The REAL Reason Edward Snowden Hasn’t Been Pardoned

what's the real reason edward snowden has not been pardoned is he a traitor or is he a hero gchq and the nsa the intelligence agencies of america and the uk respectively are celebrating the 75th anniversary of their collaboration like as if they're a rap duo or something 75 years of snitching and skullduggery we're going to use this to have a look at snowden and why successive presidents have failed to pardon him and why more and more whistleblowers are getting banged up today ed snowden is still living in moscow having left the us following the leak of nsa secrets back in 2013. before we get into snowden and his position and what the lack of pardon from successive apparently different governments means let's hear the gchq nsa statement this year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the formal partnership between the uk gchq and the u.s national security agency this alliance defines how we share communication translation analysis and code breaking information that's spying in it this has helped protect our countries and allies for decades oh thanks the amazing women and men are our two agencies hey you see you put men and women yeah put women and men know what i mean get rid of times women and men our two agencies use their skills and diversity so diversity to make a difference our alliance began before world war ii it's not like a jack daniels commercial we've been making good old spans since way back before w2 it was formalised in 46 built on a history of strong shared values spying snooping sticking a roaring including respect for privacy and the rule of law one thing that edward snowden made absolutely clear with his revelations is there'd been an incredible respect for privacy and rule of law in the decades of unruly unwarranted unrestricted spying that taken place on ordinary citizens the modern digital world is constantly evolving threats don't respect international borders and neither do we for 75 years this extraordinary partnership has enabled us to evolve and learn from each other it helps equip our leaders with the information they need to repress and control you we celebrate those 75 years and we look forward to the future together well that's how the future works you're gonna have to do that i suppose you'd be spying on that if you could would you ever since edward snowden leaked information about the nsa program the white house has been on defense calling it a critical tool for tracking terrorists files leaked by snowden revealed that the nsa funded the gchq that's the uk one by at least 100 million in 2010 to 2013 alone in order to secure access and influence over the latter's intelligence gathering programs the uk usa also serve as the foundation of the five eyes intelligence alliance together they operate a global electronic surveillance system intercepting private and commercial communications citizens and companies in every corner of the globe known as echelon well that's not terrifying but the report says the program infringes on basic privacy and is wide open to abuse by agencies seeking to spy on americans for other reasons can you see how this kind of fear starts to tempt and control the human experience on one hand we've got social media manipulating our consciousness and awareness turning us into consumers at every opportunity directing our attention also we've got the pervasive knowledge that we've been spied on and observed it's very sort of heightened state of fear and when you have people in the continued state of fear disorientation the natural experience of being human is impeded of course there must be some impediments to the human experience otherwise there are all sorts of violations that might take place on account of the animal aspects of our nature but i think that we can achieve more with moral codes than we can for a state of fear unless of course your objective is just to tyrannize and control entire populations so a small elite can operate freely if that is what you're after then actually you've done quite a good job countries around the world are rushing to use technology to slow the spread of the coronavirus some governments are tracking citizens with the help of apps drones and other high-tech methods but critics warn the surveillance may go too far digital rights experts have said extensive surveillance measures introduced around the world during the pandemic have been widened and become entrenched this we knew this would happen wouldn't it oh we're just doing these surveillance measures because you know pandemic and that we've got track and tracer okay you spreading the virus intrinsic already us officials are turning to tech companies to tap into people's digital data to see if they're practicing social distancing the measures have often been built as temporary necessities rushed into place to help track infections but now governments have been accused of denting civil rights with the widespread use of techniques such as phone monitoring contact tracing apps and physical surveillance such as cctv with facial recognition of course whilst the objectives of observing and attracting infection may appear to be good ones you're placing it in the hands of people who have not behaved honorably in the past as snowden's revelations made clear i think the revelations are terrible because they were they were revealed um there are reasons why we have classified programs yeah well not that there are reasons just that they are nefarious self-serving reasons yeah snowden uh i think he's a traitor i think he's done enormous damage to the country also like you know already it's not that long since then people have been out of government we're pretending it's a new world but it's only about 20 years ago since they were yes vilified on a superficial media level but in fact we know now that they were behaving in an abominable way going to war under false pretenses certainly mobilizing opportunities to create chances to strike out monopolize control colonize resources in other countries of course obviously the middle east would you imagine that there's been significant change in the kind of motivations of government in the intervening years what do you say to americans sir who believe edward snowden set in motion something that is proper and just in this country about the scope of surveillance get rid of that lot let's get someone new in someone has a better representation of a modern america also with some charisma the fact of the matter is that the united states is a country that abides by rule of law that cares deeply about privacy in september 2020 seven years after snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of americans telephone records the u.s court of appeals found the program was unlawful and the u.s intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth i don't think mr snowden was a patriot if in fact he believes that what he did was right then like every american citizen he can come here appear before the court he can come here attend a show trial and be imprisoned for the rest of his life with a lawyer uh and make his case what concerns me most about this is the way that successive governments regardless of the you know apparent superficial variation of whatever party they happen to represent because it tends to go back and forth a bit didn't it over the years they've had the same opinion on the matter of snowden in a sense you can use that to mark the boundary of variation and the boundary of hegemony and homogenization that is at the core of government it's unthinkable to have an elected official or a series of elected officials that go let snowden go he was trying his best we were doing [ __ ] we shouldn't have been doing the fact is is that mr snowden's been charged with three felonies nobody ever actually says what he'd done that was wrong and as far as i know the wikileaks revelations have not led to a single american service death whereas the global war on terror has killed more than 7 000 u.s service members more than twice the number of people killed in the terrible 9 11 attacks what's load and revealed is corruption dishonesty and deceit that's what he revealed and that's why he's exiled now waste fraud and abuse of taxpayer money during a decade of war in afghanistan and iraq after a three-year investigation a congressionally mandated commission yesterday issued a blunt finding that between 31 billion dollars and 60 billion dollars has been misspent on the two wars that's up to one quarter of the entire 206 billion dollars outsourced to private contractors a potential other reason is that edward snowden's revelations are dangerous and damaging to the business of war and war is big business in america and in the united kingdom and it's a big business around the world james risen author of state of war says the military industrial complex which is how you know the war machine is described and the newer homeland security industrial complex tend to support expansionist american national security and foreign policy since 9 11 they have pushed for a continuation of american military involvement in the middle east particularly in iraq and afghanistan war has become profitable the national security establishment's power stems in part from its ability to suppress the truth about his activities at home and abroad thus it seeks to punish whistleblowers and journalists who try to disclose the truth the cia and the nsa frequently apply pressure on the justice department and white house to prosecute whistleblowers who disclose their abuses the reason he's interesting is he's a lens through which you can clearly ascertain the level of government corruption and the consistency of that corruption regardless of fluctuation of administration that's an important thing to know because i suppose what can be inferred is that the government is not honest the government is not your friend and you won't solve this problem by electing a different government the institutions themselves and the agencies that remain to a degree in power regardless of what administration takes office will continue to behave in a comparable if not identical manner certain of the same kind of support regardless of whether it's trump or obama think of the ink spilt expressing the distinction between those two men the amount of time on air i really love this guy i love this guy i hate this guy i hate this guy when it comes to this issue the same when it comes to many important issues the same i'm not saying that your particular affiliation for either one of those presidents is not important to you but i'm saying what should be important to you is the things that they see the same way because that's real power that ain't changing that's beyond discussion that's beyond the reach of democracy democracy ends here well first of all he's a terrible guy i said it right from the beginning he's a terrible guy who's really set our country back this guy's a bad guy you know spies in the old days used to be executed if trump had pardoned snowden that had been such a sort of mad head rash of um what you know but he didn't so that's the end of that do you want to give edward snowden a pardon and bring him back you you once suggested well i'm gonna look at it i mean i'm not that aware of the snowden situation but i'm gonna start looking at it you're gonna kill him last week ecuador's president said today he spoke with vice president joe biden who asked him not to offer asylum to edward snowden luckily now though is joe biden joe biden has now ordered his first military strike of his presidency joe biden's pentagon transition team hailed from organizations financed by the weapons industry of the 23 people who comprised his department of defense agency review team eight of them listed their most recent employment as organizations think tanks or companies that either directly received money from the weapons industry are are part of the industry if right that was mcdonald's say it's like right off this team of 23 people eight of them even worked at mcdonald's or companies that needed mcdonald's for them to survive you go i think this is going to buy us people in favor of ronald mcdonald dear when was the last time you had substantive discussions about coming home to the united states and do you still refer to it as home uh the united states will always be my home well america will always be my home it's a tell you're dealing with a person with values what do you think he got out of that like let me get myself over to russia and i could get myself a nice set of burgundy shirts and dark tank tops and wait out that notoriously enjoyable siberian winter i told um the government that uh all they need to do is give me the right of what we call a public interest offense this is a fair trial an open trial where the jury hears what is happening and they decide was this justified or not it seems to me this is someone that was acting entirely out of integrity and the subsequent reaction to him is probably more revealing than the revelations that he made which was essentially you're being spied on and that information is being used against you well now what we know is whoever you vote for that person is going to come down hard he must have touched something at the core of power edward snowden that's what it is and what's extraordinary is that though he obviously is a remarkable person he didn't seem that remarkable he just seems like a decent guy that's sort of you wouldn't expect to risk their life and their family's life to tell the truth and if those are not values that you consider worth celebrating then i wonder what your values are because to say it's you know a particular kind of patriotism well that means you value your country but your country is what a massive land a flag a set of ideals an anthem it has to stand for something it has to mean something and the stories america or the uk tell us about what they are have to mean something usually it's stuff along the lines of this is a good country we're a country of freedom we stand up for these morals and rights well how do they intersect with this then how what does it tell us the catalystic or catalytic event of edward snowden reveals that much of national mythology is a fiction that nations fundamentally corral populations into a group control them manipulate them use them as a resource operate at the behest of powerful industries and transnational corporations use agencies to suppress and control them snowden reveals this and you have to confront oh [ __ ] yeah this is what the uk or america or any of these other mad organizations that are involved in celebrating a 75 year anniversary of spying and the manufacture of consent and the manipulation of control that's what we can learn from the edward snowden case unfortunately uh then attorney general eric holder responded and said we can't promise that we won't promise that we will promise not to torture you well come on i have promised not to torture you unfortunately i'd say uh that's not quite enough thanks very much for watching this video if you like it then you know press like i do like to see a series of thumbs up we read all the comments so put your comment there we'll join the conversation with you we'll get involved turn on your notification bell if you can stand to i don't like to push that too hard you've probably got a lot on your plate but significantly and importantly join up to my alliance arc it's a mailing list get information from me directly just in case this whole thing goes crazy one of these days if you've enjoyed this check out my audible original revelation where i go into a lot of these ideas in more detail and talk about the spiritual component to sort of awakening there's various links depending on where you are in the description here if you can't afford to buy stuff no problem enjoy the free stuff enjoy your freedom but beware that it comes as a terrifying cost and it might not be freedom at all cheers you

Channel: Russell Brand

Views: 709,195

Rating: 4.9590583 out of 5

Keywords: Russell Brand, Brand Russell, BrandThe, Russell Brand video, Russell Brand news, Russell Brand politics, News, Brand, politics, Russell, NSA, nsa, GCHQ, gchq, spying, edward, snowden, Snowden, whistleblower, obama, trump, bush, iraq, middle east, war, president, cheney, biden, Edward Snowden, russia, pardon, reason, pardoned, spy, surveillance, defense, pentagon

Id: iOceOnghdjg

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MrSure_]

Good find - I like the exposure

[u/CrystalMystix]

Russel Brand has a 16 minute video about Edward Snowden and commentary on surveillance and spying. Worth a watch if you’re interested in the topic or going to the Priv8 Summit with Snowden!

[u/Hillbilly_Murph]

Scary.