The Guardian has released video of the second part of the interview that Edward Snowden gave on June 6 to Glenn Greenwald. Laura Poitras, and Ewan MacAskill. (The first part can be seen here.) In this seven-minute clip, he explains what made him do what he did, saying, “I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded. And that’s not something I am willing to support, it’s not something I am willing to build, and its not something I am willing to live under. So I think anyone who opposes that sort of world has an obligation to act in the way they can.” He says he acted because the people who should have spoken up or stopped it did not do so. [Read more…]

Those who dislike what Edward Snowden did but approve of what Daniel Ellsberg did have struggled to find ways to distinguish the actions of the two in ways that support of that goal. But Ellsberg keeps pulling the rug out from under them, repeatedly praising Snowden’s actions and saying that they follow in the same whistleblowing tradition as him. [Read more…]

It is easy to say that the Republicans lost the presidential election in 2012 because their nominee Mitt Romney was a lousy candidate. And he likely was. But I think that we pay too much attention to the personality of the candidates and not enough to the structural features of campaigns, and it is the latter that I want to focus on. [Read more…]

A question that has been swirling around is how it could have happened that the European governments got it all wrong about Edward Snowden being on the Bolivian president’s plane and caused them, in what can be described as an act of air piracy, to close their airspace and force it to land in Austria, creating a backlash around the world at what was seen as a naked act of western imperialism and colonialism. [Read more…]

It looks like forcing down the Bolivian president’s plane on its return from Russia was a big blunder that has backfired badly on the US. It has angered many of the governments of that region, bringing back painful memories of how the US treated them in the past. [Read more…]

We have an awful story out of Nigeria of the massacre of a teacher and 29 school children in Nigeria by the Islamic group Boko Haram, with many of the victims burned alive in their school building. [Read more…]

Sometimes I say things that seem obvious and uncontroversial to me and am then surprised by the strong opposition they arouse. One such statement was in yesterday’s post where I strongly defended Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning and added that president Obama “has not (as least as yet) tried to kidnap Snowden or kill him with a Navy Seal operation or a drone strike but you can bet that it is among the possibilities that are being considered.” This aroused some strong reactions both in the comments and privately and I thought I would try and understand why this might be so. [Read more…]

Both Venezuela and Nicaragua have made offers of asylum to Edward Snowden.

[Venezuelan president Nicolas] Maduro said Venezuela was ready to offer him sanctuary, and that the details Snowden had revealed of a US spy program had exposed the nefarious schemes of the US “empire”.

“He has told the truth, in the spirit of rebellion, about the US spying on the whole world,” Maduro said.

[Read more…]