Friday, July 12, 2013

A Room of My Own: Migrant's Dream Haiku

Changing the World One Haiku at a Time Series


July Fourth fireworks...
a migrant's dream intercepted
by the NSA


Note: The National Security Agency (NSA) is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense

2 comments:

  1. Thursday, July 4, 2013

    NSA Leaker Edward Snowden In His Own Words: "You’re Being Watched," aired on Democracy! Now, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/4/nsa_leaker_edward_snowden_in_his

    EDWARD SNOWDEN: I think that the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model. When you are subverting the power of government, that that’s a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy. And if you do that in secret consistently, you know, as the government does when it wants to benefit from a secret action that it took, it will kind of get its officials a mandate to go, "Hey, you know, tell the press about this thing and that thing, so the public is on our side." But they rarely, if ever, do that when an abuse occurs. That falls to individual citizens. But they’re typically maligned. You know, it becomes a thing of these people are against the country, they’re against the government. But I’m not. I’m no different from anybody else. I don’t have special skills. I’m just another guy who sits there, day to day, in the office, watches what happening—what’s happening, and goes, "This is something that’s not our place to decide. The public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong." And I’m willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity of them and say, "I didn’t change these. I didn’t modify the story. This is the truth. This is what’s happening. You should decide whether we need to be doing this."


    Tuesday, July 9, 2013

    Edward Snowden on Why He Stood Up to the NSA: Mass Spying "Not Something I’m Willing to Live Under" aired on Democracy! Now, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/9/edward_snowden_on_why_he_stood

    EDWARD SNOWDEN: I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talked to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded. And that’s not—that’s not something I’m willing to support, it’s not something I’m willing to build, and it’s not something I’m willing to live under. So, I think anyone who opposes that sort of world has an obligation to act in a way they can. Now, I’ve watched and waited and tried to do my job in the most policy-driven way I could, which is to wait and allow other people, you know, wait and allow our leadership, our figures, to sort of correct the excesses of government when we go too far. But as I’ve watched, I’ve seen that’s not occurring, and in fact we’re compounding the excesses of prior governments and making it worse and more invasive. And no one is really standing to stop it.

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  2. Wednesday, June 12, 2013

    Is Edward Snowden a Hero? A Debate with Journalist Chris Hedges & Law Scholar Geoffrey Stone,aired on Democracy! Now, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/12/is_edward_snowden_a_hero_a


    Tuesday, July 9, 2013

    Glenn Greenwald: Snowden Encouraged by Global Outrage over NSA Spying, Support for His Plight,aired on Democracy! Now, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/9/glenn_greenwald_snowden_encouraged_by_global

    GLENN GREENWALD: The very first conversation I ever had with him, Amy, online, he said that his only fear—he only had one fear, and that was that he would sacrifice his life and take these enormous personal risks in order to make these disclosures possible, and then have the world react with indifference and apathy, a kind of fear that they would just simply say, "OK, well, I assumed this was happening, and I don’t really mind." None of that has happened. There’s been an incredibly intense debate inside the United States over these disclosures, all kinds of movements of reform, movements against the United States government, and in many, many other countries around the world, as we previously discussed. So he feels like what he set out to do is exactly what has happened. He said he didn’t set out to destroy these systems—that’s not his place; he set out to make people around the world realize what the United States’s government is doing to them, to enable them to decide whether that’s the kind of thing they are willing to tolerate. And he sees those debates happening, and he’s extremely enthused and satisfied that his objective has been fulfilled.

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