I've been offline for a bit. Has anyone made the point that Edward Snowden is today's Nelson Mandela?
I'm recalling a conversation I had with someone born and raised in South Africa, who said Mandela was in jail for a reason as he was a terrorist who broke the law, (which of course has been much discussed recently). Someone else chimed in something like "it's different when you break laws to right an injustice..."
It's a complex issue, and I'd be surprised if someone hasn't already made the connection.
Mandela was respected for what he did after being released from prison, rather than what he did before going to prison.
When oppressive and divisive regimes fall, it often happens violently and they end up being replaced by regimes that are just as bad if not worse (see: Tsarist Russia, White-majority Rhodesia, many other postcolonial states). That didn't happen in SA, and Mandela is credited with that.
If the world ends up looking way more dystopian scifi than it does at the moment, there's maybe a scenario where Snowden ends up being today's Nelson Mandela, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Oh, that's totally true. I didn't mean to suggest that he isn't respected for his earlier actions (which, reading it back, I kinda did).
But I don't think he'd be thought about the same way if it wasn't for the second act. A lot of people are unfairly imprisoned by despotic governments. Not many become unifying figures in the way that Mandela did. So I don't think the comparison to Snowden is a good one.
I thought there was this world-wide campaign to free Mandela while he was in prison as well. Surely it couldn't be informed by what he would do in the future.
I should have been more clear on what someone may try to compare.
Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by authorities in power at the time, and was accused of treason, as is Snowden I believe. History judges Mandela otherwise, and deems him a hero. Will the same be true for Snowden? I guess it really is the same old debate that has been going on - is Snowden a hero or a traitor guilty of treason, and how will the answer to that question differ, if at all, in 25 to 30 years? Nothing new here besides the context in which the question is posed, which may or may not be valid.
I would firstly say I don't think there are any good modern-day comparisons to Nelson Mandela, and I don't think this is a productive discussion.
However, at least Tymoshenko is a political leader who is imprisoned by her home state for her continuing expression of and leadership in opposition to unjust policy; Snowden is none of these things, and I cannot imagine him taking that role in the future.
Sorry, I missed the part in Mandela's biography where he avoided jail time by skipping the country, and then proceeded to go dark in order to continue avoiding jail time. Snowden is better compared to spies than to revolutionaries. At best, he's a Loki.
He was arrested after sneaking back into S. Africa, after sneaking out of S. Africa, when someone tipped off the government about his location (he went dark to avoid capture, he was in hiding when they arrested him). He attempted to evade the S. African government and clearly would have avoided arrest by fleeing the country if possible. Note that one of the things he was charged with was "leaving the country without permission".
And just for the record Loki was captured. The imprisonment of Loki is an extremely important aspect of the mythology of Loki which should not be ignored in attempting to find modern analogues.
>The narrative continues that Loki was bound with the entrails of his son Nari, and his son Narfi changed into a wolf. Skaði fastened a venomous snake over Loki's face, and from it poison dripped. Sigyn, Loki's wife, sat with him holding a basin beneath the dripping venom, yet when the basin became full, she carried the poison away; and during this time the poison dripped on to Loki, causing him to writhe with such violence that all of the earth shook from the force, resulting in what are now known as earthquakes. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki
I've seen this before, on the same user. How, if he is hellbanned, do you see that he's trying to post? Is it unlocked on seasoned accounts similar to downmods?
The difference in public perception between Snowden and Bradley Manning is interesting. Is it because of the nature of the information leaked? Is it because Snowden got away, and some folks like to root for an underdog?
Manning leaked a large swath of information indiscriminately. The material was interesting to read, but perhaps the most notable thing about it was that there were no revelations.
Snowden leaked particular information for a clear purpose. That material has changed political discourse and public perception.
Manning largely revealed information about what the US was doing to foreigners (to a foreigner, in Assange), and Snowden largely revealed what the US was doing to US citizens.
The vocal majority in the US are racist, xenophobic nationalists, and are disgusted by the idea that any conceivable US initiatives would be even slightly compromised for the sake of any number of foreigners, anywhere. The gender-change was a nail in the coffin - because to a lot of the public, that others him into a foreigner too.
Snowden is very middle-class professional, dates a (female) model, races to Moscow through Hong Kong like a movie spy, and the President of Bolivia was pulled out of a plane just to find him (unsuccessfully.)
(American) people generally understand their world in terms of shallow stereotypes and movie narratives; they hate both subtitles and protagonists that aren't white middle-class heterosexuals.
Manning is a lot more of an underdog than Snowden.
Manning is much more of an underdog, but watching an underdog succeed (or come close) is what's interesting about underdogs. Watching an underdog get trounced? Boring.
If I was her I would want to be called the female name, and you should always be a nice person and treat others like you would want to be treated, I for one would think.
Actually, icelancer does get to decide. We all have to choose our nouns and pronouns, perhaps a relic of English lacking a neutral pronoun, but choose we must.
I think you'll find transgenders, et al, having to live the lives they do, have developed a far more nuanced take on public perception than fits with the role most of their self-styled allies have assumed on their behalf.
One of my first patients was an HIV positive stripper who presented with shingles. During the history, I noted the off-label estrogen and the B cup and asked "Darren, what pronoun would prefer?" "He is fine, but whatever makes you comfortable" he said.
I will always use "her" in reference to Pvt. Manning, but for historical accuracy, I try to split it between Bradley/Chelsea since it is usually more clear to the person I am talking to when doing so. I mean no disrespect.
Snowden revealed wrongdoing by people that the general public does not feel much of any sort of connection or loyalty to.
'The military', rather than 'the NSA' (both DoD, yes, but still rather distinct in the eyes of the public), is something that the American public has become convinced absolutely must be supported no matter their political stance or position on war. Support for the military must be unwavering, even if you support nothing that the military actually does. Anything short of that is un-American, therefore Manning is un-American.
Does it matter? It's not as if The Guardian bought Snowden's information in a bidding race. Snowden trusted Greenwald, who happened to be associated with The Guardian.
A newspaper should be judged on quality. If this leads to more income, all the better.
They have reputedly released roughly 1% of what they received. I think that simply dumping the docs would have had less impact than the steady stream of new revelations, but certainly I could be mistaken...
1) Is it better to vet the documents, and remove personal information etc. where appropriate? If yes, then I'd rather they were released as they were prepared.
2) Would we still be discussing this if they had been dumped in one lot? This is maybe much more clever than you think. More importantly; I expect it's more likely these events will eventually seep into broader public consciousness if they don't come and go in a single news cycle.
If he did not have an expectation that they would follow his timeline, he would be less likely to leak the docs to them, and possibly less likely to leak the docs at all. It's not like Snowden couldn't have just dumped all the docs on us if that was his intent.
And don't unwarrantedly put people in harms way, &c. Yes. It's called journalism. It's not perfect, but neither would an unfiltered dump have been. And it's far better than us not getting the docs at all, isn't it? Which is certainly another timeline Mr. Snowden could have chosen, at far greater personal convenience.
Probably not that much, to be honest. Most people here in the UK neither know nor care about him. Which is a real tragedy, but people just don't understand the technology side of it, and probably don't care anyway as they think it doesn't apply to them.
These stories have been popular with the Guardian's standard readership, but inside the UK at least, I doubt it has increased its market.
The Guardian have had a large focus to try to pick up US readership for a while (e.g. They launched CIF America).
The NSA coverage has probably helped them in that mission, in fact it is probably motivating a lot of their NSA coverage, the UK "switched off" over the issue almost day one.
Considering how expensive this kind of reporting is, in terms of legal fees, travel expenses and journalist salaries, I wouldn't be suprised if they made a loss.
It's not the most advertiser-friendly story either.
I think I'll run for President in 2016 on my platform will be to honor Edward Snowden as a hero, not enemy of state - give a full pardon, and bring him on as a security reform advisor. That + guaranteed basic income - and flat sales tax that fluctuates to pay for everything - and get rid of a lot of the red-tape in congress. -- Our laws need a big red marker, and some duct-tape to make sense in a 2.0 world.
it is when they drip feed the world for sales instead of publishing the information freely in one lump and separately writing articles.
the whole situation stinks tbh. despite the damage to NSA and GCHQ a number of other unsavoury elements in government are really benefiting from this...
The "lump it" method doesn't work, it's top news for a day then everyone gets back to what they were doing.
Dripping it out better highlights the incompetence of those who were tasked to keep it all in check (including journalism as a whole) and the extravagance of what has been going on by matching the scale of the surveilance to the scale of reporting.
It also highlights hypocrisy, such as the initial Merkel reaction "how dare they! Oh, well carry on" with the reaction after the revelations that Merkel was spied on "How dare they! We can't let this go on".
Not acting because "unsavoury elements will benefit" would just lead to a paralysis, unsavoury elements always find a way to benefit, it's part of what makes them so unsavoury.
The drip-feeding has been great! We get to see officials grudgingly acknowledge the latest revelation, and flatly deny we're doing whatever will be released next. Over and over.
I'm not - he's only a businessman, not a political activist, and his companies haven't done anything particularly spectacular this year (Model S was released in 2012).
Remember that the Graun is still a UK-based paper, and we don't idolise business-folk the way the US does.
I get the feeling in the UK we idolise wealth in entrepreneurship more than the US.
People talk about Musk and his electric cars and space ships, Zuckerberg for Facebook, Bill Gates for Microsoft, Steve Jobs for Apple, etc. Here in the UK no one knows what any of the Dragons really do, except that they are all wealthy and we should admire them mostly for that.
Meaden's a trailer park owner who tried and failed miserably to do some dancing, Bannatyne runs a gym, Hoppen lines cushions up, Jones is the only one who actually has any money despite the only thing I know he's behind is expansys.com (I suppose that backs the HTC accessories store so I have used it) and Linney... well, apparently has something to do with cloud computing but when he first appeared I looked him up and didn't recognise anything he'd been involved in.
I'm not surprised no one idolises them. Especially Meaden.
And are dodgy barrow boys (who fucked up his chance at the big time because of poor attention to detail), property developers oh and the accountant who got lucky.
I have seen some of the Drgons den types do a live session at a business start up show and my god if there was anything at all technical in the pitch you could see the poor dears eyes glaze over and how out of their depth they where.
Any time I've seen an article from The Guardian (or Washington Post) in the past 7 months, it's been Snowden related. If the poll was conducted in some other newspaper, maybe the distribution would be different, and there would be more than a meager 2,200 votes.
It will be interesting if a US based publication does the same. To do so would be to show a strong disregard for the officially supported narrative. People forget the complexities of emotions during the time of crisis when they look back through the lens of hindsight favorably.
If we can sustain the anger long enough to get durable change, Edward will be able to rightfully take some credit for that.
That's an actual leaking strategy: if you slowly release those documents, it will be talked about more, and more will be written about it. It also give more time to journalist to analyse it, and debate those documents, as it's not a simple to analyse...
Ironically people rant on Manning for just "dumping" a whole lot of documents wholesale. But if you release them slowly people are cynical about that as well.
To me it makes sense to do it slowly, apart from other considerations, to judge the effect, impact, ensure your actions aren't hurting people you don't intend, give opportunty for consultation with authorities if they want to come to the party and if it's appropriate.
This is silly. What about Lewis Hamilton and his successful move to the Mercedes Formula One team? He risked life and limb to win points. He is a true hero. This Snowden bloke simply sent some stolen documents to a Guardian journalist before hiding like a coward.
I don't feel awards are right unless they are full of evil wrong doers spiced up with a few populist entries. Hopefully Time magazine will have Feinstein win their Person of the Year award. Then order in the universe will be restored.
How does it help? Yesterday, we had a whistle blower in here. He helped by revealing the illegal activities of his government committed against their own people. How does racing a Formula One car ... help?
Edward Snowden will never, ever, be able to return "home", he is in a foriegn country which does not welcome his native language, does not welcome his native people- and he's there for as long as the media still talk about him.
given the choice between being Ed Snowden and being Lewis Hamilton, I would choose the latter hands down, every time.
Heh, I would describe myself as Lewis Hamilton "fan", and even I had to down vote that nonsense. I mean, its not even like Lewis had a decent season. By his own estimation, he performed poorly and has to do better for Merc next season.
If we want to get all F1 about it, look no further than Adrian Newey.
I'm recalling a conversation I had with someone born and raised in South Africa, who said Mandela was in jail for a reason as he was a terrorist who broke the law, (which of course has been much discussed recently). Someone else chimed in something like "it's different when you break laws to right an injustice..."
It's a complex issue, and I'd be surprised if someone hasn't already made the connection.
Edit: clarity