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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  • mike

    Ha, yeah. Perhaps we could talk about Comet Negra in 1347…

    Speaking of catastrophism, check out the Toba super-eruption if you really want a laugh. What a huge influence on human evolution that event was. Took our numbers down to perhaps as few as 1000. That’s why there is so little genetic diversity today.

    If you really want a laugh, watch “Toast of London” on Channel 4!

  • mike

    Panspermia, yes Ben, but I’m loth to consider the flip side of that!

    Ison will be an interesting lightshow, maybe another Chelyabinsk, and that’s that. And if it isn’t, well, no point worrying about it.

  • Ben

    Terror; Interestingly, I noticed Chile was a signatory/ratified Feb ’72 and Pinochet was anxious to carry forward Allende’s agenda. 🙂

  • Phil

    From New Statesman edited by Russell Brand

    Fatima Bhutto – Poet and writer: “What does revolution mean to you?”

    I was born in Kabul, grew up in Damascus, and live in Karachi — I carried a lot of heavy ideas about revolution while growing up in those cities. Revolution, I thought, was the struggle of justice, of memory against forgetting, the future against the past. It was how people fought power. Subcomandante Marcos, Che Guevara and Emma Goldman made up the weight of how I defined insurrection. But the idea of revolution is much older than that. It is an internal mutiny above all else: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. (That’s Buddha I just plagiarised but I doubt there is a truer description of revolution than those thousand-year-old lines.)

  • th Terror

    The US did ratify the CCPR, right. But not the CESCR, Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, sad to say. So the government gets institutional pressure about state violence from the CCPR treaty body and parties, but it escapes pressure to curb the institutional violence of corporate/state corruption in health, housing, food and water, labor, education, the environment, and the other CESCR areas.

    The banks’ illegal mass evictions, BP’s destruction of fisheries, predatory educational debt peonage, that’s all unlawful under customary international law and common law, but the CESCR would help enforce it with the recurring public disgrace of independent review.

  • Someone

    “Now you know why Homeland Security purchased 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition, enough ammunition to fight the Iraq war for 12 years, has its own para-military force and 2,700 tanks. If you think the “terrorist threat” in America warrants a domestic armed force of this size, you are out of your mind. This force has been assembled to deal with starving and homeless people in the streets of America.”

    http://paulcraigroberts.org/2013/10/23/ye-sow-shall-ye-reap-paul-craig-roberts/

  • guano

    Mike

    Your link to Prince Bandar threatening Putin gave me a good laugh.
    Russia is a wholly-owned asset of Ziostan, and Saudi Arabia is a wholly-asset of Ziostan, so they’re playing with yellow plastic ducks in their bubble bath. We in the UK live in a wholly-owned Ziostan asset run by wholly-bubbled up not with champagne twerps like Cameron and 100 ml.

    Prince Bandar is more worried about his country’s ability to preserve the pilgrimage than Putin is worried about false-flag staged events. Putin is more worried about his own position than supporting Assad. Both do what they are told by Ziostan until Ziostan gets its hands on Southern Syria. Russia controls nothing. Saudi controls nothing.

    But the bubbles covering up Ziostan’s private parts are only a finger’s tug from having its chain pulled on the bath plug. By the internet. How those totalitarian Zio-Marxo-Islamo- whatever lifts your skirt up fuckwits hate the fingers of free speech on that little plug!

  • Phil

    From New Statesman edited by Russell Brand

    Molly Crabapple – Artist: “What does revolution mean to you?”

    Earlier this month, a veteran set himself on fire on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The media barely noticed. Their story, when they bothered to tell it, was of a mentally ill man committing suicide. They did not ask what he might portend.

    Revolutions are terrible things. No matter how just the cause, for every ecstatic kid on the barricades, there’s a corpse. Revolutions are terrible, in the original sense of the word. They are bigger than human beings.

    Human lives are a currency that the revolution spends. Which is why you shouldn’t sit snug in your apartment and talk about revolution, like it’s a marketing slogan. It’s what people do when normality breaks down so far they can’t live otherwise.

    VVhen, on the eve of government shutdown, a veteran burns himself alive in front of the powerful hee-haws who sent him to kill, maybe the news should notice. Maybe they should view it with the gravitas they once gave to self-immolating Tibetan monks. Maybe they should stop pretending everything is normal. Because, from Tunis to Varna, men setting themselves on fire has always prefaced something bigger. No one wants a revolution. Until they do.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    Ben Franklin

    “Have you congratulated Snowden on his award?”

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Absolutely! By personal telegram, with copies to his lawyer and President Putin.

    How about you – or did you behave like a cheapskate and just congratulate him on this blog? 🙂

    *****************

    Always look on the bright side of life!

  • The Terror

    I see what you’re getting at. However by the same logic, OJ shows that laws against murder are bullshit. Michael Jackson shows that laws against child molest are bullshit. Jamie Dimon shows that laws against fraud and theft are bullshit. Should we scrap them all? Lots of people get away with stuff. For a while.

  • Ben

    What I was getting at is the seeming impotence of the UN to do anything except create Charters.

    We should expect criminals to escape punishment, although I take exception to the charges against MJ.

  • Phil

    From New Statesman edited by Russell Brand

    Deepack Chopra – Guru: “What does revolution mean to you?”

    I put my trust in inner revolution, although it is poorly understood. Citing the pitfalls of human nature, many would say that they don’t believe in inner revolution. We are too animal to be angels, and pretending to be angelic is worse than simply accepting how imperfect you are. The truth is that, when it comes to inner revolution, belief isn’t an issue. Inner transformation is a fact. It has occurred on the road to Damascus or sitting under the Bodhi Tree, and at this moment it is occurring, quietly, invisibly, modestly, in countless places. Inner revolution doesn’t make headlines and that’s something to be thankful for. This is the one event that cannot be diluted, polluted, corrupted or betrayed. Efforts to discredit prove less than futile. Politics is irrelevant.

    Inner revolution is actually a form of evolution, a leap of aspiration. As long as human beings aspire, against all external odds, to be peaceful, altruistic, compassionate, loving and embraced by the sacred, those qualities will keep manifesting. Nothing can stop this phenomenon. I have wondered my whole life how to create inner revolution on a mass scale. It’s a vision worth living for, most people would agree. But what lights the spark is when it’s the only vision worth living for.

  • Macky

    Anon: “Evidence please that Habbabkuk is an “Islamophobe”, please, Macky. Thanks”

    Funny enough look who pulled him up for advocating that British born Muslims who have “ bestial predilections on young girls”, should be deported for crimes that other British citizens cannot be deported for.;

    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/01/uzbek-cotton-slavery-campaign/#comment-389577

    And look how disappointed he was when Villager posted a clip of Muslim teenagers behaving stupidly;

    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/01/uzbek-cotton-slavery-campaign/comment-page-3/#comment-390344

    Yes, he is actually admonishing Villager for the clip not being demonising enough !

    He also very vexed about immigrants;

    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/02/nuclear-negotiations-with-iran/#comment-396594

    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/12/swing-to-mahama-across-nation/#comment-385385

    Here’s a very early summary of my charges against him;

    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/01/uzbek-cotton-slavery-campaign/comment-page-3/#comment-390372

    Here’s Clark’s view of the Hubbu_Clown Troll;

    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/03/craig-murray-in-cotton-corruption-scandal/#comment-398964

    And just for fun, here’s Villager’s (before the brain damage);

    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/03/collateral-damage-vince-fean-the-wrong-target/#comment-397571

  • th terror

    Funny how people blame the UN. These treaties, once ratified, are US law, supreme law of the land, equivalent to federal statute. The US can’t enforce its law – how is that the UN’s problem? The only difference between treaties and our worthless toilet-paper constitution is that treaties are subject to public independent review. You can fool the US population with propaganda but it’s much harder to fool the international experts and states parties.

    And if you hope to hold the government to some standards, why hold them to obsolete crap standards from the days of yore? The constitution’s gone. But so what? The new models are much improved.

  • Phil

    From New Statesman edited by Russell Brand

    Noam Chomsky – Linguist and philosopher: “What does revolution mean to you?”

    I cannot improve on Rosa Luxemburg’s eloquent critique of Leninist doctrine: a true social revolution requires a “spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois class rule . . . it is only by extirpating the habits of obedience and servility to the last root that the working class can acquire the understanding of a new form of discipline, self—discipline arising from free consent”. And as part of this “spiritual transformation”, a true social revolution will, furthermore, create — by the spontaneous activity of the mass of the population — the social forms that enable people to act as free creative individuals, with social bonds replacing social fetters, controlling their own destiny in freedom and solidarity.

  • Ben

    I’m not blaming the UN. I’m suggesting it’s role is as helpful in the husbandry of global relations as that of a Gelding.

    They are a body which is engineered to resolve regional and national disputes through a discussion, and have little weight to enforce agreement. And when the Body agrees to an intervention, it is dogged with not just one HUGE bureaucracy, but also the niggling of numerous national bureaucracies with opposing interests. It’s the best bad idea we have I guess.

  • Ben

    Macky; Your links reminded me of how many commentators have been driven off (another few notches in the gun-handle)

    ThatCrab, GlennUK, Herbie to mention just a few.

  • Macky

    Technicolour: “why have you persistently attacked – not questioned, or engaged with, but attacked – Craig’s moderator and one of the longest term posters on Craig’s board”

    Again you force me to be rude to you, as it’s questions like this that lead me to questioning your intelligence.

    Anon: “Do you have some dungeon somewhere where aspiring members of your gang are obliged to shoot an Israeli in the head to gain membership?”

    That’s a disgusting comment, worthy of being offensive enough to have been posted by the Habbu-Clown Troll, or the abusive Angry Aussie Jemand. (I notice though that Dreoilin “the Palestinian Supporter” finds it funny).

    Dreolin: ” I don’t do “tag team attacks”. I don’t do tag-teams”

    No, your nasty snark attacks on Mary often happened while she was being bullied & attacked by Chief Troll & his Villager Idiot assistant, just by accident.

    Dreolin; “And I’m quite happy to reiterate it”

    No doubt, after all it was issued as a dig at the person of your bitchy hate fixation.

    Anon: “because Jon failed to ‘deal with the problem’”

    Yes it was under his watch that an offensive & very obvious troll was allowed complete freedom for months to troll & insult here. When he finally decided to act, it was too little, too late, as the damage has been done, & it’s still affecting this Blog.

    Habbu-Clown Troll: “that the Eminences appear to confine their moral outrage and muscular condemnations to the behavior of the western world”

    Fun to remind you who you once included as one of the “Eminences”;

    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/02/the-iranians-are-coming-aaaaargggh/#comment-394179

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