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Pardon Snowden

pardonsnowden.org

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Re: Pardon Snowden

#211

Post by turar »

BjoernKW wrote: post #93
paulintrognon wrote: post #64

I believe when you wrote "socialist" you meant "authoritarianist"? Please don't mix-up those two concepts

In theory those are different. In practice though there hasn't been a single socialist country that hasn't at least devolved into authoritarianism or even has been so right from the start (Scandinavian Socialism and modern day German Social Market Economy could be considered exceptions but I doubt these can really be considered socialist.). People keep saying: "This isn't true socialism." Well, then true socialism se…

In practice any countries that tried going the socialist route were immediately sabotaged and undermined by capitalist countries, notably the United States. When you are threatened from outside, authoritarianism becomes easy to take hold.

There were plenty of authoritarian capitalist countries, even those deemed "successful", e.g. modern Singapore or South Korea, Argentina, and others during periods of 20th century.

And on the other hand, there are democratic non-authoritarian socialist countries like Bolivia or even Venezuela.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#212

Post by coder2012 »

captainmuon wrote: post #60

Maybe a naive question, but what would the risk be for me to sign this? I wonder if I (a US citizen) might get trouble the next time at the border? Or get a higher score in some database, that combined with other things might get me into trouble? Increased scrutiny from the IRS (which should have nothing to do with this, but "they" might say hell why not?)? Inability to get security clearances in future? Being target…

I think signing that petition is the least of your worries, the amount of data already collected about you including this comment here will be used to profile you for years to come.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#213

Post by pjc50 »

arethuza wrote: post #204
pjc50 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK's "peak 'socialism'" time was in the past. Depending on how you apply metrics to socialism it would either be the good parts (Attlee/Bevan establishing schools and NHS after the war) or the bad parts ("winter of discontent" 78/79). UK surveillance is part of the permanent state and is imperialist in nature. In some ways, the UK is less authoritarian than in the past - the Human Rights Act has had a real effect…

More than one historian (e.g. Dominic Sandbrook) has pointed out that the "winter of discontent" wasn't caused by socialism in the Attlee & Bevin sense but out and out naked self interest in a way that was closer to the "no such thing as society" of the Thatcher years. I love Thatcher's description of Attlee: "He was a serious man and a patriot. Quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the 1990s, he w…

I think we're back to debating what is and what is not socialism here, but the conflict was between labour unions and the state-owned enterprises that employed them. Both of which are very social democrat / mixed economy kind of institutions. Hence the Thatcherite response to both privatise everything (making employee relations someone else's problem, and also making it much easier to fire employees), severely restrict the unions, switch UK power generation away from domestic coal, and finally have a punchup between the police and the NUM.

The Labour party failed to develop any effective way of saying "no" to naked self-interest in unions (In Place Of Strife passim). Intrinsic problem in 'socialism'? Possibly.

That is a great quote on Attlee.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#214

Post by tanderson92 »

fetbaffe wrote: post #178

Why would the Russian connected Trump hunt down a Russian spy?

This implicitly assumes that Trump has any actual Russian loyalties. While it's a popular accusation to throw about, it hasn't exactly been demonstrated.

What has been demonstrated is that he admires the authoritarian strong-man style of their leader. That is worrying enough.

Oh, and Snowden isn't a Russian spy. ;-)

Re: Pardon Snowden

#216

Post by vidarh »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #195
vidarh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The former believe in normal multi-party states with free elections. A whole lot of the people who consider themselves communist do too. In fact, the Bolsheviks murdered a huge number (tens of thousands is a very low end estimate) of communists who opposed them and who supported multi-party democracy. Including a whole lot of communists who were members of the socialist parties that beat them in the elections to th…

The original Bolshevik revolutionaries believed in democratic elections as well, they just saw the legitimate institution of government starting from the worker's councils (called soviets) that sprung up in workplaces around Russia during the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. This is why they called their system the soviet socialist republic, and why the prime government body was the supreme soviet. What actually happened i…

The civil war first started after they had conducted their anti-democratic coup, though.

They got about 10% of the votes in the elections for the constituent assembly due to write the new constitution. They responded by overthrowing the Duma and calling off the assembly.

I agree with you that many of their members probably did support democracy - in fact, many of them lost their lives for holding on to that belief and resisting an increasing authoritarian leadership.

I didn't make the distinction mainly for simplicity because even if we draw a clear line and go all black and white and call every Bolshevik anti-democratic, the majority of socialist and communists in Russia were not Bolsheviks.

Part of the problem with the Bolsheviks, to me, stands with Lenins idea of the vanguard party, which was part of the issues surrounding the disagreement between Martov and Lenin that led to the split: With the idea that they made up a revolutionary vanguard, coupled with the fact that they were outlaws for a large part of their existence, they conditioned themselves to believe they "knew better" and that they would have support, and that anything indicating anything else was just another part of government or counter-revolutionary propaganda. Then with the creation of the Soviets following the February revolutons - standing against the Duma as an alternative seat of power -, they surrounded themselves with people who supported them, and this helped them legitimise to themselves the idea that they did actually have support.

When the constituent assembly elections provided evidence that showed they had pretty much no support outside of the big cities, it was easy for them to dismiss it as the result of "counter-revolutionary" activity etc.

The civil war certainly made it worse. It both provided good reason and an excuse to crack down on opposition. When parts of the opposition chose to fight on the other side because they had legitimate reasons to fear a party that had just conducted a coup, it just made it easier to crush them and write them off as traitors and counter-revolutionaries.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#217

Post by Overtonwindow »

I cannot sign this. I'm happy there is a debate over our privacy, and the information has come to light, but I still believe this man to be a traitor and he should be punished. A pardon is out of the question.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#218

Post by bad_user »

mistermumble wrote: post #142
BjoernKW wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that definition France is a socialist country. I suppose you could say that to some extent but France isn't what one usually thinks of when it comes to real-world socialism. I think socialists in particular will argue against that notion. Even worse though: Most totalitarian countries fit that description, too.

I think many American Republicans would consider France to be socialist. And would view many other countries as socialist, if they have things like national medical insurance and free college tuition. Except China. China for some reason is viewed as comfortably capitalist, despite the pictures of Chairman Mao on the currency and at Tienanmen Square. And except Russia, whose authoritarianism is admired. Talking percep…

> China for some reason is viewed as comfortably capitalist

For the purposes of western companies with ties to China, they have capitalism - after all, allowing child labor in sweat shops is very capitalistic.

On the other hand the state controls a majority of enterprise assets even though the number of enterprises fully owned by the state is around 30%. And they also impose their will on privately owned companies, with the market not being free.

Also, don't confuse capitalism with democracy ;-)

Re: Pardon Snowden

#219

Post by Chronic9q »

ionised wrote: post #145
Tepix wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Snowden agrees that surveillance is necessary. However it is done outside of the public's eye and as we have seen without legal authorization. That's the part that made him blow the whistle. Mass surveillance is deeply contrarian to our core values as a democratic society. If it is to happen there needs to be a discussion and a public decision. That's exactly what is set into motion by the Snowden revelations.

He agreed that targeted surveillance is necessary (I do too), not this indiscriminate 'collect it all' bulk surveillance of entire populations that we have now.

Isn't that what startups do these days? Collect every piece of damn information from each user visiting their site? Log when they hover over a link and all?

Re: Pardon Snowden

#220

Post by pdkl95 »

captainmuon wrote: post #60

Maybe a naive question, but what would the risk be for me to sign this? I wonder if I (a US citizen) might get trouble the next time at the border? Or get a higher score in some database, that combined with other things might get me into trouble? Increased scrutiny from the IRS (which should have nothing to do with this, but "they" might say hell why not?)? Inability to get security clearances in future? Being target…

"You shouldn't change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because were afraid we don't care about those values very much." ~ Edward Snowden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M#t=1840

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