PapaJu

What bothers me more is all of those people went through the process of putting that photo together without any of them saying, "Hey, is this disrespectful?"

Gonna hazard a guess that he's not the only cadet saying stupid shit on Twitter. Or maybe he's doing it on purpose as part of some AFOSI ploy. Who knows.

That's effed up, but yeah, Boulder.

From a few years ago... https://thefire.org/article/9869.html

Snowden's not the first NSA "whistleblower" in the past decade, but he's received a heck of a lot more attention than the others. Why? Because he ran off to Hong Kong and has created a, "What will he do next?" saga for himself. So while I can't disagree with your pessimism, that's also sort of the point of civil disobedience. If you're going to stand for something, be ready to face the consequences. Snowden would have had a better leg to stand on if he was willing to take the punishment; in my opinion, he's lost credibility by fleeing abroad and using classified documents unrelated to domestic spying as bargaining chips.

Well, he didn't seem to make an effort to reach out to some of the members of Congress that HeloDude mentioned that have made a stink about this issue (that was the route Ellsberg went with the Pentagon Papers). Or he could've restricted his leaks to the domestic stuff and not start spilling stuff about our foreign collection methods/targets (and perhaps remained anonymous or revealed himself while staying in the country). I find the "sincere guy worried about American civil liberties" argument hard to believe when he takes other documents and flees to another country. I don't think he's off to sell stuff off to the Chinese or Russians per se, in fact I'm having trouble determining what his motives actually are. He was reportedly trying to go to Cuba, Venezuela, or Ecuador. Not exactly bastions of free media and government transparency, either. He did mention wanting to seek asylum in Iceland (after going to Hong Kong), but I have trouble buying that. Did he really think a democratic country with strong ties to the US was going to shelter him after he stole a bunch of classified documents and started giving them to the media? Either he's the most naive person on Earth or full of shit.

Ends don't justify the means. I don't think going the IG route would've done much (which is why I can empathize a bit more with Bill Binney's situation a few years ago, even though I don't condone the leaking of classified material), but the means by which Snowden did this does matter here. How can we support someone as acting in the interest of privacy when he proceeds to seek protection in authoritarian Russia? The fact that his supporters overlook this "minor" detail adds to my belief that so-called privacy advocates have become ideologically predisposed against anything the USG does rather than acting as objective watchdogs against abuse. Snowden is no hero.

Pulled a guy with a cybersecurity background--that's interesting in light of the NSA stuff the last couple of days.

Hey, at least he was for voters getting IDs first...

Asking the, "Was South Africa better before or after Apartheid?" question is absurd in the first place. Better for whites during Apartheid, potentially better for blacks after.

I actually agree with you in part--a lot of people aren't quite educated about who Mandela was and wasn't. He's often thrown into the same vein as MLK/Gandhi when, in fact, his past is much murkier. Still, Chief does have a point: you can't underestimate how tempting it was for Mandela to just pull a Mugabe and play the revenge game on those who had been part of the Apartheid regime. He didn't, and a lot of people who did really awful things (both under the previous regime as well as ANC people) weren't punished as a result of pursuing national reconciliation instead.

Wonder if the carrier even has planes on it: https://www.defensenews.com/article/20130928/DEFREG/309280009/Chinese-Media-Takes-Aim-J-15-Fighter

I bet a lot of Somali kids would love a sandwich right now...or any nourishment, really.

Please, God, no. Is it so hard to have a few police officers hanging around each checkpoint?

Either my sarcasm meter is broken or you missed the point of the article.