361–370 of 393 posts
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Probably because the US empire had deteriorated enough by that point that revoking passports for exposing the blatant lies and crimes of our government was on the table by then. Of course, it's different these days. These days they'd just kill Snowden. And Mark Klein, for that matter.
I thought they call it suicide. /s
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If Snowden was such a hero, why did he take Russian citizenship What choice did he have? Do you think he'd receive a fair trial if he came back to the US? and not oppose the invasion of Ukraine? Did he actively support it? I hadn't heard that. Major bummer, if so. Otherwise, he didn't oppose it for the same reason very few other Russians opposed it. I'm sure the reason will occur to you if you think hard enough.
> Do you think he'd receive a fair trial if he came back to the US? Honestly, yes. He was extremely visible and it was the Obama administration. I think it was well-understood how much damage it could have done to Democratic party interests if they nailed him to a wall for exposing behavior that was extremely unpopular among their constituents. Manning did far worse with far less duty-of-care and received a pardon af…
I've seen this Hollywood movie. Justice was served and democracy was defeated. The movie was crap, anyway. /s
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Upthread, we have: > Thank goodness he [was more willing to betray his position for moral reasons] than the "I was just following orders" crowd. We know from WW2 that "I was just following orders" is not a legitimate excuse to help facilitate grave atrocities, Which dilutes to this when challenged: > he didn't oppose [the invation of Ukraine] for the same reason very few other Russians opposed it. Those perspectives…
The US harasses and jails prominent dissidents. Russia murders them.
> who risked civil liability and criminal prosecution to help expose a massive spying program that violated the rights of millions of Americans. That's how corrupt the system is. You get punished for revealing crimes against everyone. Who is going to erect statues for him and people like him?
Usually, one has to kill some people to have a statue erected for him. /s
It's crazy almost nothing changed after this revelation. What a fake democracy we live in.
The "democracy" noted that when you bomb someone's brain with information and emotions (modern journalism), "he" will forget in 5 minutes what "he" was told. Especially when "he" has to pay the rent and feed a family.
"he" here could be any person.
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>he’s the only one who spoke up. Not true. (1) Russ Tice: USAF intelligence analyst (2) William Binney: NSA Technical Director. (3) Thomas Tamm: DOJ lawyer (4) Thomas A. Drake: senior executive at NSA Each of them had a senior position relative Klein and Snowden and all these cases were shut down and you seemingly never knew about them.
So what was different with Klein? He surfaced the information so widely that it couldn’t be contained by the “machine”?
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The end never justify the mean, that's how you end up with concentration camps, massive executions and other atrocities. Beside, killing without distinction combattant and civilians didn't work, see the result of the American Afghanistan war. Even during the war, 99% of the country was to the hand of war leaders and talibans because everyone hated Americans. Guess why. It took only a handful of days for Talibans to d…
> The end never justify the mean It's working so far for Russia. It worked for Germany in WWII until the US stepped and fought our way through Europe. If you see a certain group as your sworn enemy for life which should be destroyed at all means possible -- then you will never have peace. All you can have is war.
The long term result of justifying the mean is always the subordination of the individuals, you migrate from a democratic society to totalitarian state.
I feel it's safe to say that no society prefer dictatorship to democracy.
So you won (maybe), your life is worst, you have no freedom anymore.
Beside you say in some case war is inevitable because there is too much hate. I don't agree, people (individuals) can be so hateful that war is inevitable but populations always aspire to peace.
Even totalitarian state always have to justify the war by pretending they're the one merely defending, being attacked because this desire for peace is so powerful.
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> Evidence suggests that (at least in modern times) the way to get Americans to vote is to so constrain them that they can't do anything else with their time on election day. In 2020 voting by mail was widely expanded because of the pandemic. In 2024 it was rolled back. It was easier to vote in 2020 than it was in 2024. I wouldn’t describe voting in 2020 as constrained. More like enabled. It’s the closest we’ve ever…
Oh, agreed---the voting wasn't constrained. The people were. You had to make the people so bored that they bothered to fill out the damn ballot and put a stamp on it. Americans get distracted. That's the big secret. We're such a generally satisfied, busy, and entertained group of humans that we literally can't be arsed to go pull the one lever that is most politically powerful every time we get a chance to pull it. S…
I don’t find extrapolating a single anecdote to the entire population a compelling argument.
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> Do you think he'd receive a fair trial if he came back to the US? Honestly, yes. He was extremely visible and it was the Obama administration. I think it was well-understood how much damage it could have done to Democratic party interests if they nailed him to a wall for exposing behavior that was extremely unpopular among their constituents. Manning did far worse with far less duty-of-care and received a pardon af…
> For all its flaws, the US is actually a place where fair trials happen most of the time (especially when someone's in the media's eye). I've seen this Hollywood movie. Justice was served and democracy was defeated. The movie was crap, anyway. /s
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Oh, agreed---the voting wasn't constrained. The people were. You had to make the people so bored that they bothered to fill out the damn ballot and put a stamp on it. Americans get distracted. That's the big secret. We're such a generally satisfied, busy, and entertained group of humans that we literally can't be arsed to go pull the one lever that is most politically powerful every time we get a chance to pull it. S…
> I literally had a young man confide in me day of election in 2016 that he was voting for Trump because he liked him on the TV show. That's your American voter, when they show up at all. I don’t find extrapolating a single anecdote to the entire population a compelling argument.
I'd love to give you some hard data on this in modern times, but AFAICT no polls are even asking questions as simple and obvious as "When did you first hear of Donald Trump?" or "Do you trust an actor more than a politician?"