Edward Snowden, Hero or Traitor?

[Fisherking]

How can people possibly consent to a government whose laws, courts, and interpretations of those things are secret. The idea that consent of governed is a factor in government power has become an international farce. I have no allegiance to this government as it doesn't even pretend to inform or represent me.

Oh well, they will come and get you for that.

[Greyblades]

Pindar was a god among men on these boards. Adrian and Red Harvest were no sloutches. We have fallen dramatically since then. I would have probably agreed with Pindar, partly because of his well formulated points, partly because my awe-related adoration of him.

We are all a bunch of frivolous noobs now. We've sunken to the level of tribesmen - intelligent enough people who were too unserious to formulate professional arguments and instead demean one another with clever quips, like I am doing now with this passive-aggressive post.

So Where did they go?

[Fisherking]

People for the most part have been to polarized and partisan on the issues of the day to see the general situation of degradation.

In reality there are the people and there is the government-corporate complex. Everyone just knows what they are fed from various media outlets, and those are mostly just more partisan distractions.

It is long past the time for a wake up.

[Sarmatian]

Oh man, that was when Tribesman was still around. The memories.

And Devastating Dave and Gawain of Orkney... Legends of the org...

Just take a look at this

Right , all the Americans who have posted in this topic are now guilty of treason .
Your muppet of a leader has spoken . Discussing this issue is giving aid to the enemy , please turn yourselves in to the nearest police station you traitorous dogs .

Such a fine line between trolling and hitting a nail on its head. Pure genius. And the smileys... Oh, the smileys...

[Greyblades]

People for the most part have been to polarized and partisan on the issues of the day to see the general situation of degradation.

In reality there are the people and there is the government-corporate complex. Everyone just knows what they are fed from various media outlets, and those are mostly just more partisan distractions.

It is long past the time for a wake up.

Sugestions?

[Fisherking]

I wish I had some good ones but all I have at the moment is use multiple sources from both sides to keep your self informed, talk to people about the problem and look for alternatives to mainstream politicians and parties.

[Xiahou]

The thread SFTS quotes is about warrant less spying on foreigners.

So it looks like it is now warrant less spying on locals if they might be talking with foreigners... and everyone else just in case.

But since these are all obscure processes that have a secret court. Exactly what is and isn't looked at is speculative. Its also the very definition of not accountable or transparent.

IIRC, the thread was about warrantless eavesdropping on Americans when they were party to foreign calls that were already under surveillance... something like that. What we've been talking about in this thread has some similarities, but this is more about using a dragnet to pull in all manners of data- foreign and domestic.

Yeah... Pindar was one of my favorite posters....

[Lemur]

Pindar was a grown man playing with children

Pindar was a god among men on these boards.

Pindar was one of my favorite posters....

A gentle push-back against the golden calf:

Pindar, for all of his good qualities, was wildly uneven in the application of his rhetoric. He would (politely) tear into the most picayune and abstract depends-on-the-meaning-of-"is"-is detail of a position with which he disagreed, putting in a very lawyerly turn (the sort that doesn't actually work very well in, you know, a court of law, but impresses the hell out of philosophy students).

And then he would allow the most wild-eyed, illogical rants pass, so long as they were in agreement with his personal politics. Here's a good example. Note the misspellings, the multiple malapropisms and grammar errors, the unsubstantiated assertions, the leaps in logic, the foam-flecked rantish quality of the quoted post. And the god among men's response? "Truth to power."

Honesty is not selective, and intellectual curiosity doesn't give free passes.

His absence is a loss to the forum, for sure, and I miss him as much as I miss Adrian and Gawain and DevDave and many other fine posters. But the hagiography of Pindar has always struck me as, well, idolatrous.

[a completely inoffensive name]

A gentle push-back against the golden calf:

Pindar, for all of his good qualities, was wildly uneven in the application of his rhetoric. He would (politely) tear into the most picayune and abstract depends-on-the-meaning-of-"is"-is detail of a position with which he disagreed, putting in a very lawyerly turn (the sort that doesn't actually work very well in, you know, a court of law, but impresses the hell out of philosophy students).

And then he would allow the most wild-eyed, illogical rants pass, so long as they were in agreement with his personal politics. Here's a good example. Note the misspellings, the multiple malapropisms and grammar errors, the unsubstantiated assertions, the leaps in logic, the foam-flecked rantish quality of the quoted post. And the god among men's response? "Truth to power."

Honesty is not selective, and intellectual curiosity doesn't give free passes.

His absence is a loss to the forum, for sure, and I miss him as much as I miss Adrian and Gawain and DevDave and many other fine posters. But the hagiography of Pindar has always struck me as, well, idolatrous.

No one is perfect. But even as a relative newbie here, I can tell that in every discussion there needs to be "that guy" that pulls the lawyer speak out. Just as there needs to be "that guy" that wants to dissect everyone's language. And "that guy" who is able to make the most blunt, but apt points in response to your furry of words and then laugh at your meager attempt at pinning him with more walls of text.

They all contribute a different way of ascertaining the truth although the men themselves might not be consistent or well intended. When you have succeed in exposing the hypocrisy or half-truth behind the legalese you will find yourself in agreement with others who with their own contribution work together at picking apart the common enemy. That's what I took from the thread Strike linked. There is much to be missed in not having the "constitutional expert" come by to explain why your privacy is silly and why 1984 is perfectly legal and sane.

[Husar]

Well, they all have one imperfection in common:

They're not coming here currently.

[ICantSpellDawg]

A gentle push-back against the golden calf:

Pindar, for all of his good qualities, was wildly uneven in the application of his rhetoric. He would (politely) tear into the most picayune and abstract depends-on-the-meaning-of-"is"-is detail of a position with which he disagreed, putting in a very lawyerly turn (the sort that doesn't actually work very well in, you know, a court of law, but impresses the hell out of philosophy students).

And then he would allow the most wild-eyed, illogical rants pass, so long as they were in agreement with his personal politics. Here's a good example. Note the misspellings, the multiple malapropisms and grammar errors, the unsubstantiated assertions, the leaps in logic, the foam-flecked rantish quality of the quoted post. And the god among men's response? "Truth to power."

Honesty is not selective, and intellectual curiosity doesn't give free passes.

His absence is a loss to the forum, for sure, and I miss him as much as I miss Adrian and Gawain and DevDave and many other fine posters. But the hagiography of Pindar has always struck me as, well, idolatrous.

Oh, stop. You wish you could be him. Clearly he was selective in his application of critical analysis; he was a Mormon. I'm selective too, I'm a Catholic.
Let allied posts go under the radar unless they suggest something that is not allied, irrespective of the merits of the argument. Let your opponent take issue. Save your breath for the fights that you want to have. To not attack everyone for logical errors doesn't mean that you are dishonest, it means that your time is worth correcting the most serious errors which irritate you.

Example - I'm absolutely opposed to the practice and rationalization of abortion. I don't correct allies when they apply religious rationale to their arguments in support of mine. I take issue and voice it when they insinuate that they want a theocratic council deciding which secular laws pass divine muster.

[Lemur]

Let allied posts go under the radar unless they suggest something that is not allied, irrespective of the merits of the argument.

Here we part ways. I am more irritated by irrational, illogical, sloppy reasoning by people I agree with than the reverse. But then, I do not live in a dualistic us-v-them kinda world.

Truth is truth, honesty is honesty. When you let it all slide to score a point for Your Team, you are knowingly, willingly lowering your standards.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I think a lot the old vanguard are overrated. They were articulate and could make their positions sound more solid than they really were. I remember Tribesman being caught out and looking pretty silly once when somebody finally managed to gauge a proper reply out of him. I also remember Adrian being outright wrong on something that was something of a local issue and common knowledge for people like myself, which he tried to argue for whatever reason. Although he was good to me when I made one of my earliest posts here, around the time I became a Christian, so I am thankful to him for that. Don't get me wrong, he was a great contributor, but the golden era of the Backroom was defined by its culture, not its characters.

Indeed, what I bemoan is the change in the debating culture here. It's fine to make sly quips and play the superior intellectual that transcends the discussion, but you have to earn that status by backing it up with solid posts elsewhere. I think there's a lot of faux-intellectualism and circle-jerking these days, and not a lot of substance and real debate.

[CrossLOPER]

So how is suffocating on nostalgia going?

Also, I don't see MY name on that list.

[Beskar]

Here we part ways. I am more irritated by irrational, illogical, sloppy reasoning by people I agree with than the reverse. But then, I do not live in a dualistic us-v-them kinda world.

Truth is truth, honesty is honesty. When you let it all slide to score a point for Your Team, you are knowingly, willingly lowering your standards.

There are occasions where I have been genuinely impressed by people on the "other team". I was debating a while back, I think it was about the UK? Anyway, some one was saying something I heavily disagreed with and I turned around and said to them "If I am being honest, go and read some of Furunculus's posts. Whilst he is 'On your team' he makes some excellent arguments and logical cases in your favour, better than you are expressing yourself".

He is an example of a poster which I do disagree on ideological points with, but I cannot argue his logic and reasoning because within his framework "Best interests of the British people", he was most certainly right. On the other-hand, I have more global reaching approach, so I viewed the situation more as "Best Interests of Mankind". Obviously these positions can conflict, but was a more a matter of stance than irrational opposition.

[Beskar]

Ideology rules the day, and why shouldn't it?

I think it is more popularism than ideology though. As you see with "flip-flopping", people change their opinions like they change briefs if it suits their cause. The whole concept of going to one room full of people and saying one thing, then walking into another and saying completely and utterly different, only to return to the other position for a different group should be lambasted and political suicide. I think it is fine for people to change opinions and as such, if they do change opinions, they should say why they did. More open and honest communication should be the way forward, unfortunately, honesty gets lost in the white-noise of popularism and whimsical attention span.

[Papewaio]

Latest round of spying docs are in. Looks like the EU mission in Washington DC has been bugged by the NSA whilst the mission to the UN in New York has also.

Also according to the news reports the Brussels NATO buildings are being used to intercept comms occuring at the EU HQ.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I'm glad it is all coming to a head. Western governments are spying on all of us without a warrant. We just know it is true now. The next time we say that we are at risk of creating a gun database, fewer accusations of baseless paranoia should be levied. Just because we are paranoid doesn't mean there isn't someone out to get us.

[Papewaio]

Well, how many of your firearms are foreign made, have a foreign parent company or subsidiary, have a foreign sounding name and same for the ammo.

If any of the above and you've talked to another firearm owner about this on the Internet then what are the odds of bombs, firearms, fertilizer and ammo being keywords?

So as far as an official gun database is concerned. The only difference would be an official publically known database.

[Kadagar_AV]

USA... Spying...?

Who would have guessed... Just joking of course, who wouldn't have?

Seriously, every damn nation have spies. It's been publicly known since at least the last millennium that USA have spies and use them...

That USA actively spies on the EU and its own citizens isn't a shock either, that was first publicly discovered in 2001, and popular knowledge dates back from when the internet got popular (remember "Echelon"?)

So basically, this new report says things that has been publicly known for some 20 years or so?

I am not the biggest USA fan boy, but if you want to flame USA, at least do it for the actual MAJOR issues that dictate the current problems of the world.

[Papewaio]

It's only a crime if you get caught.

USA and its four partners, just, got, caught.

[Kadagar_AV]

What's important is that there is a near-universal reaction of "Stop that crap!" every single time one of these spying scandals occurs. It never stops. Intelligence obviously rates higher than the rights and desires of the people in America and probably most other western democracies too. It is an ideological issue, and people want an ideological fix. Rightly so.

Nah.. The real problem is that people are sheep. Bear in mind that a sheep don't care what nation spy on who, sheep care about having food and possibly offspring.

So in a world where we gave the sheep the power, we will undoubtedly end up with a system where those in power get away with pretty much anything as long as it doesn't directly threaten a majority of society's basic needs (warmth, safety, food, procreation).

It's all good people, don't worry about it. This is the world we built, this is what umphft years of civilization has brought.

[Shaka_Khan]

USA... Spying...?

Who would have guessed... Just joking of course, who wouldn't have?

Seriously, every damn nation have spies. It's been publicly known since at least the last millennium that USA have spies and use them...

That USA actively spies on the EU and its own citizens isn't a shock either, that was first publicly discovered in 2001, and popular knowledge dates back from when the internet got popular (remember "Echelon"?)

So basically, this new report says things that has been publicly known for some 20 years or so?

I am not the biggest USA fan boy, but if you want to flame USA, at least do it for the actual MAJOR issues that dictate the current problems of the world.

Spying wasn't considered as a U.S. thing for a long time simply because the U.S. was rarely associated with it on the media. And the U.S. never got caught at that time. The British 007 and the Cold War era depiction on the Russians dominated the scene......

[Kadagar_AV]

Spying wasn't considered as a U.S. thing for a long time simply because the U.S. was rarely associated with it on the media. And the U.S. never got caught at that time. The British 007 and the Cold War era depiction on the Russians dominated the scene......

Uh... Ok... I have no idea where you are from, but where I am from US spying has been a very well known, not to mention documented fact.

So the US is actually SPYING!? What next? Will they start torturing people? Assassinating world leaders? Meddling with democratic elections?

I am of course kidding again, the US is known to do that as well..

Let's face the facts, USA wouldn't really top your list of "friendly nations", now would it?

[Shaka_Khan]

Uh... Ok... I have no idea where you are from, but where I am from US spying has been a very well known, not to mention documented fact.

So the US is actually SPYING!? What next? Will they start torturing people? Assassinating world leaders? Meddling with democratic elections?

I am of course kidding again, the US is known to do that as well..

Let's face the facts, USA wouldn't really top your list of "friendly nations", now would it?

You're very young. The entire history is the 21st century to you. There was a time when people considered U.S. spies as underdog unintentional ones who resemble Chevy Chase and that guy who appeared as one of the Ghost Busters.

[Kadagar_AV]

You're very young. The entire history is the 21st century to you. There was a time when people considered U.S. spies as underdog unintentional ones who resemble Chevy Chase and that guy who appeared as one of the Ghost Busters.

Am I very young?

You must either be very VERY old, you know, the kind of old where wrinkled old ladies with boobs to their knees are referred to as "the new generation"... Or just very stupid to make an assumption like that.

My degree in History also kind of put your ill founded assumption to shame.

I am well aware that the US wasn't seen as one of the big dogs on the spy scene until quite lately (mainly because the nation came quite lately)...

But with that said, anyone below the age of what? Hmmm... Let's just say below the age where people die... So pretty much anyone now living... Who had some sort of education... Well, they should not be shocked that the US does nasty things. Now should they?

[Fisherking]

Many of you criticize Snowden for not following the whistleblower path.

But everyone should be aware that that path is broken. We can look at what has happened to all of them in the last 6 year and see that most either wind up in jail on trumped up charges or are put through a living hell by the government.


The revelations over the weekend of spying on the EU Trade mission and the UN staff would seem to be the beginnings of a firestorm, at least in Europe.

German Representatives are comparing the NSA to the Stasi (the East Germans Secret Police). Not exactly a compliment.

Gathering intelligence on your enemies is a lot different than monitoring governments that are you allies.

With one you can liken it to a man having a PI follow an unfaithful wife and her supposed lover.

What the US is doing is having people monitor not only a faithful wife but also his children, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and everyone else they come in contact with.

There is not much that can be said to justify such behavior and speaks to a very demented mind set.

[Shaka_Khan]

My degree in History also kind of put your ill founded assumption to shame.

I am well aware that the US wasn't seen as one of the big dogs on the spy scene until quite lately (mainly because the nation came quite lately)...

But with that said, anyone below the age of what? Hmmm... Let's just say below the age where people die... So pretty much anyone now living... Who had some sort of education... Well, they should not be shocked that the US does nasty things. Now should they?

Well that explains how you knew. Not everyone has a degree in history.
And you're basically agreeing to what I said.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Many of you criticize Snowden for not following the whistleblower path.

But everyone should be aware that that path is broken. We can look at what has happened to all of them in the last 6 year and see that most either wind up in jail on trumped up charges or are put through a living hell by the government.


The revelations over the weekend of spying on the EU Trade mission and the UN staff would seem to be the beginnings of a firestorm, at least in Europe.

German Representatives are comparing the NSA to the Stasi (the East Germans Secret Police). Not exactly a compliment.

Gathering intelligence on your enemies is a lot different than monitoring governments that are you allies.

With one you can liken it to a man having a PI follow an unfaithful wife and her supposed lover.

What the US is doing is having people monitor not only a faithful wife but also his children, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and everyone else they come in contact with.

There is not much that can be said to justify such behavior and speaks to a very demented mind set.

Anyone who knows their 20th Century History knows that the US Government has a plan to kill everyone, conquer every country, overthrow every government. This is a Government that deliberately broke the back of British trade during the early Cold War to remove us a competitor as "Leader of the Free World".

Who really cares at this point?

As to Snowden: He's in Russia now seeking Asylum. I would not be surprised if, in 30 years, it transpires that he was a Russian patsy all along. So I'll say he's probably a traitor, and should probably be executed.

Rather like Bradly Manning, this man is distinguished by he own ego and sense of entitlement - I have been surprised by nothing I have heard from either, anyone who has was probably not paying attention or just flat-out naive.

Maybe I'm just a Machiavellian Bastard.

[Shaka_Khan]

This is a Government that deliberately broke the back of British trade during the early Cold War to remove us a competitor as "Leader of the Free World".

Not everyone in the world knows enough about British and U.S. history. What you said is unknown to most people. It's like how much you know about Portuguese and Brazilian history, especially during the early Cold War.