51–60 of 91 posts
Time awarding Snowden POY would them look out of the loop. That seems to be the logiical PR explanation. Vatican is really a diminished institution, while the NSA is ascendent. This just impugns the relevance of Time mag's editorial, in a way...which is not flattering.
Interesting comparison. The NSA will never need the Inquisition to assert its power though, they already know. Knowledge is power.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure Snowden opened up a dialog when it comes to privacy etc. and that's a big deal for us because we live on the internet. This pope however is so transformational he could seriously do a lot to bring peace to the world. Potential wise, this guy trumps Snowden on every level. Take a moment to think about how powerful this guy really is. P.S I'm muslim.
I like this pope, but anything coming out of Vatican is essentially white-noise when it comes to national and international policies. No world leader actually cares. So how does he bring peace to the world?
Plus peace doesn't just have to be an end to armed conflict, it could be helping restore peace to just one person through charitable acts.
For crying out loud! What difference has the Pope made to the world (and do remember, the world does include non-Christian countries...or roughly 5 billion out of 7 billion people...and I'm not even getting into Catholics vs. non-Catholics here). Colour me cynical, but any publication that declares anyone other than Edward Snowden as the Person of the Year in 2013 has to have some pretty BIG reasons for doing so. And…
For crying out loud! What difference has the Pope made to the world (and do remember, the world does include non-Christian countries...or roughly 5 billion out of 7 billion people...and I'm not even getting into Catholics vs. non-Catholics here). Colour me cynical, but any publication that declares anyone other than Edward Snowden as the Person of the Year in 2013 has to have some pretty BIG reasons for doing so. And…
Sure Snowden opened up a dialog when it comes to privacy etc. and that's a big deal for us because we live on the internet. This pope however is so transformational he could seriously do a lot to bring peace to the world. Potential wise, this guy trumps Snowden on every level. Take a moment to think about how powerful this guy really is. P.S I'm muslim.
I think that some of you guys are missing the point by being a bit too America-centric. The new Pope is a gamechanger for a ton of people and has effected more lives directly than Snowden has (at least in those peoples' perspective).
How? He cant even stop his own priests from fucking kids.
I have recently visited South Africa and I have seen the problems caused by non existent (or rather: not allowed by the church) family planning.
However, lots of people (mostly Catholics) just want see some change, and Franzicus is feeding their hopes. Not a hard job after Ratzinger (remember, he was head of the current-time inquisition), but as long as he doesn't tackle any of the real world problems that are within his reach, he is nothing more than a prop.
For crying out loud! What difference has the Pope made to the world (and do remember, the world does include non-Christian countries...or roughly 5 billion out of 7 billion people...and I'm not even getting into Catholics vs. non-Catholics here). Colour me cynical, but any publication that declares anyone other than Edward Snowden as the Person of the Year in 2013 has to have some pretty BIG reasons for doing so. And…
You are doing the same thing by assuming that Snowden's influence is as vast as that of Christianity. If you compare the percentages of people on the internet VS those who are Christian (at this point in time) you get approximately the same amount sitting at 32-34%. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_by_country http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/dec…
It's not "just" about the internet, or even IT - it's the revelation that we are forced into a panopticon, that all of us are spied upon.
Christianity has nothing real at it's base. It's just mythology. Yeah, there are a huge number of people who "believe" it.
In contrast IT shapes just about every damn aspect of our lives. Just about all financial transfers, personal communication, news, etc. etc. are stored on computers of some shape and travel the internet. The internet has enabled the arab spring, international scientific collaboration and many, many, MANY other things.
As a little example of the real impact the Snowden Leaks have, just look at the number of Christians[1] vs. the number of cellphone subscriptions[2]: There's about 2 billion Christians. And about 6 billion cellphone subscriptions. So please don't go yapping about how fucking important some half-dead fairytale is.
[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number%20of%20christia...
[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number%20of%20people%2...
Addendum: Please also note, that the Pope doesn't even represent all Christians but just catholic Christians, of which there's even less than a billion.
Meanwhile, the Snowden Leaks are important to just about everyone. The only people who are unaffacted by this are people who live without any computers.
But hey, if you live with some indigenous tribe in the jungle, you're (probably) in the clear; Until realtime surveillance with satellites becomes cheap enough at least.
Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if Snowden has just as much impact on 2014 as he did on 2013.
For crying out loud! What difference has the Pope made to the world (and do remember, the world does include non-Christian countries...or roughly 5 billion out of 7 billion people...and I'm not even getting into Catholics vs. non-Catholics here). Colour me cynical, but any publication that declares anyone other than Edward Snowden as the Person of the Year in 2013 has to have some pretty BIG reasons for doing so. And…
Sure Snowden opened up a dialog when it comes to privacy etc. and that's a big deal for us because we live on the internet. This pope however is so transformational he could seriously do a lot to bring peace to the world. Potential wise, this guy trumps Snowden on every level. Take a moment to think about how powerful this guy really is. P.S I'm muslim.
COULD. Snowden HAS.