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America’s Open Wound

edwardsnowden.substack.com

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Re: America’s Open Wound

#311

Post by slg »

marssaxman wrote: post #278
slg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he's stuck there with nowhere else to go except prison in the US, Meanwhile Chelsea Manning is walking the streets of the US as a free person. Why do people pretend that Snowden's only option was and is to live in Russia, a country that is diametrically opposed to everything he ostensibly stands for?

I suppose people "pretend" that because it appears to be the unfortunate truth! Where else is he supposed to go, exactly, as a fugitive with no passport? Snowden ended up in Russia by accident. He was flying from Hong Kong to Ecuador, and his flight happened to be laid over in Moscow when the US government cancelled his passport. He spent a month and a half living in the airport before he gave up trying to leave Russ…

He chose to be out of the country when the story dropped. It was at least partially his decision to fly through Russia. He could have stayed in the US, faced the charges against him, argue his case in court, and tried to seek justice that way countless civil disobedients did before him.

Re: America’s Open Wound

#312

Post by ebw »

isx726552 wrote: post #231
jnovek wrote: post #87

Has everyone on Hacker News lost their minds? I come here to read and sometimes participate in rational discussions. These comments are some of the lowest effort, least rigorous, paranoid bullshit I’ve ever seen on this site. We’re a step above Facebook comments on NPR articles, here. Partisanship, viciousness and lazy conspiracy theories are not a good look for this site.

Snowden is absolutely a hero for what he did to expose US surveillance. It is also right for people to be suspicious of anything he says at the moment given his current situation. There’s no contradiction between the two. As I wrote elsewhere in the comments on this story, the atrocities of the CIA are sadly well known. There’s nothing new here. The beginning of Snowden’s post is a surprisingly poor take on Biden’s r…

Snowden is a villan. I too held a high security clearance, and swore an oath to protect those national secrets. He completely violated that - undiscriminantly sent very important data to a foreign press, then ran away to Russia.

He was a low level tech guy that found an open SharePoint share on a classified network.

He is not to be upheld, he is a small, small criminal.

This stuff makes me sick.

Re: America’s Open Wound

#313

Post by slg »

Chris2048 wrote: post #221
slg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he's stuck there with nowhere else to go except prison in the US, Meanwhile Chelsea Manning is walking the streets of the US as a free person. Why do people pretend that Snowden's only option was and is to live in Russia, a country that is diametrically opposed to everything he ostensibly stands for?

Chelsea Manning got a presidential pardon - what was Snowden's option?

Snowden could have argued in court that what he did was not a crime or asked for leniency due to the importance of what he did as Manning had done. This eventually worked for Manning and she is now free. However he removed any chance of leniency by leaving the country before the story dropped. Therefore Snowden seems likely to live the rest of his life in exile under an authoritarian regime. It seems like his decision was wrong from both an ethical and practical perspective in comparison to what Manning did.

Re: America’s Open Wound

#314

Post by yucky »

isx726552 wrote: post #231
jnovek wrote: post #87

Has everyone on Hacker News lost their minds? I come here to read and sometimes participate in rational discussions. These comments are some of the lowest effort, least rigorous, paranoid bullshit I’ve ever seen on this site. We’re a step above Facebook comments on NPR articles, here. Partisanship, viciousness and lazy conspiracy theories are not a good look for this site.

Snowden is absolutely a hero for what he did to expose US surveillance. It is also right for people to be suspicious of anything he says at the moment given his current situation. There’s no contradiction between the two. As I wrote elsewhere in the comments on this story, the atrocities of the CIA are sadly well known. There’s nothing new here. The beginning of Snowden’s post is a surprisingly poor take on Biden’s r…

>the atrocities of the CIA are sadly well known.

Not well-known enough. In my opinion, literally every mention of the CIA in writing or elsewhere in the media should come with the disclaimer (paraphrased from the article):

"...the CIA, mostly known for directing the coverage of American news organizations, overthrowing democratically elected governments, establishing propaganda outfits to manipulate public sentiment, launching a long-running series of mind-control experiments on unwitting human subjects, interfering with foreign elections, wiretapping journalists and compiling files on Americans who opposed its wars...has the following to say about "

Re: America’s Open Wound

#315

Post by daemoens »

meragrin_ wrote: post #304
daemoens wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly believe Biden wanted to make himself look evil on purpose?

Evil, no. It was meant to evoke fear of his political opponents. They failed miserably at it.

How would a speech like that evoke fear? Why would anyone be scared over anger if they were called evil?

Re: America’s Open Wound

#316

Post by roflyear »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #299
roflyear wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's exactly the same, but here are a bunch of differences"

Seriously? Look at that youtube link you posted again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JemWkV2Vcic&t=44s You don't think there's anything scary or fucked up about the imagery Biden is presenting, where it's him in front of a red-and-black shadowy military force?

No, not really. You do?

The stage at CPAC was literally shaped like a Nazi symbol. They banner there said something like "we are all domestic terrorists" - there were confederate flags inside the capitol building on Jan 6th.

Trump held the bible upside down.

Trump's supporters: https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/anna-m-kapl...

Trump using more nazi symbolism: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/us/politics/facebook-trum...

blah blah blah

I don't take the Biden stuff any more seriously than the CPAC stuff or Trump stuff above.

Do you disagree, or do you think that it's all a part of some secret imagery to tell us "what they are really thinking?"

Re: America’s Open Wound

#318

Post by Firmwarrior »

roflyear wrote: post #316
Firmwarrior wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Look at that youtube link you posted again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JemWkV2Vcic&t=44s You don't think there's anything scary or fucked up about the imagery Biden is presenting, where it's him in front of a red-and-black shadowy military force?

No, not really. You do? The stage at CPAC was literally shaped like a Nazi symbol. They banner there said something like "we are all domestic terrorists" - there were confederate flags inside the capitol building on Jan 6th. Trump held the bible upside down. Trump's supporters: https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/anna-m-kapl... Trump using more nazi symbolism: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/us/politi…

I guess you're assuming I'm some mega Trumper just because I disagreed with anything any Biden fan said

I don't think this discussion is going anywhere productive

Re: America’s Open Wound

#319

Post by CharlesW »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #298
CharlesW wrote: post #230

Note for writers: In paragraph 3, Snowden uses the word "premises" but means "premise". These are similar-looking words with very different meanings. My inner paranoid now wonders if Snowden wrote this, because in my experience this is a mistake most commonly made by ESL writers. It would be interesting to perform stylometry on his history of work to see if there's a break.

That's just the plural form, is it not? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/premises#English

Oh, I didn't even consider this given the seemingly-singular premise (paragraph 2 after the quote) but I think your explanation is more likely. Thank you!

Re: America’s Open Wound

#320

Post by somenameforme »

AdamH12113 wrote: post #283
somenameforme wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Biden gets into his speech, and for about 98% of the video - the framing is exactly as Snowden presented. Given politicians are the sort of people that obsess over the implications of the color of a tie, this visual was chosen absolutely intentionally: a flag hung vertically, blood red imposed on a dark scene, and two shadowy marines in the rear. I have no idea why they went for this visual, but it's difficult to…

> I have no idea why they went for this visual, but it's difficult to attribute it to any motivation that is at all desirable. I think Hanlon's Razor is a better explanation. Look at a wider picture[1][2], and the start of the CBS video I linked above. The building was well-lit, including the doorway area. When Biden starts speaking, the doorway light is turned off, plunging the background into darkness. This was pro…

Anything can be made to seem something other than what it is from some angle or another - or some quote or another. The best of intentions can be turned into the worst, and the worst into the best. The question is one of intent. So I'll ask you. This [1] is the CSPAN coverage, which as close as one to get as definitive. And it is effectively identical to all other coverage as well.

Do you genuinely believe the long zoomed out and angled images that are required to make this scene look less creepy are what the scene was intended to be streamed as? Or it was it intended to be streamed like literally every other single 'serious speech', the sort of which Biden's team, a group absolutely obsessed with visuals and apperance, have decades of experience orchestrating - front and center, zoomed on speaker?

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JemWkV2Vcic

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