{"id":268756,"date":"2016-09-21T10:48:18","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T10:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/assange-manning-and-snowden-standing-with-the-conscience-of-truthtellers\/"},"modified":"2016-09-21T10:48:18","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T10:48:18","slug":"assange-manning-and-snowden-standing-with-the-conscience-of-truthtellers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/assange-manning-and-snowden-standing-with-the-conscience-of-truthtellers\/","title":{"rendered":"Assange, Manning, and Snowden, Standing With the Conscience of Truthtellers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Last week, Oliver Stone\u2019s biopic \u201cSnowden<\/a>\u201d
\n hit the theaters. The film illuminates the life of Edward Snowden between 2004
\n and 2013, aiming to humanize one of the most wanted men in the world. Just before
\n its release, a public campaign was
\n launched<\/a> urging President Obama to pardon this renowned NSA whistleblower.<\/p>\n

The massive US government persecution of truthtellers over the past years has
\n exiled conscience from civil society, locking it behind bars and driving it
\n into asylum. Yet, despite these attacks, it refuses to die.<\/p>\n

From prison where she is serving 35 years, Chelsea Manning is standing up for
\n her dignity. Recently, she protested<\/a>
\n her dehumanizing treatment by engaging in a hunger strike. All the while, WikiLeaks
\n editor in chief Julian Assange keeps publishing, giving asylum to the most persecuted
\n documents, while being
\n arbitrarily detained<\/a> in the Ecuadorian embassy for the last 4 years. As
\n this struggle continues, the torch for transparency and courage that kindled
\n hearts and has sparked public debate keeps shedding light on the state of the
\n world we live in.<\/p>\n

In a debate with executive director of Freedom Press, Trevor Timm, which addressed
\n the question of pardoning Snowden, National security attorney Bradley Moss expressed<\/a>
\n his disdain over the former NSA contractor providing information to the Press.
\n He criticized Snowden\u2019s act, noting how journalists are unauthorized to possess
\n government information:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s approximately 4 million people who also hold clearances. It is a sacred
\n trust and Snowden broke it by giving these documents to people who were not
\n authorized to have it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moss\u2019s statement revealed the culture of the Intelligence community that permeates
\n the life of not only U.S. citizens, but of people around the globe. What is
\n this \u201csacred trust\u201d that Moss referred to that would give exclusive privilege
\n to a certain population? Implied in Moss\u2019s comment is that honoring this trust
\n would take precedence over the right to free speech, requiring journalists to
\n ask for permission to engage in activities that are supposedly protected under
\n the First Amendment of the US Constitution. This signals the existence of an
\n invisible governance that claims superiority over the highest law of the land.<\/p>\n

Government Secrecy <\/strong><\/p>\n

There are some who have come to see the internal working of a patronage network
\n that is bound within this exclusive trust. In his 2006 seminal writing Conspiracy
\n as Governance, <\/em>Assange noted<\/a>
\n how secrecy was used by political elites \u201cas the primary planning methodology
\n behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power\u201d. He then assessed<\/a>
\n how \u201ccollaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population is enough
\n to define their behavior as conspiratorial\u201d.<\/p>\n

In his latest book, The
\n WikiLeaks Files<\/a><\/em>, Assange described how through…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Oliver Stone\u2019s biopic \u201cSnowden\u201d hit the theaters. The film illuminates the life of Edward Snowden between 2004 and 2013, aiming to humanize one of the most wanted men in the world. Just before its release, a public campaign was launched urging President Obama to pardon this renowned NSA whistleblower. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-268756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}