The mask of our democracy is falling: A letter from #Brazil
Posted on June 17, 2013 by Akashma Online News
Source Truth is a Beaver

contribution from Franco A., an undergraduate student of International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, translated from French
It’s true: I do think all the signs in Portuguese are a problem for those who wish to understand the protests that are taking place in my country. I hope this article will be useful to shed some light on what is actually happening in Brazil today.
You have maybe already heard the superficial reasons for the recent wave of protests as the media has announced them. A rise of 20 cents in R$ for a bus ticket, leading to a ticket price of 3,20 R$, which is the equivalent of a modest 1,14 Euro.
The pictures that have decorated the international news pages of most of the world’s important newspapers, images of burning trash cans in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, mass mobilization in São Paulo, tear gas grenades fired by the police, overall just images of violence, do raise the question : all of that for 20 cents ? There are many people who have already asked themselves this question.
My answer to all of them is : No, “all” of this not just for 20 cents.
Brazil is still a poor country, inhabited by a population that is generally poor by global standards. The minimum wage, despite successive wage increases over the last years, is still a bad joke : 678 R$, which makes 242 Euros. Many workers live very far away from their workplace, which means they have to buy numerous tickets to get there. At the end of a month, another 20 cents can make the difference between eating and not eating. A number of low-paid workers, when they were interviewed by the media, have effectively admitted that due to the bus fare increase, they would have to go to sleep without eating more often than before.
Nonetheless, the revolt has not started for 20 cents and will not end as soon as the price is lowered again. Similar to the movement of Gezi Park in Istanbul, which has not really erupted because of the decision to build a shopping mall, or the demonstrations in Tunisia, which were not really caused by the suicide of Mohammed Bouazizi, no one in Brazil is revolting because of 20 cents. All of these uprisings share a set of deep-seated causes, which accumulate over the years, followed by a symbolic event which serves as the first spark that ultimately lights the fire.
“If the price doesnt fall, the city will come to a halt”
Like many countries today, Brazil lives through a civil war between the State and the people. This war, up until a few weeks ago, was happening without much noise but in no way more peaceful than now. For way more than a century, Brazil has been governed by politicians who see the revenue from taxes payed by their citizens – those who they ought to represent – as a mere bank account. Whole states (regions) belong to a certain group or a political dynasty, families who, before being elected to office, had already been the feudal lords of enormous latifundios, with family trees as old as the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil. In Brazil, more than anywhere else in the world, the oppressors of today are the oppressors of tomorrow.
The foundation of Brasília, in 1960, has not improved anything. In fact, the passage from the old capital Rio de Janeiro to the new one in the middle of the country, planned and constructed within five years, an apotheosis of modernity, has only reaffirmed the odious tendencies of Brazilian politics. Rio de Janeiro was a cosmopolitan center in those days, inhabited by more than one million people, the heart of a very active workers’ and citizens’ movement. Brasília, in contrast, an artificial capital, did not even have any population before its foundation; even if this has changed over time, it continues to be primarily inhabited by an army of bureaucrats, who will not criticize the government very often, as they depend on it and are well-paid. None of the other metropoles of Brazil has the same political importance and the majority of them is too far away from Brasília for the population to travel there and directly show their indignation to our President.
Brazil is living through a special moment today, it’s true. Some well-applied political programs over the last decade have brought impressive results: economic inequality – a real cancer of which Brazil was practically world champion – has been reduced notably. The program Bolsa Família has had much success to reduce poverty and the investments in higher education for the poor as well as for ethnic minorities have shown encouraging results.
This is not about questioning the things that have worked well. These experiences of the last 10 years under the administration of the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers’ Party) must be protected and enlarged if one wants to create a more just society, with less poverty and exploitation from the forces of the past, like the feudal lords from the Sarney family. This is not just about protesting against the government of the PT, against the President Dilma, or against Geraldo Alckmin, Fernando Haddad or Eduardo Paes. This is about freeing the country from its authoritarian, dictatorial, and cruel heritage.
If, at the end of these protests, the political class of Brazil – a class for itself more than any other – and its army of capitalist crétins who enrich themselves not through work but thanks to their personal connections, its journalists who prostitute themselves in the interest of an elite, its policemen who kill without hesitation, if all these oppressors are removed from power and forced to recognize that an era of true democracy is arriving, then I will be very happy to pay 20 cents more.
Here’s something curious: In Brazil, demonstrations are traditionally seen as something for the “bo-bos,” an entertainment for the children of the rich who have nothing productive to do, an excuse to paint one’s face and to shout in the street.
If the demonstrations are seen like this, then it’s because, to a certain degree, it’s correct. The majority of people who participate in the protests are effectively young people coming from rich families (sometimes very rich) who have a rather leftist political vision that is considered by some as incompatible with their social class. The strange combination of protest chants inspired by worker movements of the 20th century and the not-at-all-worker-like upbringing of the protesters is very often ridiculed by the media and this perspective ends up being internalized by a large part of the Brazilian population, a country where fatalistic cynicism has been lifted to the level of art.
But here’s an interesting situation: When I participated in a demonstration of the “movement of the 20 cents” (using this name seems, at least for the moment, more practical than “movement to reduce the bus ticket price by 20 cents again”), we were stopped near the Central do Brasil, the famous train station which you probably know from the movie of the same name. The demonstration up to this point had been entirely peaceful, a real party of democracy. The majority of us were, in fact, university students from wealthy families, but already then one could see that this movement had a social base that was more heterogeneous: we also had numerous people from independent professions, retirees, and poor workers among us who were dissatisfied by this fare increase. It’s very rare for a protest in Rio de Janeiro to attract more than 200 people but we were around two thousand from several social classes. I began to realize that it was something different this time. The Brazilian people was waking up from its long sleep – and it was furious.
The calm was not there to stay. Special forces from the police, with their shields, their black uniforms, frightening looks, and “non-lethal” weapns had just arrived and started to make a line in front of us. Our group stopped. The songs fell silent. The situation almost seemed like a duel from a Western movie.
All of a sudden, something happened. The people coming out of the Central do Brasil joined us. They were street side vendors, selling fries, or mothers with four children, the children in the street, or hobos and beggars. The poor, the poorest of the city of Rio, came together and positioned themselves right between us and the police.
A few minutes later, the riot police shot at us and arrested 40 people, among them a friend of mine. On the run, as I was trying to seek refuge in the closest metro stop, I saw a man who was crying and seemed weak. He was bleeding – a victim of “non-lethal” arms.
These scenes have repeated themselves innumberale times, at all places where the people have had the courage to lift their voice against a decision which directly affects the majority of the population without ever being consulted. An authoritarian way of doing politics, and a type of politics which is only interested to benefit a cartel of bus companies, well-known for ther connections with the electoral campaigns of the mayor of Rio and other important figures. Bellow all of this: a deaf-mute federal state that takes the people hostage for private companies, financed by public money. The resultats are: bad services, high fares, revolt.
In São Paulo, the police shot at demonstrators who were carrying flowers. Just a couple of days later, they forbade carrying vinegar in the city because it could be used against the effects of tear gas; they simply allowed themselves to search people, looking for it. In Minas Gerais, all demonstrations were banned during the FIFA Confederations Cup 2013. One project that is being discussed in the Chamber of Deputies is a bill that would characterize all demonstrations during the World Cup 2014 as “terrorist,” including similarly grave punishments. In Rio de Janeiro, in the wake of a new confrontation with the police on June 16, close to Stade du Maracanã, certain demonstrators tried to flee from the fight by hiding at a friend’s house. The police, then, started to invade the houses in search of these “criminals.” The mask of our democracy is falling and the authoritarian roots of our political establishment have become visible – roots originating in a compromise with the military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985, which ended by bringing those who had fought for democracy closer to the old major figures of authoritarianism.
The symbolic alliance between Lula, the hero of the labor movement of the 70s and 80s, and Paulo Maluf, the last presidential candidate of the moribund military regime, shows that the political class is just interested in power itself and does not have an actual political project to offer. But thanks to them and their watchdogs from the police, the “Movement of the 20 cents” is becoming a movement to say what one thinks, the right to say that one wishes to live in a real democracy.
This is what is happening in Brazil. But this doesn’t stop at our borders – it’s a global struggle, against all dictators, may they come from a Unity Party, that of Moscow or that of Capital. Our world is interconnected and so will be the global resistance against those who believe they can govern us with their orders.
It is winter in Brazil at the moment but, figuratively speaking, we are living through our spring, a spring of popular action and mobilization against injustices. I hope that spring will last – otherwise, it might be the last spring before an eternal winter.
Solidarity from Turkey: “Resist Brazil: We are together in this fight”
Thank you for your article, Franco! Solidarity from France and Germany!
The Giant Is Waking Up:”
Interview with Gonzalo
Gonzalo G. is a friend of our group at “Truth is a Beaver” and an undergraduate student of the social sciences at Sciences Po’s Latin American campus in Poitiers. He comes from Rio de Janeiro.
1) Why are the recent protests in Brazil something new ?
Despite all the big changes in Brazil over the last years, what is still missing is a true social change! This conformism which has haunted the country for a long time has to go, the people have to revolt, go to the street, protest – but nothing of this sort had been done before, the Brazilian continued his day on the sofa, watching Novelas and complaining each time a protest arises that it will make him be late to work. But corruption was always present, just as much as sleeping children in the street has been a normal part of our everyday life. Hospitals in Brazil have still always had a lack of medicine, equipment, and places.
Overall, Brazil is a conservative country. The values of Brazil are still the same as fifty years ago and the old Brazilian thinks like he did in his youth – and a large part of the youth of today thinks the same way as well, unfortunately. I read an article the other day that said all of the recent protests have given back the ability to dream to those older generations who had forgotten how to do it : dream of a better country, of social justice, of equality for all.
These protests started with the bus fare increase of 20 cents and was organized by the the movement Passe livre (Free fare movement). It developed step by step (a bit like in Turkey, which started with a simple demonstration for a park and ended up in a movement demanding the removal of the prime minister) – into a social movement that no one had seen coming! These 20 cents were the drop that finally spilled the cup.
Many journalists have been attacked or arrested.
2) How do the protesters organize ?
How did they actually get started ? Another time : Facebook ! It’s the tool, the tripping divice, of social movements (I won’t go up to the point to draw a direct line between the Arab Spring and this Brazilian Spring in Winter but the principle is the same). Through Facebook, everyone shares information on the protests, even the central slogans on the signs are chossen through Facebook groups with the option to make a survey etc. Also, Facebook has become an important tool to pass videos of police violence along, to share advice on how to protect oneself against tear gas, how to reach doctors or lawyers.
3) What is the role of the police in the development of the movement?
What is funny and another time very comparable to Turkey is the fact that the police agression is the actual source of all of these demonstrations. Brazil has a fascist police, corrupted and badly trained, especially for situations like these, up to the point that people in the streets call Brazil a dictatorship (in Rio they call it “Ditadura Paes,” after the prefect of the Rio region, Eduardo Paes). The protests had, at the beginning, a pacifist strategy and, in principle, still do today but the numerous cases of police violence against the protestors have just re-affirmed their case and given reason to more and more people to not only demand the decrease of public transport fares but also to get involved to change the whole country, which, despite the general belief, still works very badly for most. Look at the videos from Rio or São Paulo and you will see the absurdity of the scenes, the unnecessary force used by the military police, the agressions against journalists, who are there to do their job but end up being shot with rubber bullets and tear gas grenades. Numerous journalists have been injured and hundreds of people arrested.
What’s curious is that a large part of the arrests were made on the 4th day of protest when the cops had the order to arrest all people who were carrying vinegar – a useful tool against the effects of tear gas – in their backpacks or pockets! The absurdity of the situation, the fact that people get arrested for the possession of vinegar – please!) has been widely commented in the media and the response of the people lived up to the same level of absurdity as police and government: they organized a “Marcha para legalizaçao do Vinagre” (a parody of the “Marcha para legalizaçao da maconha” for the legalization of cannabis).
4) What social class is pushing the protest forward?
The rich really don’t care about this question since the public transport system is almost not used by them at all and the poor do not have any time to lose for such questions either, since watching a football match is still a thousand times more important than going to the street to defend one’s rights. Marx said that religion is the opium of the people – in Brazil, it’s football. So it’s the middle class that actually defends the civic rights of Brazilians but it’s not always easy. On one side, you face the manipulative media (O Globo, Rede Record, etc.) and on the other side, you have a conformist population who is not interested in political life. They still try to do their best, showing that one can change a country, and that they want the peace, which has been destroyed multiple times by the military police. Humour is very present in their banners and chants and many people bring flowers to the protests to give them to policemen as a symbol of peace.
5) What can we expect for the time to come?
I don’t have an answer to this, and I don’t think there are many specialist who actually do. The days of action against the fare increase continue, the next one is June 17 and more and more people will be there. Even if the fare increase will not be taken back, at least Brazil will have understood one thing: the people have the power – a power they did not know about but one that becomes more and more present in the mentality of young Brazilians. One cannot foresee how a government could possibly counteract such a process because if a country of more than 200 million people is waking up, that’s going to make noise, a lot of noise. So for once, in a long time, the Brazilian people has an actual reason to be proud of itself.
#vaipraruabrasil
Iran to send 4000 troops to Aid Syria
World Exclusive: US urges UK and France to join in supplying arms to Syrian rebels as MPs fear that UK will be drawn into growing conflict
By ROBERT FISK
SOURCE: The independent
SUNDAY SUNDAY Sunday 16 June 2013
Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.
For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.The Independent on Sunday has learned that a military decision has been taken in Iran – even before last week’s presidential election – to send a first contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the largely Sunni rebellion that has cost almost 100,000 lives in just over two years. Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel.In years to come, historians will ask how America – after its defeat in Iraq and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan scheduled for 2014 – could have so blithely aligned itself with one side in a titanic Islamic struggle stretching back to the seventh century death of the Prophet Mohamed. The profound effects of this great schism, between Sunnis who believe that the father of Mohamed’s wife was the new caliph of the Muslim world and Shias who regard his son in law Ali as his rightful successor – a seventh century battle swamped in blood around the present-day Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala – continue across the region to this day. A 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, compared this Muslim conflict to that between “Papists and Protestants”.America’s alliance now includes the wealthiest states of the Arab Gulf, the vast Sunni territories between Egypt and Morocco, as well as Turkey and the fragile British-created monarchy in Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan – flooded, like so many neighbouring nations, by hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees – may also now find himself at the fulcrum of the Syrian battle. Up to 3,000 American ‘advisers’ are now believed to be in Jordan, and the creation of a southern Syria ‘no-fly zone’ – opposed by Syrian-controlled anti-aircraft batteries – will turn a crisis into a ‘hot’ war. So much for America’s ‘friends’.Its enemies include the Lebanese Hizballah, the Alawite Shiite regime in Damascus and, of course, Iran. And Iraq, a largely Shiite nation which America ‘liberated’ from Saddam Hussein’s Sunni minority in the hope of balancing the Shiite power of Iran, has – against all US predictions – itself now largely fallen under Tehran’s influence and power. Iraqi Shiites as well as Hizballah members, have both fought alongside Assad’s forces.Washington’s excuse for its new Middle East adventure – that it must arm Assad’s enemies because the Damascus regime has used sarin gas against them – convinces no-one in the Middle East. Final proof of the use of gas by either side in Syria remains almost as nebulous as President George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.For the real reason why America has thrown its military power behind Syria’s Sunni rebels is because those same rebels are now losing their war against Assad. The Damascus regime’s victory this month in the central Syrian town of Qusayr, at the cost of Hizballah lives as well as those of government forces, has thrown the Syrian revolution into turmoil, threatening to humiliate American and EU demands for Assad to abandon power. Arab dictators are supposed to be deposed – unless they are the friendly kings or emirs of the Gulf – not to be sustained. Yet Russia has given its total support to Assad, three times vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that might have allowed the West to intervene directly in the civil war.In the Middle East, there is cynical disbelief at the American contention that it can distribute arms – almost certainly including anti-aircraft missiles – only to secular Sunni rebel forces in Syria represented by the so-called Free Syria Army. The more powerful al-Nusrah Front, allied to al-Qaeda, dominates the battlefield on the rebel side and has been blamed for atrocities including the execution of Syrian government prisoners of war and the murder of a 14-year old boy for blasphemy. They will be able to take new American weapons from their Free Syria Army comrades with little effort.From now on, therefore, every suicide bombing in Damascus – every war crime committed by the rebels – will be regarded in the region as Washington’s responsibility. The very Sunni-Wahabi Islamists who killed thousands of Americans on 11th September, 2011 – who are America’s greatest enemies as well as Russia’s – are going to be proxy allies of the Obama administration. This terrible irony can only be exacerbated by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adament refusal to tolerate any form of Sunni extremism. His experience in Chechenya, his anti-Muslim rhetoric – he has made obscene remarks about Muslim extremists in a press conference in Russian – and his belief that Russia’s old ally in Syria is facing the same threat as Moscow fought in Chechenya, plays a far greater part in his policy towards Bashar al-Assad than the continued existence of Russia’s naval port at the Syrian Mediterranean city of Tartous. For the Russians, of course, the ‘Middle East’ is not in the ‘east’ at all, but to the south of Moscow; and statistics are all-important. The Chechen capital of Grozny is scarcely 500 miles from the Syrian frontier. Fifteen per cent of Russians are Muslim. Six of the Soviet Union’s communist republics had a Muslim majority, 90 per cent of whom were Sunni. And Sunnis around the world make up perhaps 85 per cent of all Muslims. For a Russia intent on repositioning itself across a land mass that includes most of the former Soviet Union, Sunni Islamists of the kind now fighting the Assad regime are its principal antagonists.Iranian sources say they liaise constantly with Moscow, and that while Hizballah’s overall withdrawal from Syria is likely to be completed soon – with the maintenance of the militia’s ‘intelligence’ teams inside Syria – Iran’s support for Damascus will grow rather than wither. They point out that the Taliban recently sent a formal delegation for talks in Tehran and that America will need Iran’s help in withdrawing from Afghanistan. The US, the Iranians say, will not be able to take its armour and equipment out of the country during its continuing war against the Taliban without Iran’s active assistance. One of the sources claimed – not without some mirth — that the French were forced to leave 50 tanks behind when they left because they did not have Tehran’s help.It is a sign of the changing historical template in the Middle East that within the framework of old Cold War rivalries between Washington and Moscow, Israel’s security has taken second place to the conflict in Syria. Indeed, Israel’s policies in the region have been knocked askew by the Arab revolutions, leaving its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hopelessly adrift amid the historic changes.Only once over the past two years has Israel fully condemned atrocities committed by the Assad regime, and while it has given medical help to wounded rebels on the Israeli-Syrian border, it fears an Islamist caliphate in Damascus far more than a continuation of Assad’s rule. One former Israel intelligence commander recently described Assad as “Israel’s man in Damascus”. Only days before President Mubarak was overthrown, both Netanyahu and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called Washington to ask Obama to save the Egyptian dictator. In vain. If the Arab world has itself been overwhelmed by the two years of revolutions, none will have suffered from the Syrian war in the long term more than the Palestinians. The land they wish to call their future state has been so populated with Jewish Israeli colonists that it can no longer be either secure or ‘viable’. ‘Peace’ envoy Tony Blair’s attempts to create such a state have been laughable. A future ‘Palestine’ would be a Sunni nation. But today, Washington scarcely mentions the Palestinians.Another of the region’s supreme ironies is that Hamas, supposedly the ‘super-terrorists’ of Gaza, have abandoned Damascus and now support the Gulf Arabs’ desire to crush Assad. Syrian government forces claim that Hamas has even trained Syrian rebels in the manufacture and use of home-made rockets.In Arab eyes, Israel’s 2006 war against the Shia Hizballah was an attempt to strike at the heart of Iran. The West’s support for Syrian rebels is a strategic attempt to crush Iran.
Top story
Blood on your hands: Putin attacks Cameron over SyriaRussian President rounds on Britain at a Downing Street press conference over support for Syrian rebels, and says his country will continue to arm ‘legitimate government’
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National Security Letters
Posted on June 11, 2013 by Akashma Online News
National Security Letters
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Defending Your Rights in the Digital World
Of all the dangerous government surveillance powers that were expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act the National Security Letter (NSL) power under 18 U.S.C. § 2709 as expanded by PATRIOT Section 505 is one of the most frightening and invasive. These letters served on communications service providers like phone companies and ISPs allow the FBI to secretly demand data about ordinary American citizens’ private communications and Internet activity without any meaningful oversight or prior judicial review. Recipients of NSLs are subject to a gag order that forbids them from ever revealing the letters’ existence to their coworkers to their friends or even to their family members much less the public.
The FBI’s systemic abuse of this power has been documented both by a Department Of Justice investigation and in documents obtained by Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act request.
EFF has fought for years to spread awareness of National Security Letters and add accountability and oversight to the process.
In 2007 EFF filed Freedom of Information Act litigation seeking documentation of National Security Letter misuse by the FBI. Thousands of pages of documents were released over a period of four years leading to repeated revelations of government abuses of power. An EFF report based on these documents led to tough questions for the FBI before Congress. The documents also helped prompt the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied to Congress.
In 2008 EFF defended the Internet Archive from an inappropriate National Security Letter. Because NSLs come with a gag order most recipients are unable to ever reveal their existence. However with the help of EFF and the ACLU the Internet
Archive fought back and won the right to speak publicly about the letter. As a result it’s become one of the few well-documented and publicly-known cases of NSL use.
And in 2013, EFF won a landmark decision in the Northern District of California in which Judge Susan Illston declared one of the statutes unconstitutional in its entirety. EFF’s petition, brought on behalf of an unidentified telephone service provider, challenged both the underlying authority to obtain customer records as well as the concurrent gag provision that prevented the recipient from disclosing even that it had receiving an NSL.
EFF has been fighting in Congress for legislative reform of National Security Letters since 2005. In 2009 many hoped that President Obama having run for office promising to reform Bush-era surveillance abuses would work with Congress to curb NSL abuse. Unfortunately the Obama Administration has instead continued to block reform and has even sought to expand NSL powers.
Snowden Censored by Craven Media
Posted on June 10, 2013 by Akashma Online News
10 June 2013
Snowden Censored by Craven Media
Mr. Snowden, please send your 41 PRISM slides and other information to less easily cowed and overly coddled commercial outlets than Washington Post and Guardian. Their arm-waving, self-aggrandizing verbosity, after conspiring to obey official demand (below) to censor your information is a pattern well-documented by unfettered disclosure sites. Their piecemealing release is hoary dramatization, diverting cover-up, of failure to deliver untampered material. Your valor is yet to be fully disclosed, do not settle for being seduced by false promises portending being kicked under the bus. Heed this under-bus-kick published today by Secrecy News:
EDWARD SNOWDEN, SOURCE OF NSA LEAKS, STEPS FORWARD… “When you are subverting the power of government– that’s a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.”
“I’m willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity [of these disclosures]. This is the truth. This is what’s happening. You should decide whether we need to be doing this,” he said of his disclosures.
In the history of unauthorized disclosures of classified information, a voluntary admission of having committed such disclosures is the exception, not the norm. And it confers a degree of dignity on the action. Yet it stops short of a full acceptance of responsibility. That would entail surrendering to authorities and accepting the legal consequences of “subverting the power of government” and carrying out “a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.”
And two days ago this go-to-prison kick by The Atlantic:
Whistle-blowing is the moral response to immoral activity by those in power. What’s important here are government programs and methods, not data about individuals. I understand I am asking for people to engage in illegal and dangerous behavior. Do it carefully and do it safely, but — and I am talking directly to you, person working on one of these secret and probably illegal programs — do it.
High officers and rhetoricians convene safe at base to wargame, destined by history, to praise and send youngsters into harm’s way to protect high privilege, then crow about leadership, sacrifice, pretending remorse, gloating in amply-pensioned retirement. Bear in mind, fodder for their ambitions is how they see you imprisoned for disobedience, emblazoned in by-lined headlines, warehoused in vet hospitals, or best, flag-draped in coffins disappearing into vote-rigged databanks.
http://www.wect.com/story/22544509/snowdens-cautious-approach-to-post-reporter
To effect his plan, Snowden asked for a guarantee that The Washington Post would publish – within 72 hours – the full text of a PowerPoint presentation describing PRISM, a top-secret surveillance program that gathered intelligence from Microsoft, Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley companies. He also asked that The Post publish online a cryptographic key that he could use to prove to a foreign embassy that he was the document’s source.
Gellman told him the Post would not make any guarantee about what the Post published or when. The Post broke the story two weeks later, on Thursday. The Post sought the views of government officials about the potential harm to national security prior to publication and decided to reproduce only four of the 41 slides, Gellman wrote in his story about their communications.





Europe Union is taking seriously PRISM spying program, they know well that this could very well be use to spy on EU officials.

Laura Poitras was nominated for an Academy Award®, an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy for My Country, My Country (POV 2006). She received a Peabody Award and was nominated for an Emmy and an Independent Spirit Award for