m sure many of you have– you find that overwhelmingly the security is the security of the state from its own population and that’s why things have to be kept secret.
There are some cases where there’s authentic security concerns. But they’re pretty limited.
The plea of the US government in this case for the surveillance and so on, is that it’s security against terror. But at the very same moment the US policy is designed in a way to increase terror. The US itself is carrying out the most awesome international terrorist campaign, ever, I suppose– the drones and special forces campaign. That’s a major terrorist campaign, all over the world, and it’s also generating terrorists. You can read that and hear that from the highest sources, General McChrystal and scholars and all, so on.
Of course the drone campaign is creating potential terrorists, and you can easily understand why. I mean, if you were walking through the streets of Geneva and you don’t know whether five minutes from now there’s going to be an explosion across the street that’s run a couple thousand of miles away and it will blow away some people and who ever else happens to be around– you’re terrorized. And you don’t like it. And you may decide to react. That’s happening all over the regions that are subjected to the Obama terror campaign.
So you can’t seriously on the one hand be not only carrying out massive terror but even generating potential terrorists against yourself and claim that we have to have massive surveillance to protect ourselves against terror. That’s a joke. It should be headlines.
Then comes the interesting question of extradition. The US has just announced again that they’re going to punish anybody who refuses to extradite Snowden.
At the same time the US is one of the leaers in refusing extradition. Bolivia is an interesting case. The US has imposed pressure at least… to try to block the Bolivian plane because they want Snowden extradited. For years Bolivia has been trying to extradite from the United States the former president who’s already indicted in Bolivia for all sorts of crimes. The US refuses to extradite him.
In fact it’s happening right in Europe. Italy has been trying to extradite 22 CIA agents who were involved and in fact indicted for participating in a kidnaping in Milan. They kidnaped somebody, sent him off I think to Egypt to be tortured. And agreed later he was innnocent…
Extradite the people involved, the US of course refuses. And there’s case after case like this… There are a lot of cases where the U.S. just refuses…
In fact one of the most striking cases is Latin America, again, not just Bolivia. One of the world’s leading terrorists is Luis Posada, who was involved in blowing up a Cubana airliner which killed 73 people and lots of other terrorist acts. He’s sitting happily in… Miami, and his colleague Rolando Bosch also a major terrorist… is happily there… Cuba and Venezuela are trying to extradite them. But you know. Fat chance.
So for the U.S. to be calling for others to extradite Snowden is let’s say a little ironic.
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/chomsky-says-snowden-should-be-honored-for-telling-americans-what-the-government-was-doing.html
video added..... BTW he looks healthy
= new reply since forum marked as read
nailed it in the first paragraph! 
already crowded bus. Someone should make a list of Snowden's side vs. NSA's side. 
While Bush was president snowden was posting that all leakers should be "shot in the balls" but now that Obama is prez this vile traitor is shocked SHOCKED that our spy agencies actually conduct espionage.
Seriously?
Since I am a liberal I won't advocate summary execution even for a dirty traitor like snowden. The rule of law is supreme here. A,fair trial followed by a prompt hanging is in order
Kidding, the death penalty is barbaric. But snowden's treason warrants a prison sentence.
about the enormous surveillance state - and there would be no outcry in Congress, in the media or from the public to rein it in if he had or someone else had not come forward and had not come forward in an equally flamboyant and headline grabbing fashiion. It would have been one of the stories like Binney, Tice or Edmond - with no more than 5% ever hearing of them and no more than 5% of the public talking about the surveillance state. Traitor or hero, patriot or sociopath - without Snowden - we would not be talking about it now and there would be no interest in controlling the Intelligence Industrial Complex.
Crazy traitor leaker got Congress to notice vast surveillance state By Alex Pareene
Pols from both parties are all of a sudden demanding more transparency and pushing reforms. Thanks, leaks!
(Credit: Reuters/Bobby Yip)
There is a guy, a famous guy, who lives now in a Russian airport or something, no one is really sure, but everyone in the media (and lots of people not in the media) cannot stop fighting and arguing about this guy. Some people say he is a jerk and crazy and bad and others say he is a hero and super cool. Either way, mean jerk or cool hero, this guy that everyone won’t shut up about is actually responsible for the first major public displays of Congressional opposition to the unchecked surveillance state in 35 years or so.
Congress has always had a handful of privacy advocates and true civil libertarians. But for many years in political Washington it has been considered foolish and perhaps a bit treasonous to suggest that our intelligence agencies are even slightly overzealous in their collection of all information possible about everything on the globe. That is still the general consensus, but as McClatchy’s Washington Bureau wrote on Friday, there are suddenly a bunch of members of Congress who actually want to rein in the NSA.
The last time a significant number of Washington politicians favored additional restrictions on intelligence-gathering and surveillance powers was in the immediate aftermath of the Church Committee reports, in the mid-1970s. Since then, Congress has practically abandoned its oversight power over the intelligence communities, and it’s only gotten worse since 9/11. Fighting terrorism trumped privacy every time Congress was asked to expand government spying powers. For much of the last dozen years, civil libertarians weren’t just ignored by the political establishment, they were vilified. When Democrats took full control of Congress, they still rubber-stamped Bush’s surveillance programs.
So what happened, exactly? Well, the American people learned a bunch of scary sounding stuff about how much data the NSA is collecting, on everyone. They learned this because of illegal leaks of classified information, to reporters, from the guy everyone is fighting about. Everyone can keep fighting about the guy, I guess, but no one can now say that the guy’s leaks were entirely gratuitous. Because before the leaks, people who were alarmed at what the intelligence agencies could be up to were ignored and politicians who had pretty good notions of what they could be up to (or who could’ve learned what they were up to if they cared to) weren’t concerned.
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/crazy_traitor_leaker_got_congress_to_notice_vast_surveillance_state/?source=newsletter
blog posts which were supposedly Snowden's. I went to the source of those posts, but couldn't find anything that proved or even tried to prove, they from him. So far I have been unable to get any information on how these posts were connected to Showden. No one seems to know but have just accepted the claim which also has no origin that I can find, that they were his.
Do you have something that proves those comments were from Snowden? i'd like to see some verification and have failed to find any so far.
And btw, Snowden is Whistle Blower, and the American people overwhelming agree now. And a hero.
I laughed out loud at this though:
'The rule of law is supreme here'! 
Sure, that is why War Criminals, torturers and Wall Criminals are treated like heroes and elder statesmen and we are told to just forget the horrendous crimes and 'move forward'.
That was actually very funny. I'd love for it to be true though, I have to admit.
to make our hero look bad. Tenured professor at MIT and Nobel Laureate were just covers to give his crazy notions credibility.
& R
