The impact on the world of Snowden's leaks is real. Our allies don't trust us, a growing number of citizens here is the U.S. no longer have faith in our government, and the U.S Empire is tottering like Humpty Dumpty on his wall. And so it is clear that the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, to say nothing of the future impact of the mounting Snowden revelations will have in 2014 and
::::::::
Originally posted at
AcronymTV
TIME magazine generates plenty of buzz each year in rolling out
their PERSON OF THE YEAR.
Not to be confused with a popularity contest, TIME is very clear in
its criteria. It's editors state: TIME's Person of the Year is
bestowed by the editors on the person or persons who most affected
the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was
important about the year. Got it? Given those criteria, whom would
you have chosen for 2013? Time chose Pope Francis. Even an atheist,
like me, who has argued, as I have, that the Catholic Church has
been running at a net moral deficit for a few hundred (or a few
thousand, but who's counting?) years can find much to admire in
Pope Francis. He talks openly about the
Tyranny of Capitalism, he sneaks out of the
Vatican at night incognito to feed the poor., and all of that
kissing of the feet? Amazing.
Person of the year? Come on now, Francis just took the job, and he
heads an institution that still, let us not forget, relegates women
to second class status, and protects pedophiles from the full
punishment of the law. Could it be that Time magazine was acting in
pre-emptive manner? In describing The People's Pope,
Time
writes: "He took the name of a humble saint and
then called for a church of healing. The first non-European pope in
1,200 years is
POISED (emphasis mine) to
transform a place that measures change by the century."
Is another case of our times affinity for pre-emptive action? There
was once a time when attacking a country that did not declare war
on you and posed no threat to you, never mind shocking and awing it
into the stone age, was considered a war crime. Now offense is the
new defense and Pre-Emptive wars waged based on lies are now the
standard foreign policy of the U.S. Empire. Barack Obama, for his
part, has not (as promised)
ended the war in Afghanistan. He has not scaled back
the Drone Program started under Bush, rather he has
escalated it. But before he got a chance to
prove himself, the Nobel Peace Committee pre-emptivly
gave
a peace prize to a man who was and remains
commander in chief of what Martin Luther King Jr correctly
described as the
greatest purveyor of violence in the world. And so it
goes with TIME magazine, granting a title based on promise rather
than actual impact.
And so it is with pride that I announce the Acronym TV person of
the year is Edward Snowden. Edward Snowden opened up a Pandora's
box that cannot be closed. In the Christmas season, many parents of
small children will find themselves humming the refrain "he see you
when you're sleeping and knows when your awake, he knows if you've
been bad or good"" to keeps kids in line with the promise of toys
under the tree. Adults, however, are now confronted with a reality
that can no longer be dismissed as conspiracy theory paranoia: The
NSA, for all intents and purposes, sees us when we sleep, and wake.
The data, we are learning is being collected pre-emotively. Just in
case.
The list of things we know from the Snowden leaks are still
evolving; more is said to come. Here is a quick rundown of what we
know now:
The NSA is allowed
direct access to Google, Apple, and
Facebook.
Documents reveal that the NSA makes
regular exceptions to only spying on
foreign targets. In one-example NSA officials tried to excuse the
revelation that they collected all phone data with the Washington
DC 202 area code by saying it was a mix up with the "20" country
code of Egypt.
Oh and, by the way, the US spied on Presidents or leaders of what
are considered countries friendly to us like Brazil, Mexico and
Germany- and also hacked the United Nations video conference
systems- the for those of you who are tech savvy enough to encrypt
your communications, know that the NSA has been working
to
systematically influence
encryption standards or insert backdoors in the code of
commercial encryption software to enable it to access Internet
users' communications.
The list goes on and on. And more, we are told, is on the way. The
impact on the world of Snowden's leaks is real. Our allies don't
trust us, a growing number of citizens here is the U.S. no longer
have faith in our government, and the U.S Empire is tottering like
Humpty Dumpty on his wall. And so it is clear that the person or
persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill,
to say nothing of the future impact of the mounting Snowden
revelations will have in 2014 and beyond is Edward Snowden, the
Acronym TV 2013 person of the year.
tags Person of the year, 2013 person of the year, Time person of
the year, 2013 Time person of the year, Pope Francis, The Peoples
Pope, Edward Snowden, Edward Snowden person of the year, 2013
Person of the year Edward Snowden, Ed Snowden, Acronym TV, Dennis
Trainor Jr, TPOY, POY 2013,
Authors Website: http://www.AcronymTV.com
Authors Bio:Dennis Trainor, Jr. is the creator and host of Acronym TV and the writer, director and producer of the documentary American Autumn: an Occudoc.