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I would just like to post a word of warning about the petition currently on the White House web site. Do not sign it! The wording of the petition itself should set off warning bells:
Quote:
Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.
It should be obvious: he did not commit a crime, therefore he doesn't need a pardon. The proper petition would be one asking that all charges against him be dropped, not that he be pardoned from his current crime. Snowden was not the one who broke the law, the Government broke the laws. The U.S. constitution is the ultimate law in the land, all laws that do not agree with the U.S. Constitution are illegal. The government has been carrying out "unreasonable searches and seizures" on every thing carried over the internet, which is against the U.S. Constitution. The government, the entire government, are the guilty ones. They are the ones who need to be charged, impeached and arrested, not Snowden. Snowden, the whistle blower, was the one who was following the law, the government was the one breaking it.
Conclusion: Don't side the Pardon Snowden petition! He is not guilty, so he doesn't need pardoned.
If I were still seventeen years old, full of vim and vigor and still convinced that the world, perhaps with just a little bit of youthful convincing from people like me, really can work like I think it "should," then I might jump onto such a "petition."
Instead, when a college professor "quietly took me aside" and inquired "if I wanted to be a part of a project" that would have required me to join one of the 1.5 million(!) people who today have a "Top Secret clearance" ... I made a life-setting decision:
I said, "No, thanks."
Almost 40 years later, I still do not regret it.
First of all, I can't help but notice that, in exchange for having given the US Government carte blanche privilege to (that is to say, "officially" ) peer into every single aspect of their personal lives, the vast majority of those million people don't seem to be making significantly-more money than I do.
Second, "my conscience is clean." Yes, there have (unfortunately) been times when there were just 2¢ in my bank-account, but I have never had to appeal to Vladimir Putin for mercy when I "leaked" the content of a PowerPoint presentation that, I am quite sure, was seen by a hundred thousand people.
My good friend, if you learn nothing else in this life, learn this: War Is A Racket. Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler (1881-1940), who was the most-decorated Marine in his day, and who held every commissioned rank from the bottom to the very top, said this quite plainly. A generation later, five-star General (and President) Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the phrase, military-industrial complex. This is the cancerous, nation-eating monster that has paid for quite a few 20,000-square-foot "cottages" in, uhhh, Maryland.
In the USA, today, you can tap into literally Trillions of dollars of "Uncle Sugar's Money," merely by breathing the magic words, "nine wun-wun." On a vastly larger(!) scale, you can actually launch a full-scale invasion of another country ... and it will be an invasion that never ends(!) ... and you can do this for a dozen countries at a time, and you can build more than a thousand military bases worldwide (some of them are small cities), and win the Federal contracts to supply all of them.
Now, put on your thinking-cap for a split second here, and guess which one of the two alternatives is more likely:
{ President Obama | Your Senator | Your Congressman } truly has no idea about any of this, and would be aghast to have discovered it, and therefore will move swiftly to Do The Right Thing. or ...
{ the aforementioned ... } "merely await the obligatory 10% 'Legislative Fee'" to arrive in the Grand Caymans.
(Close your eyes. The US National Debt is tens of Trillions, and most of that money was spent on ... this. What is 10% of (just...) 10 Trillion Dollars?)
"Son|Daughter, how much money do you make in a year? Uh, huh. That's nice. I make that amount of money in twenty-three seconds ... and Nobody Knows. Get it?"
"And-d-d the way that I make "all that money" is ... this.
"So, what are you asking me to do, you miserable plebeian? Get out of my face. Go... go eat some cake. And, if you are about to die, then you'd best better do it, and thus do your part to decrease the Surplus Population..."
Last edited by sundialsvcs; 07-01-2013 at 04:29 PM.
If I were still seventeen years old, full of vim and vigor and still convinced that the world, perhaps with just a little bit of youthful convincing from people like me, really can work like I think it "should," then I might jump onto such a "petition."
Instead, when a college professor "quietly took me aside" and inquired "if I wanted to be a part of a project" that would have required me to join one of the 1.5 million(!) people who today have a "Top Secret clearance" ... I made a life-setting decision:
I said, "No, thanks."
Almost 40 years later, I still do not regret it.
First of all, I can't help but notice that, in exchange for having given the US Government carte blanche privilege to (that is to say, "officially" ) peer into every single aspect of their personal lives, the vast majority of those million people don't seem to be making significantly-more money than I do.
Second, "my conscience is clean." Yes, there have (unfortunately) been times when there were just 2¢ in my bank-account, but I have never had to appeal to Vladimir Putin for mercy when I "leaked" the content of a PowerPoint presentation that, I am quite sure, was seen by a hundred thousand people.
My good friend, if you learn nothing else in this life, learn this: War Is A Racket. Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler (1881-1940), who was the most-decorated Marine in his day, and who held every commissioned rank from the bottom to the very top, said this quite plainly. A generation later, five-star General (and President) Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the phrase, military-industrial complex. This is the cancerous, nation-eating monster that has paid for quite a few 20,000-square-foot "cottages" in, uhhh, Maryland.
In the USA, today, you can tap into literally Trillions of dollars of "Uncle Sugar's Money," merely by breathing the magic words, "nine wun-wun." On a vastly larger(!) scale, you can actually launch a full-scale invasion of another country ... and it will be an invasion that never ends(!) ... and you can do this for a dozen countries at a time, and you can build more than a thousand military bases worldwide (some of them are small cities), and win the Federal contracts to supply all of them.
Now, put on your thinking-cap for a split second here, and guess which one of the two alternatives is more likely:
{ President Obama | Your Senator | Your Congressman } truly has no idea about any of this, and would be aghast to have discovered it, and therefore will move swiftly to Do The Right Thing. or ...
{ the aforementioned ... } "merely await the obligatory 10% 'Legislative Fee'" to arrive in the Grand Caymans.
(Close your eyes. The US National Debt is tens of Trillions, and most of that money was spent on ... this. What is 10% of (just...) 10 Trillion Dollars?)
"Son|Daughter, how much money do you make in a year? Uh, huh. That's nice. I make that amount of money in twenty-three seconds ... and Nobody Knows. Get it?"
"And-d-d the way that I make "all that money" is ... this.
"So, what are you asking me to do, you miserable plebeian? Get out of my face. Go... go eat some cake. And, if you are about to die, then you'd best better do it, and thus do your part to decrease the Surplus Population..."
I wasn't saying that we should start a new petition. I was just saying that the current petition is no good and explaining why.
Originally Posted by Nbiser;4981909
I would just like to post a word of warning about the petition currently on the White House web site. Do not sign it! The wording of the petition itself should set off warning bells: It should be obvious: he did not commit a crime, therefore he doesn't need a pardon. The proper petition would be one asking that all charges against him be dropped, not that he be pardoned from his current crime. [U
Snowden was not the one who broke the law, the Government broke the laws.[/U] The U.S. constitution is the ultimate law in the land, all laws that do not agree with the U.S. Constitution are illegal. The government has been carrying out "unreasonable searches and seizures" on every thing carried over the internet, which is against the U.S. Constitution. The government, the entire government, are the guilty ones. They are the ones who need to be charged, impeached and arrested, not Snowden. Snowden, the whistle blower, was the one who was following the law, the government was the one breaking it.
Conclusion: Don't side the Pardon Snowden petition! He is not guilty, so he doesn't need pardoned.
I agree with you, but perhaps I go a bit further than you by asserting that the constitution itself has no authority, and neither the government established by it any legitimacy.
Quote:
Our constitutions purport to be established by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people' consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given. -- Lysander Spooner
Quote:
The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: 1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes—a large class, no doubt—each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a “free man,” a “sovereign”; that this is “a free government”; “a government of equal rights,” “the best government on earth,” and such like absurdities. 3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change. -- Lysander Spooner
Every search engine, every web page (almost), every credit card company, every tv channel, and so on has been collecting data on me to sell me stuff and take advantage of me.
Thousands of crooks world wide have been attacking my computers, credit and bank accounts and such in order to rob me.
So when the NSA tries to prevent some nut from blowing me up, you guys are mad?? None of you guys ended up in any trouble out of this. None of you lost data because of this.
Edward Snowden is a coward, crook and can't keep a promise to his country and it's citizens. He did nothing to save the lives of innocent people from death.
A guy with a stripper girlfriend ought to give you a clue to what his is.
Distribution: Debian Wheezy, Jessie, Sid/Experimental, playing with LFS.
Posts: 2,900
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro
Every search engine, every web page (almost), every credit card company, every tv channel, and so on has been collecting data on me to sell me stuff and take advantage of me.
Thousands of crooks world wide have been attacking my computers, credit and bank accounts and such in order to rob me.
True.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro
So when the NSA tries to prevent some nut from blowing me up, you guys are mad?? None of you guys ended up in any trouble out of this. None of you lost data because of this.
Doesn't make much sense does it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro
Edward Snowden is a coward, crook and can't keep a promise to his country and it's citizens. He did nothing to save the lives of innocent people from death.
Actually he is extremely brave, he has taken on a government and I for one admire him for doing so. He may not have saved any Americans, but I dare say he has saved, in the future, lives of non-Americans,
Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro
A guy with a stripper girlfriend ought to give you a clue to what his is.
What does his personal preferences have to do with this? Next you'll be saying to be LGBT is a bad thing.
So when the NSA tries to prevent some nut from blowing me up, you guys are mad??
I would like to see actual data on this. How many terrorist attacks have been prevented, actually? Not an estimate, real data, facts, together with names and which sentences the alleged terrorists have got for their crimes. Also, do the EU politicians that were bugged by the NSA count as possible terrorists, too?
Quote:
None of you guys ended up in any trouble out of this. None of you lost data because of this.
How do you know? Does the NSA call you every time someone gets in trouble because of this?
Quote:
Edward Snowden is a coward, crook and can't keep a promise to his country and it's citizens.
Indeed, he has done something very few Americans do nowadays, as long as the second amendment isn't involved: He reported a blatant violation of the US constitution to the press, a violation of the very basis of your country. And he gets treated like a criminal for pointing out other criminals and is called a coward and crook for that? That seems to me somewhat weird: Those people that break the basic rules of your country are the heroes, those that point that out are the criminals?
Quote:
A guy with a stripper girlfriend ought to give you a clue to what his is.
I can't see what the profession of his girlfriend has to do with that at all. Would you have a different opinion of him if his girlfriend would be a singer in the opera? Or is this just a projection like: She is a stripper, in my world view strippers are evil, so since she is his girlfriend he must be evil, too?
Edward Snowden is a coward, crook and can't keep a promise to his country and it's citizens.
Really? I thought he took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, and furthermore I thought this oath is supposed to take precedence over any others, like "you must keep quiet about the illegal wiretapping we're doing here".
It seems to me he kept the oath that matters. Am I wrong?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro
He did nothing to save the lives of innocent people from death.
Yes, it's a good thing we keep everybody under surveillance at all times, otherwise somebody might have been able to carry out an attack on, say, the Boston Marathon. Oh, wait...
My opinion: The only cowards are those who shiver at the mere mention of the word "terrorism", and are willing to give up all freedoms and all privacy for a false sense of security.
@jefro Are you a Texan? If not. You'd make a good one.
I am more concerned about Manning living his life as a free man than Snowden right now. Just because he/Manning was a soldier does not mean he had to act like a Nazi (I was just following orders). Or as SGT.Shultz woulda said in Hogans Heroes. "I know nutting"!
I admire him greatly.
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