Rixstep
 About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Home » Learning Curve

Snowden's Clemency

It's the wrong question.


Get It

Try It

Edward Snowden knows what he gave up. He used to live on Hawaii. That's a nice climate. Barry Obama should know - he went to Punahou. Now Snowden's in Moscow where the ice floes will start thawing in a few months.

He left a comfortable job and a nice girlfriend and flew to Hong Kong. And from that point, he broke all the rules of whistle-blowing. He came out and identified himself, then turned over all his materials to journalists. Putin's said he can't release anything whilst in Russia, and Snowden can't - he doesn't have the docs anymore. It's all out of his hands. As he says himself, his job is done.

Which makes it all the more risible how major publishers like the NY Times and the Guardian and now Sweden's Aftonbladet are advocating clemency for Snowden. Snowden should be forgiven.

And that's utter nonsense. Snowden's gone through a lot of trouble to get those documents to the world; he should be compensated for his hard work. And the crooks he's exposed shouldn't be talking about clemency - they should be talking about an apology - and perhaps a hero's welcome if he ever again sets foot on US shores.

But judging from the way the media react to him in the US, who could blame him for choosing voluntarily to remain in exile?

And this silly talk about a 'pardon' in exchange for all the docs he took. Whoah. A 'pardon' for what? There are no pardons here. Snowden did the right thing and those who caused this NSA mess don't get off with a pardon. There's a lot of work remains to restore life for our species on this planet and get away from 1984.

The Snowden documents are out there. They're in the hands of journalists. And there's speculation that other whistleblowers are already complementing with documents of their own. That stuff all belongs to the people of the planet. The Powers That Be have proven to be dishonest, to have betrayed us, and we want to see it all, dammit - we want to get to the bottom of it. No matter how long that takes.

We want to cleanse the system. We want the Keith Alexanders and Michael Haydens and James Clappers and all of their ilk roundly chastised. Certainly removed from office and preferably spending quality time in social rehabilitation institutions. Our governments need to make strong statements. That this type of shite isn't going to go on anymore. We need new institutions so someone we can trust is guarding the guardians.

Clemency? For whom? For Snowden it's not a question of clemency and for the crooks he exposed clemency is out of the question. The crooks are our duly elected representatives or were appointed by them. We're the employers. And we need to clean house.

See Also
Justice4Assange.com
Assange Defence Fund
WikiLeaks: Support WikiLeaks
The Police Protocol (Translated)
Rixstep: JA/WL (Assange/WikiLeaks)
Rixstep: Assange/WikiLeaks RSS Feed
Radsoft: Assange/WikiLeaks RSS Feed

About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Copyright © Rixstep. All rights reserved.