Edward Snowden

crows as whistleblowers and snowdens

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Crows tree bw 1500

MY ROOMMATE GADJI is a cat who ac­tu­ally likes having a har­ness strapped around her neck and midriff: it means that she is going out­side! Ap­par­ently, any price is worth paying to spend the time in the fresh air—rolling in the dirt, spying on birds, and going for walks.

When walking, we tend to head to the green belt about 100 feet from the house and in­vari­ably, as we enter the treed area, a large black crow swoops in, perches on a branch on one of the ever­greens around us, and be­gins ha­ranguing us:

Cawww! READ MORE

is alleged irascibility germane to the issue? da! nyet!

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PutinSnowden header copy

FROM TODAY’S SEATTLE TIMES (Au­gust 8, 2013, page A3) is a piece from The Wash­ington Post ad­dressing Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s “snub­bing” of Russian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin over the granting of asylum to Ed­ward Snowden, Mr. Putin is de­scribed as “shrewd but fa­mously iras­cible … with a deep sus­pi­cion of U.S. mo­tives.”

Two ob­ser­va­tions, the first of which is gram­mat­ical: iras­cible is de­fined as “marked by hot temper and easily pro­voked anger” by Merriam-Webster On­line. READ MORE

looks like we will be needing more snowdens

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Snowden cartoon header

FROM TODAY’S SEATTLE TIMES (July 19, 2013) and a piece ti­tled “U.S. Of­fi­cials says NSA taking steps to stop leaks” (page A2): an AP ar­ticle ac­knowl­edges that “The in­for­ma­tion re­vealed [by Ed­ward Snowden] that the agency was gath­ering mil­lions of US phone records and in­ter­cepting some US In­ternet traffic.” Which, if you care about gov­ern­ment transparency—an ab­surd ex­pec­ta­tion to many—then it looks like we will be needing more Snow­dens. READ MORE