© Dagens Nyheter / AFPMr. Snowden, whistleblower, traitor or credit due?
Former US Attorney General Eric Holder gave some credit to Edward Snowden for what he did, but the praise would have been more beneficial while Holder was still in office, says ex-MI5 agent and whistleblower Annie Machon.
Holder praised whistleblower Edward Snowden for starting a debate over global surveillance. Snowden replied by posting a timeline of the seemingly changing reaction of US officials to his actions.
RT: What's your first reaction to the words of the former US Attorney General?
Annie Machon: He [Eric Holder] is giving
a tacit acknowledgement to the fact that there should be a public interest defense under law for intelligence whistleblowers coming out and exposing malfeasance and crimes on the part of the spies. And it is a crying shame that after so many whistleblowers have come out over the last two decades, at least in the UK and the US,
there is no such public interest defense. I think it is criminal in itself that
these people are not protected but they are prosecuted.RT: Why is he going public with his thoughts on the issue right now?
AM: Holder has retired from pubic office; he's the most senior lawyer in the US. He is now back in private practice. Unfortunately, we see this time and time again when senior spooks, senior lawyers, senior government officials come out after they are retired and say "
we could think about this in a different way." It would be lovely to see them doing it when they are actually in office when they have power to actually effect that change. Think about it: in the US they are working under old laws - the 99-year-old
Espionage Act of 1917. This has been
used more times by the Obama administration than all the other presidents put together since 1917 to go after whistleblowers - not spies, not traitors, it is not espionage. These people are coming forward and saying that there are
things that are seriously wrong with our intelligence agency, we need to fix them, they are
breaking our constitution and they are abusing human rights all around the planet.
Comment: The rabbi's views on women don't seem to be all that different from how women are treated in Saudi Arabia by the ruling class. Claiming that girls as young as 6 riding a bike is "provocative" is merely a projection by the rabbi of his inner views onto the world. The majority of the people in the world won't see a young child riding a bike and immediately draw a sexual comparison. Maybe the rabbi ought to have his head examined instead of forcing the outside world to conform according to his twisted worldview.