Edward Snowden’s Long, Strange Journey to Hollywood
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The NYT operates in coordination with the U.S. government (c.f. DNC email leaks that show them coordinating a Bernie article with the DNC). It is helpful to consider them as the U.S.'s own state owned media (c.f. Chomsky), and these its press releases. Read them, but be skeptical.
Their likely is something very big coming from wikileaks in the next few weeks. The political elites in Washington have been working hard to discredit wikileaks.
People that found themselves wondering why they should care about Snowden and the programs he disclosed will find their answer in this movie.
I expected to see a full on campaign against it, this NYT piece is mild. It spins up some conspiracy with russian involvement, yawn but even it can't to deny: The movie is good. It's riveting-- just as a movie-- and the subject matter is of importance to all of us. I can't see anyone being bored by it, and I think even the most hard core of the tech people will forgive the one or two "movie-computers" moments in it. :)
It's opening a couple days before its full release (the 16th?) at something like 800 theaters (on the 14th? I believe). I would recommend going to see it on the 14.
[1]: http://www.vocativ.com/356350/fbi-clinton-spent-long-hours-i...
You could also argue that the accused "should" be the one to risk conviction and pursue appeals in an effort to get the law in question struck down by the courts, but one could just as easily argue that the government should recognize the obvious abuse and injustice in their reading of the 1918 Espionage Act, and use the power and discretion it has - precisely for cases like this - to extend their recognition of the public service he's done to the abandonment of charges against him.
It's hard to make the "yes but rule of law" argument in a case where the law in question is being twisted, stretched, and misapplied as egregiously as it is here. After all, rule of law is a two way street, and in a government ostensibly of, by, and for the people, an impasse like this should resolve itself in favor of the people.
I know there's a class of civic/legal philosophy that says that people should stick around and face the consequences of breaking unjust laws, even if the law is unjust.
I admit, despite hearing the position stated, I've never really been able to reconcile why this would be deemed a reasonable position at all.
Clearly it plays to the interests of the authorities enacting the unjust laws, who would want people to be within their grasp and thus punished when the law is broken. And it would be beneficial for such people to try to instill in the general populace, and the lawbreakers themselves, beliefs that they should just stick around and "get what's coming to them".
But as a general philosophy I admit it seems prima facie absurd to me. If you believe that a law is so unjust that its ok to break it, i really don't see how a reasonable person would expect that a perpetrator should hang around and be punished. Have the strategic option to choose to do so to further one's ends, sure. But a duty or expectation that one should be punished for breaking an unjust law...I just can't compute it.
People with a... err...i can't think of a more appropriate word apart from "hard-on", so forgive the vernacular...for authority, sure, i can understand and predict they would have such a position. But I wouldn't call that reasonable.
If anything, it sounds like a nice example for an intro into discussing Nietzchean master/slave morality, or even the Ted Kaczynski's concept of oversocialization :P
> Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
That aside, that I still don't see how that implies it is loaded.
(by the way, I never objected to people believing he should serve jail time as the GP suggested; my comment concerned the certainty that he was a traitor)
So people just say "treason" to be inflammatory. He definitely broke the law and should probably be in jail, but treason is another ballgame altogether.
Are we already witnessing the rewriting of this part of history?
Order of events are relevant. It is important to know how he ended up in Russia in the first place, long before this asylum. And was declining the asylum really an option?
My point being that there are larger forces guiding our lives than our individual beliefs and actions.
Or put another way: as long as Snowden criticizes the transgressions as he sees them of Russia, isn't this what credibility requires?
If you are truly a hardliner when it comes to non-interventionism, continuing to live and take advantage of the United States' infrastructure and quality of life (which is what it is due to said policies) makes your position suspect. Kind of like eating meat while preaching vegetarianism.
To offer another analogy: If I work at a company which makes their money off pop up ads and I think that's unethical, so I pitch management on alternative revenue streams, then is my position suspect because I'm taking my paycheck from a shady ad tech company?
I think the analogy of preaching vegetarianism while eating meat is somewhere between preaching no-interventionalism while living in the country you were born in, and preaching non-interventionalism while personally bombing people on the other side of the world.
I'm also not sure I agree that living in a country means you morally take responsibility for all its ills. I would characterize the responsibility for ills to be those that one is aware of and accepts because of the perceived personal benefit. The point of political opposition is to reject the current order of society.
> I'm also not sure I agree that living in a country means you morally take responsibility for all its ills.
You're attacking a strawman here, that's a very strong position. I just said it hurts his credibility and my analogy was that eating meat while preaching vegetarianism is suspect.
Eating meat, in my "strawman" is acceptance, or rationalization, of the evil once one is aware.