While we are at it, is Biden going to pardon Snowden?
He has spent his life lying about his credentials, and then selling the influence he gains in the us government to foreign countries.
No, I don’t think Biden will be pardoning Edward Snowden.
Drone strike: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-dron...
Disinterested: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/08/25/fac...
Joes plagiarism: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/18/us/biden-admits-plagiaris...
More lying about law school credentials: https://apnews.com/article/cd977f7ff301993f7976974ba07c5495
Selling influence: https://news.yahoo.com/independent-source-confirms-authentic...
https://reason.com/2015/04/09/the-feds-want-a-back-door-into...
"One fine day in 1991, an ambitious senator named Joe Biden introduced legislation declaring that telecommunications companies "shall ensure" that their hardware includes backdoors for government eavesdropping. Biden's proposal was followed by the introduction of the Clipper Chip by the National Security Agency (NSA) and a remarkable bill, approved by a House of Representatives committee in 1997, that would have outlawed encryption without back doors for the feds."
The man is an authoritarian, him playing an absent minded nice man of advanced age and his empty SJW phrases don't change that. You can get real glimpses of the personality like him "losing patience with the unvaccinated" lately.
Firmly embedded in the swamp.
It's hard to define someone in a phrase, but I just view him as a half-bright grifter with backers. The backers are the people to be angry at. His views on civil liberties are probably more taking the easy road (or easy money) rather than being for or agin'.
In fact, it would have been politically expedient last summer for him to say the 1994 crime bill was a mistake in hindsight, but he did the opposite. I think this is who he really is.
"In the letter dated May 2010, the al Qaeda 9/11 mastermind wrote he had no assassination plots against Biden because he deemed him “totally unprepared” to lead the United States."
"Bin Laden warned in 2010 letter that Biden would ‘lead US into crisis’"
https://nypost.com/2021/08/20/bin-laden-warned-in-2010-lette...
This guy sent helicopters full of swat teams to arrest a single guy - Kim Dotcom. The whole thing was super illegal and almost hilariously over the top. "Almost" because there was nothing amusing about the whole thing. It was ugly
Let's not forget that Kim Dotcom is a miserable piece of shit who rats on his friends and used his position of trust to snoop through people's data and then snitch to governments and criminals for profit.
Not enough people know his real history but the guy is a pure scumbag, credit card fraud criminal and con artist masquerading as freedom-loving CEO.
He's exactly the kind of person that should be thrown in a hole somewhere and not heard from again and if you knew anything about him you would do it if you could.
Kim funded Megaupload largely off of his fraudulent gains on carder forums and a legitimate business that he scammed money off of.
Kim is the kind of person that deserves to have his asshole tickled with glowing hot metal rods...but that isn't an endorsement if somebody goes and does it.
It's fine to be outraged at the US & NZ governments, but it's not fine to spare the man a shred of sympathy.
Biden might pardon Snowden at the end of his term, but don't count on it. I haven't seen a single sign that Biden (or any American presidential candidate for that matter) would side with anyone for leaking government secrets. The government is sitting on many more juicy details that'd upset the global political balance and transparency is not in the USA's interests.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/leaker-of-drone-secrets-ge...
Much like I can - randomly or otherwise - choose any faction in the Nigerian elections.
Or is their some planet-wide law that he fell under?
Furthermore, as Assange isn’t an American citizen and doesn’t get to vote in the USA, none of them have no reason to put personal dislike aside and defend him or his actions.
Hell, he might have been a lot better off now if he was a USA citizen, or even if he’d been officially working for Russia.
Right now, he’s a conveniently unlicensed hot potato: held personally liable by the powers, not even really seen as a journalist even if he was one.
Indeed, hate away.
But its a big jump to imprisoning (or as some would like killing) him.
Just as - and focus here - its not ok to extradite atheists to Saudi Arabia for heresy committed in say New Zealand.
Its after all just a wee election.
Are you suggesting that people shouldn't take the actions of others into account?
How do you pardon a foreign citizen?
Based upon the talking points at the time, establishment Democrats very much wanted this to be true. This makes sense since the Russians are a convenient scapegoat.
>suppressing damaging information on Republicans.
They wanted this to be true but it didnt happen:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/5pmo25/debunked_...
In any case, hitting up sources for leaks is, well, journalism.
"if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters"
They explain their interest in a Bernie angle as a result of Trump, in their minds, having a low probability of winning:
"we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary . . . so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting"
He still didnt conceal any leaks in pursuit of that goal and he wasnt a russian spy. Nonetheless, both claims are frequently made in the mainstream media linked to Democrats.
They are lies.
lol I kid. Literally 0% chance CNN will give him one.
Every establishment critic faces the same choice:
1) appear on PressTV or RT
2) face ridiculously hostile interviewers
3) dont appear on TV
Mostly they go for a mix of 1 and 2.
It makes him a journalist who doesnt appreciate being threatened with a drone strike by a sitting secretary of state for practising journalism.
The fact people give him shit for this is pretty unbelievable.
Excusing Russian style journalist assassination is not compatible with respect for Democracy.
Do you expect him to have been neutral on her candidacy?
The DNC had their email server itself hacked, which is an entirely different level of compromise.
Of course, they crafted a narrative that “republicans were hacked too!” which of course is true but highly misleading (typical of such propaganda campaigns).
This was highly effective, as it’s still popping up in discussions like this one 5+ years later.
[1] https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-tru... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-said-considering-pardo... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/16/tr...
https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/27/politics/republicans-2016-edw...
I think this shows on either side of the aisle, there is little love for Snowden and people alike.
No need to steer away from "deep state" so hard you go hyperbolic.
Maybe use "Multiple competing power cabals", if you prefer?
It's no deep state conspiracy that the Pentagon or the CIA have their own opinion on world politics. If anything, the Trump administration has shown that there are still some restraints to the president's power. At some point details were made foggy or even left out in Trump's security briefings out of fear they might get leaked to Twitter. The end result of this process isn't to keep the elites in power or to control the people, it's much more tame than that. People don't like change and when a new guy rolls in and decides that the way some government body does something is wrong, people will naturally resist.
There is always a power balance, usually in favour of the democratically elected officials, between the elected government and the government that sticks around. When push comes to shove the elected officials always have the power to overrule the unelected ones, but any future endeavours related to these parties would become difficult once you force matters.
The CIA, FBI, DoJ and FDA don't get a complete reshuffle every four years. The figureheads and even organisational top can get replaced, but there are many layers of middle management below them that have cemented their ways in difficult to change processes, workflows and office culture.
The system has its advantages, notably that the country doesn't collapse after giving a complete lunatic the reigns for four years, but also a great many disadvantages, notably elected officials being worked against in their quest for improvement and change. This effect can be increased or decreased, but it won't ever go away and denying that there is more to politics than elites at the top is just nonsensical in my opinion.
It will erode away as American influence does. Just ask the Brits what happened with their War Office, India Office, Colonial Office etc etc etc. No one thought those were ever going away either.
If it wasn’t Snowden it would have been someone else, matter if time.
Here’s what the gov should do:
1.) Pardon Snowden publicly 2.) Work with Snowden as public front, to build a better (more privacy conscious) surveillance network and win back the public’s trust
Will this ever happen? Probably not
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/15/494157921...
> The committee unanimously voted to endorse the report, and all members signed a letter to President Obama urging him not to pardon Snowden.