If he really wanted to ask questions about freedoms, he should have asked about the LGBT rights in Russia or Chechens' right for self-determination
Why not asking question about why the working bees have to slave their lives for that motherfucking Queen Bee ?
I mean, the FREEDOM of the BILLIONS of the working bees rests on the hands of Mr. Snowden !!
How dare Snowden forgets to ask THAT question !!
We are talking about Snowden, a person who spilled the beans of the tyrannical secret program of a supposedly democratic country and thus, helped hundreds of millions (if not billions) to aware of the evil surveillance program that had trespassed on their privacy and this guy
I'm speechless !!
Imagine for a minute, an associate of Alan Turing escaping Bletchely Park in 1944 with files recording the facility's activity â" and with details of its capability to decrypt Enigma traffic.
He is outraged about the government's attempts â" often successful â" to intercept other people messages (some intercepts leading to deaths of hundreds) and is smart enough to envision the future, where such ungentlemanly conduct will become common place. And so he goes public with the materials he took with him, holding a press-conference somewhere â" say, in Switzerland.
Because none of the UK allies will have him, and he fears the Allies' long hand in neutral Switzerland, he takes refuge in Germany, where he is promptly drained of all the information he carries (in files and head)? Germans modify their encryption practices and Bletchley Park is no longer able to decode the communications.
Should the man's life not be hell after that? Or should he simply be hung for treason?
Mr. Snowden asked Putin a question and they crawled out from under the rocks and singled out on Snowden for asking "soft question" and/or "canned performance", et cetera, et cetera, et cetera
Even if Snowden didn't ask any question (didn't participate on the call-in program at all) they would still find a way to attack Snowden
NSA has a long memory - and they will never stop harassing Snowden, period.
Instead of sneering from you perch, get involved yourself.
But he *IS* involved !
He is working on the side of NSA in making sure Snowden's life will be hell, no matter where Snowden lives.
I fully understand your doubt.
For people who have no idea of what it takes to grow plants commercially, they have no idea what the chain of support industries whose whole existence is to make the whole process more cheaply, and to get the "harvest" to market as fast as possible.
And in order to do so, they have to use a lot of resources - resources such as fossil fuels - to make it possible.
Everything from the making of the fertilizers, to the packaging of the fertilizers to the transportation of the fertilizers to the farms, to the pesticides used (and the making and transporting of the pesticides) to the harvesting to the, in the case of corn and palm to sugar cane and the turning of those commodities into biofuel --- all those consume massive amount of fuels.
You won't understand the full extent of the agricultural business until you are in it, and I am in the midst of it, right now.
I have largely exit the high tech field and right now most of my investment is in agriculture - I can see the stupidity of the insistence on the use of biofuel.
The only way to cut down on the carbon footprint is to USE LESS. The biofuel thing is nothing but a big sham !
the American Dream(TM) lie is well understood
It has nothing to do with luck. It has everything to do with one's point of view and how far one is willing to go to achieve that dream.
The American Dream does happen, and it happened to me. Of course, there aren't many people like me, but to say that it is a lie is to deny the reality.
...we're likely to break the cycle by spawning an eternal Tyranny instead of a sustainable Democracy
The only way a tyranny can last is when the people let them.
Unless they can find a way to turn the "subjects" into borg-like things (which obeys their master 100% of the time), human beings, being a rebellious lot, can not, and will not be suppressed forever.
Rebellions (plural) will happen.
While the tyrannical regime might be able to crush most of the rebellious attempts, there will always be that final rebellion which will crush the ruling junta.
Thus, the cycle continues
The Chinese are always, and have been, very concern to what is happening in China.
Even me, a Chinese, who ran away from China when I was very young, and ended up in America and stayed in America for a few decades, still in my spare time, check out what is going on in China.
The "nationalistic" phenomenon for the Chinese people ebbs and flows - it happened back in WW2, when the Japanese invaded China, it happened again during the Korean war, and for a while, in between the Korean war until recently, most Chinese prefer to focus their attention towards themselves.
At first it was for survival, as China under the tutelage of Mao, landed itself in a seemingly endless episodes of man-made disasters. Famines that took away the lives of millions happened. Cannibalism happened, cultural revolution happened, intellectuals were driven to madness and/or suicide happened, and so on...
When Deng took over in the late 1970's, economically speaking China became better. The Chinese people turned towards making money.
That lasted for almost 40 years, and the economy of China has started to flatline, people are getting laid off (and young university graduates couldn't find jobs).
To allay the pent-up anger, the CCP, under the Xi-Li pair, opted for the "nationalistic" approach.
And that coincides with the provocations from Japan. With more and more provocations from Japan, the fuel for the fire of nationalism multiplied.
You gotta understand that the Chinese people, until today, can *NOT* forgive what the Japanese did to them, back in the WW2. That is because, unlike the Germans who issued public apologies to their victims (particularly Jews and Gypsies), the Japanese refused to apologize for the carnage they had done in China.
That bad blood in between the Japanese and Chinese is now exposed in the open.
The CCP of course, ain't stupid. They fully utilize the follies from Japan to add fuel to the nationalism fervor.
The fact still stands.
In the United States of America, the commoners are totally cut off from the decision making process.
George Bush did *NOT* get the permission from the American public before he launched the attack. He didn't have to, as the American public has absolutely *NO SAY* in the running of things.
Taking this a step further --- in the current situation relating to NSA --- Obama does *NOT* care what the people feel, because the "feeling" of the people is inconsequential, as what is to be done, WILL BE DONE, whether the people like it, or not.
"...because the politicians do, as you say, simply have to FRAME a proposal in language which RESONATES with the worldview of the people being targeted..."
Sadly, you do not know the US of A.
The politicians inside the United States of America do not need to frame any proposal to the people, all the need to do to get anything done is to use their influence to rally a portion of semi-elites to his or her cause, and through the butterfly effect , it is done.
Case in point - United States attacking Iraq
When George Bush decides to attack Iraq, he did not need to get the approval from the Americans. All he did was to rally the world community (elites from different countries) to his cause, and when he got the support, off goes the Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
I was from China, and I still remember how hard the Chinese Communist Party had to rally their own people to support their decision to send troops into Korea to fight the Korean war.
In contrast to what George Bush did - the Chinese government, under Mao, almost tapped into all the resources it could muster, to get the people into the mood.
In a way, at least back in the time of the Korean War, the Communist government which rule China was more attuned to their own people, than George Bush, to the Americans.
The main problem is that we are human being, that we are *NOT* robot.
As human beings we are the product of millions of years of evolution - an evolution that did not encounter _any_ form of electronic gadgets until very recently.
The fact that we can drive a car (or any vehicles) is not because we *adapt* to the way the car operate, but it is another way around.
We engineer the vehicles so that they can become our tool, and the operation of that tool is *within* our range of capability.
While using cellphone (and now smartphone) have been accused of causing a lot of accidents, they are not the only distraction. Long before the advent of the cellphone, a lot of traffic accidents were caused by drivers adjusting their radio (either looking for station of turning up/down the volume), or adjusting the seat, or the air condition, or whatever.
It is thus evidenced that we human beings are not made to be effective "multi-tasking" device
And smartphones are not the only culprit - I have known drivers who were so distracted by their on-board sat nav devices such as tomtom (and other brands) they drove their car into poles, walls, and so on
Personally when I drive, I drive. If I have to adjust my seat, my mirrors, my radio, or whatever, I stop my car at the roadside (or any other safe place) to make the adjustment, and then continue my journey.
NSA does not even have to tap on those "human rights" activists, they are more than often willingly contributing to NSA's arsenal of knowledge
In fact, it was the "Human Right Watch" which published Mr. Snowden's secret email address, leading into the shut down of the operator which offered the totally encrypted email service.
We're watching you, so behave
It's more like "We will make sure that you'll be very miserable if you do not behave"
Thank you, England, for teaching America how to take this program worldwide.
The flight deck crew have keys to open the door
After the 9/11 incident in NYC the cockpit of most commercial aircrafts have had their doors upgraded.
No one but the people inside the cockpit can open the door, and the door is thick enough to withstand normal bang and kick and whatnot.
Cabin crews won't have the keys, or else terrorists (they are on board) could have gotten the keys from the crews and open the security door to the cockpit.
There are way too many fishy things that happened to flight MH370
1. There was an "airspace territory gap" of 3 to 4 minutes in between the airspace of Malaysia and that of Vietnam, over South China Sea.
The last communication from that plane was from the co-pilot, not the pilot. And his message was "Goodbye Malaysia, Goodbye MH370" and that message was uttered just before the transponder and all comm channels were shut.
Once the transponder and all the comm channels were severed the aircraft remained silent for another 7 to 8 hours
2. After the transponder been switched off and all the comm channels cut, the plane took a turn to the West, purposely flying just south of the border of Southern Thailand the Northern Malaysia.
And during that trip from the South China Sea to the northern tip of the Malaccan Strait the aircraft was flown up to 45,000 feet, way over the limit of the safety limit for Boeing 777, and the aircraft flew at that altitude for a full 23 minutes.
At that height, passengers in the fuselage will experience a lack of oxygen.
Even if the emergency oxygen respiration devices dropped down and the passengers put them on, that oxygen supply would only last for 10 minutes - Which meant, all people inside the fuselage would have extreme difficulties getting oxygen for 13 long minutes
Many of them would die. Those didn't would have passed out.
3. When the plane reached the northern tip of the Malaccan Strait it dropped down to 25,000 feet, and then turned north to the Andaman Sea.
At that place, the plane "hug" the Northern Sumatran coastline and flew from the North East side of the Sumatran Island to the North West.
And from that juncture, the plane could have go Northward, or South.
4. Now they are saying the plane went South, based on the "Ping" signals that they received.
Since that "Ping" signal is not a complicated signal, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to "clone" that signal - and if there was someone behind the hijacking of that plane, they could have done so.
5. Why ? Well
There was a comment embedded in the following link allude to such a plot - http://www.themalaysianinsider...
Let me quote part of that comment:
One more possibility is that those people might have "cloned" the "ping signals" using another device that broadcast that "ping signal", and then, when that Boeing 777 had landed safely on that undisclosed location, they immediately flew that "clone ping device" and, did what I have outlined above.
They did that to divert attention, and to create a false lead to the world which will come looking for that plane.
What happened to this Boeing 777 has so many gaping holes yet to be answered - like
* Why it flew for 7 to 8 hours without anyone actively looking for it ?
* Why they purposely switched off the transponder and the comm channels but left that "ping device" kept on broadcasting the "ping signals" ? Is it part of the plan to mislead the investigator ?
* Where is that plane right now ? Where could it possibly had landed ? Thailand ? Laos ? The Philippines ? Malaysia ? Indonesia ? Myanmar ? Bangladesh ? Cambodia ? Vietnam ?
* What happened to those 239 people on board ? Have they all been killed ? If so, how ? If not, where and who are keeping them locked up ? For what purpose ?
"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical." -- Jon Carroll
