64% of Americans under 45 call Snowden a “whistleblower”

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 1 Comment
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who helped the government read your email and then betrayed us all by telling you

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who helped the government read your email and then betrayed us all by telling you about it

Here’s a fun quote from former UN ambassador John Bolton about why Edward Snowden is a traitor:

[Snowden] thinks he’s smarter and has a higher morality than the rest of us…that he can see clearer than the other 299,999,999 of us, and therefore he can do what he wants. I say that is the worst form of treason.

Guided by individual conscience? Singing the song of yourself? That’s not what America is about. America is about playing on the team. You’ll have plenty of time to worry about whether you participated in an immoral conspiracy in the moments before death. On an unrelated note, 64% of Americans under age 45 regard Snowden as a whistleblower, compared to only 50% aged 45 to 64 and 40% of those aged 65+. Totalizing theories after the jump.

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Close Readings: Keith Vaz on detaining Glenn Greenwald’s boyfriend

By Dan Brooks in War on Terror 2 Comments
Keith Vaz, chair of Parialment's Home Affairs Select Committee (artist's conception)

Keith Vaz, chair of Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee (artist’s conception)

The good news is that the United States was not involved in any way with the UK’s decision to detain David Miranda, partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, under Schedule 7 of Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000. Sure, we knew about it in advance, but we didn’t request or encourage it—nor do we condemn it, and we won’t say whether we benefited from it. According to pleasingly-named White House spokesman Josh Earnest, the British detention of the boyfriend of the journalist who reported the Edward Snowden leaks is just a fact the US government calmly absorbed, like a jellyfish encountering a Gummi Bear. Our executive branch’s placidity in the face of what is maybe the most naked abuse of anti-terrorism law in the modern era is a model we all can follow, and so is its use of understatement. Quote from important British person after the jump.

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Friday links! Birthday edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments

Cake-picture-1

I never thought I would live to see it, but people all over the world can use an electronic network to view pictures of unsuccessful cakes. Today is my birthday. I am 36, which means my opinion is no longer valuable re: movies, popular music or men’s shaving products. I took my brother to the airport at five this morning and drove home with the dim light of the 18-35 year-old demographic growing brighter ahead of me. It was an imperfect analogy, frankly, and I felt the tendrils of despair. Then I remembered that, in the words of MC Lyte or possibly Da Brat, age ain’t nothing but a number. It’s just a number and a social arbiter and a quantifiable reminder of my inexorable progress toward death, but on the plus side, everyone has to do what I say. Today is Friday, so read my arbitrary opinions and marvel at how I made it this far.

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Okay, they are looking at the content of your emails

By Dan Brooks in War on Terror 2 Comments
Traitor!

Traitor!

The New York Times announced today that, contrary to earlier assurances from the executive branch, the NSA is looking at the contents of large numbers of Americans’ emails. Don’t worry, though: they’re only looking at emails and text messages that originate or are received overseas, and they’re only searching for information related to specific targets. The word “target” appears in an alarming number of reassurances about this program. While we’re trusting implicitly the institutional structures of America, there’s also this paragraph from the Times report:

Hints of the surveillance appeared in a set of rules, leaked by Mr. Snowden, for how the N.S.A. may carry out the 2008 FISA law. One paragraph mentions that the agency “seeks to acquire communications about the target that are not to or from the target.” The pages were posted online by the newspaper The Guardian on June 20, but the telltale paragraph, the only rule marked “Top Secret” amid 18 pages of restrictions, went largely overlooked amid other disclosures.

Which is understandable, because why would journalists notice the one marked “Top Secret?”

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Friday links! Culture war edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

 

Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!

Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!

Let’s call this thing what it is: a war between two cultures that have somehow emerged from the same nation. Class warfare obviously isn’t happening. The average net worth of a US congressperson is just shy of $8 million dollars, which is approximately 100 times the median net worth of US households. This rich/poor thing is settled. Now we must lock ourselves in mortal struggle to resolve the conflict between tradition and modernity, ruralism and urbanity, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Community. Today is Friday, and America is on its H.L. Mencken, except for the half that’s on its William Jennings Bryan. Won’t you man the barricades with me?

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