Edward Snowden Gets Sam Adams Award 3361

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Ray McGovern and the Sam Adams party have presented the Sam Adams award to Edward Snowden.  I am delighted.  This from Ray’s account of the event:

In brief remarks from his visitors, Snowden was reassured — first and foremost — that he need no longer be worried that nothing significant would happen as a result of his decision to risk his future by revealing documentary proof that the U.S. government was playing fast and loose with the Constitutional rights of Americans.

Even amid the government shutdown, Establishment Washington and the normally docile “mainstream media” have not been able to deflect attention from the intrusive eavesdropping that makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment. Even Congress is showing signs of awaking from its torpor.

In the somnolent Senate, a few hardy souls have gone so far as to express displeasure at having been lied to by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA Director Keith Alexander — Clapper having formally apologized for telling the Senate Intelligence Committee eavesdropping-related things that were, in his words, “clearly erroneous” and Alexander having told now-discredited whoppers about the effectiveness of NSA’s intrusive and unconstitutional methods in combating terrorism.

Coleen Rowley, the first winner of the Sam Adams Award (2002), cited some little-known history to remind Snowden that he is in good company as a whistleblower — and not only because of previous Sam Adams honorees. She noted that in 1773, Benjamin Franklin leaked confidential information by releasing letters written by then-Lt. Governor of Massachusetts Thomas Hutchinson to Thomas Whatley, an assistant to the British Prime Minister.

The letters suggested that it was impossible for the colonists to enjoy the same rights as subjects living in England and that “an abridgement of what are called English liberties” might be necessary. The content of the letters was so damaging to the British government that Benjamin Franklin was dismissed as colonial Postmaster General and had to endure an hour-long censure from British Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn.

There has been a determined attempt by government to justify the need to intercept everybody’s communications, all the time.  We have, yet again, had MI5 claim there are many thousand violent Islamic terrorists running around the UK, (yet somehow not managing to kill anybody).  The cry of “paedophiles” is raised, as always.  I can imagine them suggesting the entire population be shot dead, and justifying it as making sure they get the paedophiles.  The tabloids would go with that.

There still had not been a single credible claim by the mainstream media that any named individual has died, despite that contingency being trotted out all the time as the reason Snowden and Manning should not have revealed state crimes and abuse of power.  I am hopeful that, with the internet still largely free to the dissemination of information, out next massive whistleblower is only weeks away.

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3,361 thoughts on “Edward Snowden Gets Sam Adams Award”

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  • Ben

    BrianJ and Macky; Thanks for responding to my suggestion. I was thinking without my cap.

    Citizens of Damascus are literally bleeding, ours is merely metaphorical.

  • John Goss

    Anon, you are not interested in reading anything. You just come here with an agenda. You obviously know nothing about anything, your comments are totally without substance, everybody on here knows you to be what you are. And you are what you are. Do not address me ever again. I have enough dickheads to deal with in my daily life.

  • John Goss

    And for others who comment here I have been courteous most of the while and shall continue to be so. However I will not tolerate insults from ill-informed people who are not prepared to read an article but prepared to call the American-based organ which published it anti-American. As far as I am concerned anybody who does not treat me with respect will be sent under the bridge.

  • John Goss

    Ben, the troll. But yes I know there are more than one. I used to ignore them. And I’m going back to that policy. Perhaps if we all ignore them they can have a conversation among themselves. Can’t think of anybody who would want to listen to that drivel.

  • Anon

    Ok John, you crack on with the Rothschild stuff and I’ll not bother you again. Obviously as someone who advocates left-wing control of the media it was too much to ask for a balanced view.

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    Anon. 3 42

    “We all had a good laugh about the thought of Fedup being dismissed for calling his boss a ziofuckwit…”

    I know I might sound a bit judgemental here Anon, but I don’t think you’ve really got the hang of this “public diplomacy” job. Maybe you should have another look at the “Grooming” module.

    http://972mag.com/israeli-universities-becoming-hasbara-mills/38929/

    “We all”?……In your dreams!

  • MC

    Mary,
    I watched the Ambassadors last night and I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting a load of rubbish but I found myself enjoying it, regardless of where the inspiration came from. Mitchell and Webb were quite suited to their roles.

    Looks like Unite have realised that they overreached themselves at Grangemouth and are willing to consider the Ineos’ proposal made on Monday. Hopefully 800 people will keep their jobs rather being forced into unemployment by their Union’s intransigence.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-24647843

    All,
    As for Russell Brand he is a self-promoting fool. The comment has already been made that like an awful lot of wealthy ‘revolutionaries’ he talks an excellent game but is perfectly happy to exist within a structure which pays him millions to talk and write total tosh.

  • Ben

    Journalism is largely a capitalist venture, so I’m not sure Lefty dominance will get any traction.

    Plenty of Capitalists here to applaud the theme of Capital/Authoirtay, so the playing field is tilted enough, except for the plenty.

  • The terror

    Don’t understand why BBC apparatchiks pester Brand about the alternative to UK squalor. Professional propagandists in the US satellites normally go through frantic contortions to ignore the obvious alternative.

    It’s not Brand’s place to define the alternative because it has already been specified in detail and adopted by universal acclamation. If the state were to comply with these minimal standards of the civilized world, the US or the UK as we know it will cease to exist. They would be tranformed beyond recognition.

    The minimal standards are, comply with the UN Charter, the International Bill of Human Rights, and the Rome Statute.

    This change entails continuing remedial measures. The Limberg Principles and the Siracusa Principles, along with treaty body general comments, set limits on government encroachment and predation. The Paris Principles align state institutions with government obligations. The right to peace and the right to development put the state on a treadmill of continual demands for improvement. Education in universal norms protects the public from statist indoctrination.

    Seen it done twice. It works. This is how you take a violent, discredited kleptocracy like the US or UK, and get it back on track. Doesn’t look much like an old-time revolution – the outside world will do more to make it happen than the subject population can do. But that’s always the way with states that have failed to protect.

    The world is gradually imposing these standards on pariah states like ours. Official criminals can’t escape them.

  • Ben

    The Terror; Is Agenda 21 part of that mix? The USG seems to want to make the Continent rest easy, as they promote the benign nature as what, a test-case for the rest?

  • mike

    MC, The Ineos owning carpetbagger Jim Ratcliffe purchased Grangemouth using high yield high(risk) debt. I cannot think of a more important piece of critical national infrastructure than an oil refinery – the UK only has two of them. Chancers shouldn’t be allowed to waltz in and buy oil refineries. They are too important (leaving any carbon reduction arguments aside for the mo). I realise Unite are by no means guilt free (especially with regard to Falkirk, which started the current trouble) but Ratcliffe, from the outset, was looking for a chance to squeeze the workforce. Unfortunately, Unite presented him with a gift.

  • fedup

    anon-villageC-techniC one and the same gleefully creams itself

    We all had a good laugh about the thought of Fedup being dismissed for calling his boss a ziofuckwit, and wished him the best of luck with finding a new job.

    The supremacist fuckwit verily believes every fucking boss to be a ziofuckwit and a supporter of the supremacist fuckwits in that lunatic asylum aka zionistan. All the while enjoying itself that I am out of a job and desperate. Although it does not compute that if I am out of job then how come I am managing to post during the day?

    These ziofuckwit wankers first told me I am an Islamist, then found out I am a drunkard always in the pub, and now I am a jobless out of work who posts from the local library during the day next to the jobcentre plus.

    Well I am beat, when will I manage to get a fucking crystal ball as good as theirs? Oh forgot, only ziofuckwits can have superduper crystal balls.

  • ESLO

    I am off and will buy a new statesman for my journey

    Some of us have been subscribers for 30+ years – and despite all that we get labelled as neo con Zionist etc. I did enjoy the issues edited by Jemima Khan and Richard Dawkins – and I can still tolerate the likes of Pilger.

  • fedup

    Sofia Kibo Noh 24 Oct, 2013 – 5:33 pm, That link of yours is so funny, there is ziofucwit troll, trolling the place. Only slight trouble is, it is one of the outside jobbies and has no fucking idea about its unconscious drivelling!

  • The terror

    Nah, Ben, not really. Agenda 21 is optional, unlike the mandatory state obligations of human rights and humanitarian law, which are binding as customary international law or jus cogens.

    Agenda 21 is just the current bugaboo of the Republican Party (which of course is an organ of the state, like the Dems.) The US governent acknowledges its state duty of development in the international space while keeping it a secret from the subject population at home.

    The clearest sign of the degenerate state of US politics is a nation tearing itself up over Obamacare, which deals with one clause of one paragraph of one article of the CESCR (12.2.d), and it never occurs to anybody to lay the whole CESCR on the table as a policy. In fact, when’s the last time you heard anybody admit that the US is a signatory?

  • Anon

    Little Sofia chips in to accuse me of being a ‘hasbara agent’. I have never once stated support for Israel on this blog or anywhere else, because there is very little to defend. I genuinely believe that she and others here are obsessed with Israel way beyond concern for the suffering of Palestinians, or else we would see posts on all manner of conflicts and injustices around the world. As I wrote the other day, several thousand have been killed and thousands more injured, from many different religions and in dozens of different countries, in the last month alone, by Islamist terrorists, and yet we see no comment on that here at all. That is why it is difficult not to conclude that the obsession with Israel is motivated by a particular dislike of Jews.

    Fedup, the joke was not that your boss was a zionist but that you see zionism in your breakfast bowl. If you could see your constant unhinged ranting from the other side, it makes quite an amusing mental picture to imagine you calling your boss a ziofuckwit for, say, asking you to turn up for work on time. But you should never have to explain a joke…

  • Scouse Billy

    Jemand, I applaud you for posting something worthwhile.

    The Lipid Hypothesis was based largely on a scientific fraud (cherry picking data) by Ancel Keys (who incidentally was the inventor of K Rations).

    In fact, it is the polyunsaturated fats (high in Omega 6) and worse still the trans (hydrogenated) fats that cause inflammation leading to atheroschlerotic plaques etc.

  • Anon

    MC,

    Absolutely, I have the utmost respect for lefties who do walk the walk, but there are very few of them, and Russell Brand certainly ain’t one of them. If he is calling for revolution, we should rise up and seize his millions, no? After all, he did say that wealth comes at the expense of others!

  • mike

    Anon, the issue for me is who finances/handles the globetrotting bogeymen of AQ, and why. There was something a little fishy about the Westgate Mall attack, while the gassing in Ghouta was patently not what “we” said it was.

    I’ve posted this a couple of times, but it’s worth repeating:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10266957/Saudis-offer-Russia-secret-oil-deal-if-it-drops-Syria.html

    Saudi and Israel essentially have the same goals in the Middle East.

    You might also want to have a look at this, written by former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook just a few days before he conveniently died. NB his comment on what AQ actually is.

    http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development

  • mike

    All eyes on Ison,, eh Ben? When do our paths cross, in the middle of next month? Should be some interesting bolide action then.

    I like the way in which the Suspicious Observers present their viewpoint. I’d never come across them until I followed your link. Thanks for that. Their vid on the movement of the Earth’s poles and the seisimc influence of the sun’s magnetic field was something I’d been chewing over for a while. Nice to see it laid out so cogently, and with a humourous slant to boot.

  • Ben

    Glad you enjoy, Mike. SO does a good job of keeping the folks who want to protect the public from themselves honest.

    If we were in friendly company, I would share my concerns about passing through ISON’s debris field. 🙂

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