{"id":2308,"date":"2016-09-13T08:16:41","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T15:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=2308"},"modified":"2016-09-13T08:21:02","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T15:21:02","slug":"snowden-is-wasting-his-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=2308","title":{"rendered":"Snowden is Wasting His Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Exiled US political dissident Edward Snowden is probably wasting his time when he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2016\/sep\/13\/edward-snowden-why-barack-obama-should-grant-me-a-pardon\">begs for a presidential pardon.<\/a> The Obama Administration&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/10\/09\/mouths-wide-shut-obamas-war-on-whistleblowers\/\">record<\/a> on tolerating political dissent in the form of whistleblowing is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/obamas-crackdown-whistleblowers\/\">not a good one.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s understandable why he&#8217;d want to get out of Russia, of course. Snowden has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibtimes.com\/edward-snowden-criticizes-russias-human-rights-record-says-online-restrictions-2084713\">publicly criticized<\/a> his host nation <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/06\/28\/world\/europe\/edward-snowden-criticizes-big-brother-measure-in-russia.html\">more than once<\/a> and is doubtless feeling the heat for having the courage to <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/68036\/edward-snowden-vladimir-putin-nsa\/\">speak out<\/a> in what is an unfree society (albeit one offering him more personal freedom than that of the prison cell he&#8217;d be in if he hadn&#8217;t fled persecution in the USA).<\/p>\n<p>Still, he&#8217;s mainly just jeopardizing what freedom he currently has in the name of a largely futile quest for clemency from a superpower which has gotten less, not more, tolerant of internal dissent in recent decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exiled US political dissident Edward Snowden is probably wasting his time when he begs for a presidential pardon. The Obama Administration&#8217;s record on tolerating political dissent in the form of whistleblowing is not a good one. It&#8217;s understandable why he&#8217;d want to get out of Russia, of course. Snowden has publicly criticized his host nation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-ghouls","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}