
How to trap a whistleblower - alsothings
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/16/how_to_trap_a_whistleblower/
======
pcunite
Obama could have been special. The symbol, the icon for an America forgiven of
its past and now authoring _hope_ for future people of all races. Perhaps it
was power that corrupted him or maybe it was his close advisors that stymied
his original purer motives.

I remember feeling so proud that we had a black President. I knew he was
human, I know that skin color does not matter, but it was hard to not hope
that given what his race has been through - he could understand what was wrong
with the world ... and maybe fix it.

For reasons he only knows, he choose to side with abuse. He has perverted
himself with something so addictive that perhaps the best course of action
maybe for him to take a seat at the back of the bus.

~~~
danenania
Another explanation that I sadly believe to be much more realistic is that
Obama never had pure motives. He was just playing the game (as any candidate
must to win the support of either establishment party), and he took many
millions of hopeful people along for the ride.

It's important for people who believed in Obama's rhetoric to stop making
excuses and realize that they were conned. Fool me once, shame on you...

~~~
spin
I wonder, though, if perhaps a lot of "power decisions" are made at the
margin.

(I mean "making decisions at the margin" in the way that economists use the
term. For example: I wish cheese was free. But, in real life, I have a choice
between $2.49 cheese and $2.19 cheese. So I buy the cheaper cheese, not the
free cheese. Because the free cheese doesn't exist.)

If the President has to make small decisions about "the lesser of two evils",
then how much power does he really have?

For example: He said he would close Guantanamo Bay, but didn't. One theory is
that he was full of shit. He's just a tool. Another theory is that there
wasn't the political capital to accomplish such a thing. As in: there was
enough push-back from his own party... he didn't want to alienate some of his
friends... as in, he couldn't afford to. So he says: "Screw it. A couple
hundred people in hell isn't worth my career if I can focus on other things
that can benefit more people."

(I'm not trying to be an apologist for Obama here. I think Washington is
pretty horribly corrupt in both parties...)

So I'm left to wonder: Sure, no smart politician is going to burn his own
career for a couple hundred foreigners that the citizens hate anyway (I
guess...). But why is Gitmo still open? What does it accomplish? (I keep going
around in circles trying to figure out why anyone loves Gitmo...)

A president "spends power" at the margins. He spent a lot of power on
Obamacare. (You call in favors, you do the horse-trading...) But he has spent
no power against the "Security Industrial Complex". I guess it's not something
that he cares to achieve. People are calling it "Bush's 4th term". I
understand the contractors profit from "Fear of Terrorists". And I'm sure
there are some military / intelligence people who are actually hard-core about
it. But, outside of that.... who the fuck loves it? I just don't get it...
Washington has wrapped itself into a self-sustaining engine of fear...

... oy vey. And here we're not supposed to be getting all political on HN...
:-/

~~~
pavanred
Lesser of the two evils, I don't think its that polarized, there are grey
areas. Not closing down Gitmo because of the lack of political will from
congress is understandable but there are other decisions such as curbing the
hunger strike with forced nasal feeding every day is another decision. I agree
it's in the rule book that says if the body weight index drops beyond a point,
use nasal feeding but I guess when you make such a decision you can weigh the
differences between a medical decision and a hunger protest and deal with them
a little differently.

Besides, if you are the president and your campaign promise was to close a
prison. Keeping in mind that many people there are held without charges for
over a decade and a few are already cleared to be let go but are still there
for reasons I don't understand, if you can't do this being a president in 2
terms then perhaps you just can't do it, least you can do is make way for
someone who can.

------
enraged_camel
"Misled" the public? No. He _lied_ to the public.

~~~
toble
Misled is a political euphemism for lied. Politics is full of that sort of
indirect language.

~~~
lazyjones
> _Politics is full of that sort of indirect language._

Politics may be full of that sort of language, but why are media? This is not
North Korea where journalists have to fear punishment for insulting the
supreme leader. Or is it?

~~~
SteveGerencser
This may not be entirely true if people like Sen Feinstein have their way -
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/why-sen-feinstein-
wron...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/why-sen-feinstein-wrong-about-
whos-real-reporter)

By changing the definition, or narrowly defining it, they can exclude all of
the great new forms a journalism from the protections that 'journalists'
provide. The next step would be a government license for 'approved'
journalists.

------
mtgx
I recommend everyone to watch this "Enemies of the State" video. Thomas Drake
speech starts at minute 24. Jesselyn Radack and William Binney also have
speeches in it. Drake and Binney talk about how the government treated them
even when they went through the "proper channels".

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBp-1Br_OEs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBp-1Br_OEs)

------
dalek_cannes
And that's the answer to everyone refusing to call Snowden a whistle blower
because he left the country rather than face the legal consequences. The
consequences involved were anything _but_ legal.

~~~
twoodfin
What non-legal consequences did the counterexamples in this article face? I'm
not sure what you mean.

~~~
dalek_cannes
I did not phrase that properly. I meant: technically in the law books and
interpreted as such, but violates the spirit of the law and is
unconstitutional. At the risk of beating a dead and buried horse, consider the
legal definition of "torture".

I doubt he would have had assassins on his trail, but he would have been put
through the legal system the same way Manning was.

Also consider the court of public opinion -- there's enough of an uninformed
mass who think this is a scumbag who gave American secrets to China and Russia
that an administration can bend the laws quite a bit and get away with it.

~~~
pekk
Actually he wouldn't have been "put through the legal system the same way
Manning was," because Manning was a soldier tried under military law, while
Snowden was a civilian contractor.

I don't know which law you are consulting for the definition of "torture," but
if solitary confinement is torture then our system hands it out for many
people less famous and glamorous than Snowden all the time, without much of
any outcry. And this outcry seems to be confined to certain political figures,
not just any prisoner caught with a shank.

------
northwest
Also, let's keep in mind that Obama has _lied_ to the public when he said that
there was no abuse by the NSA.

(Not that we can expect different behavior from any of the future Presidents,
nor from the recent ones.)

------
coldcode
Sad to say the old joke "How do you know if a politician is lying? Their lips
are moving" is no longer funny. The even sadder thing is none of them seems to
remembers the story of the boy who cried wolf. You know someday the president
might tell us the truth but we won't be able to tell.

~~~
ihsw
Lying implies intentional maliciousness, which is pure speculation. It stands
to reason that our elected representatives are simply puppets -- what they say
and do are controlled by others.

------
graycat
My guess is that much of Obama's political _strategy_ is mostly just to
pretend. So, there he sees a public issue and says something, just something,
just says it, to defuse the issue and, then, counts on (1) the mainstream
media not getting into the details of what is wrong with the fantasy
statement, (2) the voters being busy with other things, and (3) soon something
else in the headlines.

Except for the fantasy statements, Obama is careful about actually doing
anything. He's good at making sure that whatever happens, he is not held to
blame.

But he does actually do some things: He pushed 'clean, green, pure, pristine,
100% all-natural energy' and got a lot of campaign contributions. He has
pushed ObamaCare but seems to want to 'push' its implementation out past the
end of his second term (fine with me). So, he wants ObamaCare as fantasy but
not as actual implementation. He does some little things in Syria, e.g.,
supposedly trained about 20 rebels in how to use some Russian missiles; so, he
gets to claim to support 'fighting for freedom' or some such in Syria without
actually doing much or much he could get blamed for. He asks the DoD to give
him options for doing more in Syria, no doubt already knowing that all the
options would be high on cost and low on effectiveness and that he won't
approve any of the options; but just by making public that he asked for the
options he will please some voters. After one of the high school shootings, he
visited the site and said he was going to 'get the guns' or some such. Of
course the Second Amendment and the NRA are still there, along with a lot of
gun owners in rural and Western states. But the high school shootings are out
of the headlines now. We could go on and on this way.

For the NSA leak issue, he sees right away that a lot of voters are concerned
about the Fourth Amendment and so makes statements, like the one to Leno, that
he is against 'over reaching government' or some such. But as the Salon
article explained in detail, what Obama said to Leno was just nonsense. But
such nonsense is about all Obama needs because only a tiny fraction of the
voters will get as deep as the Salon article, and the MSM mostly won't go
there. So, superficial nonsense is enough.

Maybe it's a smart strategy. There is a danger that once people catch on that
mostly he's just passing out fantasy nonsense no one should take seriously,
too many voters will get pissed. Maybe. Maybe not.

At least he's not actually doing much, and money he doesn't spend isn't wasted
and projects he doesn't do aren't failures. We've got plenty of government and
in total don't really need more. So in a major sense, Obama can get by without
doing very much. Actually I wish that at times W had done less.

There is a risk if the country actually needs a president; in the meanwhile
it's okay for him to spout fantasy nonsense on Leno and work on his golf game
and jump shot.

~~~
raheemm
How would you classify handling the American economy during the worst banking
crisis, killing OBL, pulling US out of Iraq, etc, etc? Pretending or Doing?

~~~
graycat
Economy: Spend a lot of money via TARP I and TARP II and otherwise let
Bernanke handle it.

There is one view that the US went from The Great Depression to a hot economy,
with 2-3 jobs for everyone who could work, in just 90 days after people
started shooting at us. We spent huge bucks, and nearly everything that the
bucks bought was junk on a battlefield in a few weeks or sold for war surplus.
Still, the spending, even on stuff that was just junk, got us out of The Great
Depression.

My view is that mostly the extra spending was just wasted, but, as for the
WWII example, have to believe that even wasted such spending can get us out of
a great depression. So, I'm not totally against the spending. But the waste
was still a black mark. We didn't have just to waste so much of the money.

OBL? Fine. But bringing in Hollywood to make a movie and letting out secret
information on Navy Seal tactics was not good. I credit the Navy Seals and the
DoD. Even if a president doesn't do anything, there still is the rest of the
government, and sometimes it does things. So, can credit Obama for not messing
up a good effort across the Potomac River in that five sided funny farm.

US out of Iraq? Another post in this thread says that that was just the
schedule anyway.

I can't claim that Obama never does anything. Still, I see a difference: It
appears to me that he has the strategy I tried to describe, on a lot of
headline issues, pass out a lot of platitudes but actually do something on
only a small fraction of those. Otherwise do relatively little and, thus,
don't get blamed for failures.

It's all on a continuum and not 0 or 1. It just looks to me like he talks the
talk without walking the walk, or some such, more than other presidents since,
say, FDR.

Maybe it's good pragmatic _leadership_ , and if so most of the blame is on the
mainstream media and the voters. US voters are awash in power, can shake DC
just by pulling some levers behind a curtain, and with the Internet are awash
in information. If Obama gets away with what the OP described, then the voters
get what they deserve.

~~~
jivatmanx
>Still, the spending, even on stuff that was just junk, got us out of The
Great Depression.

The U.S. was the only major country with cities and factories left standing,
that weren't hit by wave after wave of bombers, so rebuilding your country
necessitated buying U.S. goods.

The U.S. also suffered relatively fewer casualties than the other major
players. The Nazi scientists didn't hurt either.

You are correct in that spending money on otherwise useless military items /
people, is indeed useless[0], though those receiving military contracts argue
the opposite, called "Military Keynesianism".

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#Th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#The_opportunity_cost_of_war)

------
crazygringo
The thing that confuses me the most, is that Obama used to come across as
_extremely_ intelligent, with nuanced understanding of the issues at hand. In
his writing and in his speeches, he had no equal, and he was very much a
"straight talker", and even on issues you disagreed with him on, you felt that
he understood your side (and all sides) of the argument genuinely.

But over the past year, he's practically gone full retard. I'm not even
talking about on a policy level -- I'm just talking about his communications,
period. On the Snowden issue he's shown zero leadership, zero sense of
understanding or sympathizing with Americans' concerns... and all this coming
from a former constitutional-law scholar, it's just BIZARRE.

Obviously my faith in Obama has rapidly dwindled, but more than that, I'm just
left confused. Why can't the man even _communicate_ anymore?

~~~
jmaygarden
Perhaps all that brilliant content was written for him by other people that
are no longer in his service?

------
sbmassey
If the head of state is a proven liar, is there any moral reason to tell the
truth to any of the organs of state you deal with?

~~~
crusso
Yes.

1\. They're in power and "but the government lied first" is not going to hold
up in court if you're accused of perjury, lying to a police officer, etc. 2\.
There's something to be said for taking the higher ground. Long after people
forget who started it, having a culture that doesn't value honesty hurts
everyone.

~~~
LanceH
That's a practical reason, not a moral reason.

~~~
crusso
Morals are there for practical reasons. Otherwise they're just random.

------
snitko
Don't worry. Next time there will be a candidate who promises to never be like
Obama and never lie to the public. He (or she) will give you hope that maybe
this time things are going to change. And you are going to be believe it,
because "what's the alternative?". And then you are going to vote sincerely
believing that your vote is important and the system works. And all the bad
will be forgotten and the life will pass in a blissful ignorance of the fact
the they got you by the balls - for your own safety, of course. It's okay, my
friend, repeat after me: we are a civilized society, democracy works, voting
is important, the government is largely on your side.

------
andy_ppp
I think what I find most disappointing is the stunning amount of apathy when
it comes to politicians lying. But then what can we do to stop them? It has
become farcical how every time the government makes a statement on this it's
almost immediately shown they are directly lying to the people.

These lies bring into question the truthfulness of a lot of other government
statements.

~~~
lifeformed
Why aren't there legal consequences for politicians lying? I know you couldn't
catch everything, but it seems like if you intentionally mislead the public in
a high profile context, you should face proportional punishment. Corporations
face huge consequences if they lie, even accidentally, in earnings reports.

Lawyers on the clock are always careful that what they say is legally sound;
why shouldn't politicians be held to that standard? Maybe it'll make them more
vague and hand wavy, but perhaps the law could be structured to be
proportional to the malice and deceit behind the lie. If they must do
something contrary to what they said, they should have to justify their
decision in writing why they have changed their mind.

~~~
cheald
Who exactly is going to write and pass this law?

------
kyleblarson
Obama talks like the president of the ACLU but acts like Dick Cheney.

~~~
pekk
You can hate both, but the things they do aren't the same.

------
001sky
_A few months after the group sent out its second round of payments to
Omondi’s village, I spent two days walking around the area in Siaya where
GiveDirectly is working._

One hell of a co-incidence.

------
ratsmack
Status Quo is the name of the game in Washington politics.

~~~
alan_cx
From a British point of view, that is the most scary thing ever.

