Snowed on Snowden

[flamingdem]

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2013/07/snowed-on-snowden.html

--- snip

The method isn't really about reform; it's about making the US retaliate, and then pointing to the harsher policies and claiming the US is no longer its liberal self, true to its ideas, and then working to discredit and undermine both America and its liberal ideas as false. It is not about wishing the best for the US, as much as Snowden thinks he can mouth this platitude and have us believe it.

It's like the hackers who hack and disable and damage a website and then claim that all along they were really just "helping" a company to beef up its security. Baloney. If they really cared, they would quietly speak to their own IT colleagues and help them. If they really cared, they wouldn't need to bully and shame a corporation and portray it in an ill light -- and harm its customers. What happened with Snowden's hack of USA, Inc. is no different than Swartz taking down Jstor and MIT defiantly in the copyleftist cause, or Weev assaulting AT&T and running off with its customer lists in a supposed, um, helpful probe dedicated to a Better World. Poppycock. All of this is about radical nihilism and anarchism and most of all, taking power. After all, when anarchists thwart and disable and defeat power, where does it go? To them. WikiLeaks is about a war for power, not a campaign for freedom or rights.

There are too many liberals who think that there's some national conversation to be had here that is "better" than Snowden's coerced version -- they're willing to say they've been "lost" on the cause because he leaked to the Chinese but still think he "did some good".

Nonsense. The nature of the means by which you "start this national debate" matter -- if it is by crime, collusion, and coercion, then those are the results we will end up with when those hackers come into power. No thank you!

[MannyGoldstein]

1. And the White House is still spying on all Americans

Which is a huge problem, no?

[dionysus]

2. try harder manny

[flamingdem]

3. At least we're not hearing

"they've been "lost" on the cause because he leaked to the Chinese but still think he "did some good".

[randome]

8. Cite some evidence of that Mr. Goldstein.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[MannyGoldstein]

31. Sure:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023126050

[ucrdem]

32. Right, the op-ed extolling the exceptional Rand Paul:

It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.

Oh brave Rand Paul, who has defenders at the NYT, and elsewhere. I remember commenting on that one but I guess it got reposted sans pesky critics, as these things often are. Oh well, comment is free, to borrow a phrase.

[MannyGoldstein]

33. Yes, that's what it is.

Denial is not just a river...

[ucrdem]

34. Rancid is welcome to his opinion.

And you're welcome to share his opinion, though it puzzles me that you or anyone else here would.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. How many attacks on Snowden is this today?

[flamingdem]

5. I posted an article

It seems oversensitive to call that an "attack".

[Warren Stupidity]

6. How many attacks on Snowden today?

[flamingdem]

7. No whining on DU. Post your own article nt

[Warren Stupidity]

9. 3 attacks on Snowden today.

And the no whining rule is about ops. Feel free to whine away all you want in replies. If you are going to spend your time on du posting attack after attack on Snowden, people here might just notice that you are doing that, and might just question your motives.

[flamingdem]

13. Are you the post nanny today?

[Warren Stupidity]

17. Yes I am. You need a timeout. Your quota for shoot the messenger posts is two.

So go to bed. Right now. If you are good you can start posting more attacks on Snowden tomorrow, but your quota is two, not three.

[flamingdem]

19. You're welcome to alert nt

[flamingdem]

10. Referred to Wikileaks article:

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2010/12/wikileaks-is-about-war-for-power-not-rights-or-freedom.html

--- snip

I call foul on this, of course, because it isn't about rights, but about property, about a government's good governance in keeping secrets, and about crime. The files belong to the People of the United States through their elected representatives, and the president's chosen appointees who guard these secrets (diplomats). There are institutions to work through the disclosure of what is made classified, through Congress, FOIA, the media, even Gov 2.0, the movement to make government more transparent legally. And that is how it should be done fairly, democratically -- liberally -- instead of with coercion and theft, like WikiLeaks.
Classic Human Rights Groups Muted; "Progressives" Cloak Revolution in Rights-Speak

Earlier this year with the first round of war-related WikiLeaks, the classic human rights groups like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Human Rights First have quietly, and seemingly without a lot of conviction, made some protests against the harm that may be caused by WikiLeaks to human rights activists or others who help the U.S. or get aid by the U.S. It's not their center of gravity. They have statements on the record, but the first one issued earlier this year was torn apart by griefer professor and WikiLeaks fanboi Peter Ludlow as "not really" being representative of these institutions and the Wall Street Journal somehow "concocted" their protest. They didn't fight back. I asked them to make a statement; they wouldn't. (For more on WikiLeaks from Ludlow in the Chomskyan vein, see his paper.)

Some of the human rights groups protested *again* with this latest leak, stressing the harm to come to sources, and perhaps that helped both news media like the Guardian and even WikiLeaks itself to redact some (but not all!) of the names of people who could be harmed. It was terribly important to the WikiLeaks anarchist supporters like Ludlow to bludgeon and batter this very thin protest by the liberals and "progressives," because that is the real enemy of extremism -- as Lenin said, "social democracy is social fascism". Extremists can fight "authoritarian states" like the U.S. , so they reason; the liberals ostensibly very close to them in ideals who uphold states and respect them while remaining critical are a lot harder to fight -- but WikiLeaks has basically paralyzed them with fear of political incorrectness. WikiLeaks has to paralyze the liberals; Bolsheviks fear real rights like a silver bullet. So they adopt the language of rights to drown out the legitimate protests about their *overturning* of rights in their own secretive and coercive organization.

[randome]

23. Yeah, overturning our rights.

More than that, Snowden, Greenwald, Assange and all these hiding, sniveling cowards think they get to determine what's constitutional, as well.

There is a reason the Wikileaks attorneys turned away from Snowden. The boy is nothing but blather.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[flamingdem]

25. I wish someone would interview that lawyer

now that would be insightful.

He's got something on Snowden or his handlers.

[randome]

11. "Come and see the violence inherent in the system!"

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[flamingdem]

14. Is that from Monty Python?

?

[randome]

16. Oh, yes. And that fits exactly what the author is saying.

Provoke then scream. Provoke then scream.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[flamingdem]

18. No one expects the Snowden Inquisition

... I don't quite have that right yet

[randome]

20. Work on it.

Unfortunately, I start my new job tomorrow so I won't be able to keep up with The Snowden Drifts until evening from now on. But the blogger in your OP seems to have it just right.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[Mojorabbit]

12. This is one of the most ridiculous articles I have read on the subject.

I will never get that time back.
I mean really, "After all, when anarchists thwart and disable and defeat power, where does it go? To them. WikiLeaks is about a war for power, not a campaign for freedom or rights. " Who writes this swill?

[flamingdem]

15. Wow, I'm surprised you read anything I post

nt

[Savannahmann]

21. I for one read your articles

It saves me the time of visiting the rabid RW sites to see what they are saying.

[flamingdem]

22. ROTFLSHMSFOAIDMT

Rolling on the floor laughing so hard my sombrero falls off and I drop my taco.

[SidDithers]

24. DURec...nt

Sid

[struggle4progress]

26. Let's listen to Emma Goldman for a moment:

... There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical ... Psychologically and socially the means necessarily influence and alter the aims. The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization ...

To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future ...

Emma Goldman
My Further Disillusionment with Russia (1924)
http://www.panarchy.org/goldman/russia.1924.html

[flamingdem]

28. Great reference.

Now there's a hero!

[struggle4progress]

30. An exceedingly dangerous woman

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017131617

[Tx4obama]

27. Snowden needs to buy a new shirt. I'm sick of seeing him in that one. n/t

[flamingdem]

29. Someone analyzed the shirt!

At first glance, it looked like Edward Snowden was wearing the same blue-gray button down dress shirt that he wore during his interview with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in that Hong Kong hotel room on June 6, which until now was essentially the only photograph we had of him. That already seems – as it must even more so for him – so long ago. Another continent. Another life. He had already made the decisive step to break with the NSA, but still had a passport, was still free.

Yet without anything else to go by, that image became ubiquitous around the world, reproduced thousands of times in print and online, on TV screens and LED billboard displays, turned into ironic artwork, Xeroxed for demonstrations in his support, truly gone viral. So the thirst for more images – more up-to-date images – has become palpable and unnerving. In a world where there are too many photographs, Snowden managed to remain publicly unseen throughout his flight to Russia and subsequent limbo at Sheremetyevo Airport. So much so that there was doubt if he was even really there.


http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2013/07/more-photographed-more-dangerous/

[FarCenter]

35. The Snowden story is so yesterday's story. It has been replaced.

Squirrel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rhett o rick]

36. What a sad statement for those of you that have no lives except to obsess over

Snowden. He is so not the issue, but apparently it's too confusing for you. Kill the messenger is usually only for Conservatives, but because you post in DU you supposedly are "politically liberal", meaning you have an open mind.

There is a possibility that our government, bought and paid for by Corporate Oligarchs are spying on allllllllll Americans. You may not accept this, you may love the comfort of your big daddy protecting you, but I do not. I will fight tyranny and it appears that you side with the tyrants. Clapper, Mueller, Comey, are REPUBLICANS. Choose sides.