The debate in the United States continues over whether Edward Snowden is a whistleblower or a traitor. I previously wrote a column on that question. There appears to be less debate in Sweden where Snowden received standing ovations in the Swedish parliament after being given the Right Livelihood award for his disclosure of sweeping surveillance programs of the United States. The award honors Snowden “for his courage and skill in revealing the unprecedented extent of state surveillance violating basic democratic processes and constitutional rights”. This week, the new movie on Snowden also captured two more awards and critical acclaim.
Snowden appeared by video from Moscow and has left the prize in Sweden hoping that he will someday be allowed to travel personally to pick up the prize. His father however was in the chamber during the award ceremony. Many are hoping that Sweden or another West European country will grant Snowden asylum. Philanthropist Jakob von Uexküll, who established the award in 1980, raised this prospect in his speech when he added “So Mr Snowden, your Right Livelihood Award is waiting for you. We trust that Sweden will make it possible for you to collect your award here in Stockholm in person in the very near future.”
Polls have shown that a majority of Americans share the view of Snowden as a whistleblower despite a concerted effort by the White House, intelligence community, and congressional leaders to the contrary.
Source: The Guardian
Snowden will never be allowed out of Russia, except in a box!
Daniel Frankovitch said …
Wall Street and the US government cheat and lie, Americans give them a pass. Snowden and Manning point out that we are being lied to and played for chumps, those are the people Americans curse.
I think you are under-estimating a large number of Americans. Institutionalized bureaucrats at the senior level ranks (SES) do not get elected, however they remain in DC permanently (they do not require confirmation in vast majority of cases) and there’s not much ordinary people can do about it. It is why I advocate that Congress cap their numbers, minus about 50-75% of them.
Snowden and Manning did not release the information because they hate this place, it was because they believed that exposing the evil our nation does would be the catalyst for change to make the US the country its founders fought and die to create.
I agree that they didn’t do it out of hate for America. None-the-less their method was and is ineffective, other than to make a splash in the news media. Tell me, please, what you think has changed in the arrangement of the deck chairs, so to speak, as a result of their expose’? As a former military “Fed” I can tell you very little was even disturbed…new names for the same old thing, etc.
We need to agree to disagree on this matter I suspect. BTW, Daniel Ellsberg had vastly more experience and credibility than either Manning or Snowden, and yet his Pentagon Papers (covering thru 1967) release to the print media had little effect. It took until 1972 for things to change in SE Asia. I was there, but maybe I missed something. None-the-less, Ellsberg had first hand experience in country, while Snowden and Manning were essentially amateur interlopers. The revelations about LBJ’s Robert (Blowtorch Bob) Komer were necessary and factual….yet, even today we have White House micro-managing of our conflicts, again by wonks, not professionals like Ellsberg. So, again, tell me what has changed?
Wall Street and the US government cheat and lie, Americans give them a pass. Snowden and Manning point out that we are being lied to and played for chumps, those are the people Americans curse.
It takes a hell of a lot more courage out out our own nation as murderers and present proof of that than it does to sit at home and whine about it on the Internet. Snowden and Manning did not release the information because they hate this place, it was because they believed that exposing the evil our nation does would be the catalyst for change to make the US the country its founders fought and die to create.
You want traitors, just look at a role sheet of our federal government of the last 60 years, pretty much all of them have sold out their own nation for personal gain.
Snowden and Manning are messengers exposing the corruptness of our government and all most people want to do is kill them or lock them away forever. But the Congress and WhiteHouse that have generated perpetual wars and destroyed all but the name of the Constitution, for at least all of my life, those guy you re-elect.
We get what we deserve.
Gary T said …
… what they want to blow never made it to the public attention …
See, that’s the problem. Does “public attention” remedy the wrongs? Do you really believe all the publicity Snowden got actually changed more than 1% of anything in the intelligence community? If that. Same for Manning.
What is more important, “public attention” or actually curing the problems, stopping the improper actions?
Do you really think Joe Sixpack give’s a rat’s tinker dang about what goes on…in some respects Dr Gruber was right. That and publicity provides cover for a lot of dithering around by PR folks asserting fixing things, meanwhile nothing really changes. Deck chairs moved, same deck, same chairs..carry on.
Yep, am I a delusional statist…one who wants to reduce the institutional bureaucracy in Washington DC (mentioned a couple of times on other threads) by 50+% because I was once part of the bureaucracy and know how it works? Too many chiefs makes for idle minds dreaming up wrong things to do…usually based upon zero experience…then technicians make it happen. By the time whatever it is becomes a splash on TV news and in newspapers, that thing has a life of its own and is dang near immortal.
Hint: one way to “cut off at the knees” those who dream up bad things is to find a way to remind them that Washington DC is a cannibalistic place…e.g., one agency will be delighted to “make news” if they can reveal the foibles of another agency. Short story: you really can make a difference and not get your name in lights.
Finally, I don’t think Snowden should be tried for anything. I think he should live out his days in Russia. He fits there. I’m confident those wonks who enabled a 90 day wonder prefer it that way as well. Manning should rot in the the prison he’s been sent to…and the unfortunate thing is that the IT idiots who were lazy and careless with the “Roles & Permissions” he was given as a PFC (for G-d’s sake…he had the R & P’s of a four star general) are not also prosecuted and imprisoned. They are very likely “contractors” so that makes it harder to do … we have a military today that might have difficulty defending Boston if invaded by the Duchy of Grand Fenwick without a slew of contractors showing up. It is scary from a military point of view, which is my background. Mice can and do roar these days.
To all those here who say Snowden should have gone through “the proper channels”, and/or faced the music in criminal court . . . .
You are either very naive or intentionally self-delusional statists.
Other whistleblowers DID try to do this, and were woefully cut off at the legs, what they want to blow never made it to the public attention, and they and their friends were subjected to official raids and sanctions.
Snowden would not have an opportunity for a fair trial, not with the laws that we have in place.
Whistle-blowers who actually cause changes for the better do NOT go to print or television media. They approach persons they know or know about who can make changes. “Going public” usually makes for salacious reading or listening but rarely results in any significant change…the culprits, such as they may be, simply rearrange the deck chairs, so to speak, and go on with what they’re doing.
Said by a former military “fed” who was a whistle-blower three times, and not once public, but in every case, effected the necessary change completely…which in my case usually involved law breaking by other “feds”.
Paul’s comments are beyond my comprehension.
If he went to Des Moines, would that have made a difference?
Paul C. Schulte
“Barry — not sure what people escaping from the USSR have to do with Snowden. I don’t remember any of them claim whistleblower status.”
Have a friend – or rather, a random person – read what I wrote and help you with it.
My point is that those people in the USSR could have always stayed, and publicly protested. They’d have been put in prison/mental hospitals, and dealt with quietly.
Getting oneself destroyed needlessly, and to no purpose, is foolishness, not courage.
Barry – Snowden could have taken what he had and gone public. He did not have to go to Hawaii, download even more top secret info and then go public. Had he not gone to Hawaii, I could have backed him.
You are going to have to write clearer if you wish to make your point. I am not responsible for intuiting your meaning.
Worthy read.
Talking to James Risen About Pay Any Price, the War on Terror and Press Freedoms
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/25/talking-james-risen-pay-price-war-terror-press-freedoms/
James Risen, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for exposing the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program, has long been one of the nation’s most aggressive and adversarial investigative journalists. Over the past several years, he has received at least as much attention for being threatened with prison by the Obama Justice Department (ostensibly) for refusing to reveal the source of one of his stories—a persecution that, in reality, is almost certainly the vindictive by-product of the U.S. government’s anger over his NSA reporting.
He has published a new book on the War on Terror entitled Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War. There have been lots of critiques of the War on Terror on its own terms, but Risen’s is one of the first to offer large amounts of original reporting on what is almost certainly the most overlooked aspect of this war: the role corporate profiteering plays in ensuring its endless continuation, and how the beneficiaries use rank fear-mongering to sustain it.
What is this, or are these, pass codes to this web site? I use no pass code to open this website. What am I missing?
Without the info shared by snowden who would have thought that clapper will be lying under oath to the Oregon senator . That’s just one example that for me is enough to consider snowden a hero . For anyone suggesting that he should have been here to defend his case in a court I think just don’t know how this administration treats people who want to expose it’s illegal activities . Just read Stonewalled (sharly Attkinson) to get an idea what is going on inside this aministration of Harvard law school graduate .
DBQ. “No one cares” about why you desire privacy. Does that sound familiar to you? It should. If one wants their privacy respected one should respect the privacy of others.