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Feinstein and Rogers: No Clemency For Snowden
Ars Technica reports, probably to no one's surprise, that U.S. elected officials are unlikely to start seeing Edward Snowden as a righteous whistleblower rather than a traitor to the U.S. government. From the article:"[Sunday], the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and her House counterpart, Mike Rogers (R-MI), both emphasized there would be no mercy coming from Washington. 'He was trusted; he stripped our system; he had an opportunity—if what he was, was a whistle-blower—to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say I have some information,' Feinstein told CBS' Face The Nation. 'But that didn’t happen. He’s done this enormous disservice to our country, and I think the answer is no clemency.'"
Here in Czech republic, one office worker reported corruption on Ministry of the Environment to the Prime Minister. The only thing that happened was that the office worker was fired by the end of week. So he gave all the evidence to media and now he's a senator (sponsored in the elections by Pirate Party, Greens and Christian Democrats).
Bingo, that is the thing people don't realize. If there isn't a corporate sponsor (like in the case of the Tea Party), what happens with any grassroots movements more specific than a few Facebook posts is what happened with Occupy -- a concerted, blitzkreig strike removing them off the board.
People forget the US is a police state. There are no knocks on the door like the Stasi; the door is kicked down, and the target wakes up with a taser pointed at their eyeball. In fact the city I live in has building codes requiring large windows in all new structures so a police sniper has a clean shot to at least 85-90% of the building from outside.
Americans can outvote what's in power just like East Germans had the power in the 1960s to out-vote the Stasi and the building of the Berlin Wall.
Occupy was America's Tienanmen Square. No, it wasn't anywhere near as brutal, but it doesn't take much for anyone living in the US to disappear into the private [1] prison system. There is no real way for people to protest. Take it to the street? It gets kettled. Take it to a park? Most parks are privatized, so people get rounded up wholesale for trespass. Take it to Facebook? Anything gets infiltrated and sabotaged, similar to how the Tea Party started out with legitimate grievances, but then got taken over and is now just another corporate mouthpiece. Even Occupy got overrun with anti-US Arabic propaganda towards the end (not many Americans use "down with the zionists" as a political slogan.)
It isn't a matter of won't, but can't. The US congress has a lower approval rating than "blue waffles" [2] for crying out loud.
Europe shouldn't feel contempt... it is pity. The problem is that a revolution is -impossible-. A UAV piloted by a mercenary from the Middle East (it won't be an American doing the dirty work) lobbing a few cans of VX gas at a few towns and farms, and the so-called "gun behind every blade of grass" would be lining up to surrender en masse, just like the Iraqis did in Desert Storm.
[1]: Yes, private, with its own lobby and campaign funding so only people who dish out maximum sentences stay in office come DA and judge elections. The two private prison corporations are some of the few stocks which have seen anywhere near Apple's prosperity with regards to prices. Not as earth-shattering, but doubling every few years.
[2]: NSFW, google the reference on an empty stomach.
What kind of logic is that? "He's already shot his wife, no reason to go after him." They'll go after him to satisfy their sense of justice, exact their revenge, and warn any other future whistle blowers of the consequences of their whistle blowing.