WHO are you gonna believe? A patriot defending your 4th amendment rights like Ed Snowden, or a weasel and cowardly 4th amendment traitor like 'Lurch' Kerry?
"Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for the purpose of a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Last night, Edward Snowden finally had his say on network American TV ('Inside the Mind of Edward Snowden', NBC) in a prime time interview by Brian Williams. Even before the interview aired, Williams - on NBC Nightly News - in previewing the interview, noted many viewers had written the network expressing their disgust and they may never watch it again. They also labeled him a "traitor".
My reaction? These are mock Americans who don’t deserve liberty. These are what I call sheeple as opposed to free-thinking people. (Brian Williams at the end of his interview said: "Many Americans are upset at Snowden because they can no longer sleep soundly at night" - on account of terrorists now getting the better of us. Awwww....boo hoo hoo, poor little babies! Give 'em a sippy cup and a change of diapers!) They’ve meekly followed and imbibed the propaganda spewed by the corpora-media and the security state which is the real culprit in terms of trashing the 4th amendment. As Snowden pointed out to Williams, in a real democracy we ought not be tolerating any "security state" - the two are mutually exclusive. So again, as Ben Franklin posed it - do we want liberty or security?
Anyway, it's the whining, infantilized wusses who’ve followed the lead of the American puppet media by making Snowden and his travails, asylum seeking and persecution the story instead of the vile overreach he disclosed – which as others have pointed out – leads the way to tyranny (especially via the COG program).
What does that make these mock Americans? In my book it makes them “Good Germans”. Go back to the end of World War II and the American occupation of Germany in the years after 1945. We assailed the “weak” German people and mocked them for not standing up to the growing metastasis of Hitler’s Reich which they obviously saw but did nothing about. These vermin actually praised the Gestapo and helped rat out their neighbors to them, usually for speaking against Hitler or hiding Jews.
Who would have believed 80 years later, a coterie of weak-blooded, meek, pseudo-patriot, pussified "Americans" (and I use that term very loosely - hence the scare quotes) would emulate the Gestapo-loving Germans of the 1930s? But there it is!
Then there was the weasel, coward and 4th amendment traitor John Kerry, mouthing off on the same news segment and bellowing about the "damage" Snowden caused (he likely meant more the embarrassment at being caught out) and calling him a "coward and traitor". Imagine Kerry's nerve calling Snowden a "coward" when he essentially burned all his bridges to leave a comfortable life behind to alert too many underserving 'Muricans what was being done in their name.
Meanwhile, the real coward is Kerry, who in the 2004 Presidential election ran with his tail between his legs - instead of standing and fighting - when the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' unloaded on him. Then, after the violations of voting rights were disclosed in Ohio (including suppressing minority voters by limiting polling places and making many use "provisional" ballots), this weasel never followed up and demanded a full -on investigation. He just punked out like the punk he is.
Kerry is also a hypocrite and 4th amendment traitor. Recall back in March Lurch's boffo performance in actually claiming:
"It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country,” Kerry said on Face the Nation.
Kerry clearly displayed NO historical memory at all. In a blog post at the time I had to give this delusional chump a hint about this nation's "willful choice to invade another country" and using a "completely trumped up pretext" as in "WMD" to do a shock and awe in Iraq. A "war" and invasion which was illegal from the get go.
But Kerry's treachery, as well as that of most of congress, inheres in changing the law (the 1978 FISA law) originally there to protect us from overweening surveillance, following the exposure of illegal wiretapping by Bush. The latter was then rendered "legal" via a revised FISA law, effectively gutting the 4th amendment and paving the way for dragnet NSA surveillance. As Robert Scheer noted in a June 25, 2013 blog post on smirkingchimp.com, ‘The Good Germans in Government’:
"Read the Fourth Amendment to the
How important is that individual conscience in terms of ethics? At the Nuremberg War Crimes trials we informed the Nazis it trumped all else, even government regulations, laws and orders! The operating Principle (VI) came to be known as the Nuremberg Code and clearly states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to orders of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."
Note this Principle’s injunction is exactly analogous to what Edward Snowden followed. He had allegedly binding orders and “oaths” by which the government found it expedient to limit his actions, but he saw (as the U.S. military leaders did at Nuremberg) that the option of a higher moral choice dictated he inform the American people – whose liberties were at stake and threatened – of what was being done in their name.
Moreover, Snowden has since been vindicated. Judge Richard Leon, in a 68 -page ruling issued in Washington December 17, 2013, vindicated Snowden by arguing that the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records by the National Security Agency is likely to violate the U.S. constitution, Judge Leon also declared that the mass collection of metadata probably violates the fourth amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and was "almost Orwellian" in its scope. In a judgment replete with literary swipes against the NSA, he said James Madison, the architect of the US constitution, would be "aghast" at the scope of the agency’s collection of Americans' communications data.
This remark alone shows Snowden is not the villain the Neolib traitors make him out to be but a fuckin' HERO! Now, add to that - if that wasn't enough - the issuance of a 300-page report by a commission appointed by Obama himself - not any screwball, terror loving commie symps. The report made 46 recommendations including that the NSA be stripped of its power to collect phone records in bulk. In addition, the panel advised that the NSA be banned from attempting to undermine the security of the internet- themes pounded by tech companies when they met with Obama last December. (Which makes a mockery of what one talking head "national security" specialist said on CBS' Early Show this morning, i.e. Snowden "hurting tech companies" - when he in fact revealed how the NSA had done so, by unraveling their security systems!)
Even Jim Sensenbrenner, who helped write the Patriot Act, declared that the intent of the law was never to allow the NSA the latitude of mass surveillance that Snowden revealed. I was also delighted to see Colorado Senator Mark Udall, a leading critic of the NSA overreach who said - in his own words:
"The (Leon) ruling underscores what I have argued for years: [that] the bulk collection of Americans' phone records conflicts with Americans' privacy rights under the US constitution and has failed to make us safer,"
The problem with the NSA and its troglodytes is they think that because they have the techno tools to spy into every nook and cranny of the world, they are mandated to do it, 'cause otherwise them 'thar terrorists win! Which is utter horse pockey. You can't use the terrorist bogeyman as an all encompassing excuse to rob people of their rights.
Besides which, the odds of any such attack are slim and none. Gideon Rachman in a Financial Times piece two years ago, i.e.
observed that the number of Americans killed by terrorists since 1960 is "about the same as the number killed over the same period in deer accidents".He also showed "the average American had only a one in 500,000 chance of being killed in a terrorist attack". By way of comparison, the chance of dying in an airline crash is one in 346,000 and the chance of being annihilated by a large asteroid (> 0.5 km dia.) in its collision with Earth, is the same, according to Sir Martin Rees ('Our Final Hour').
So why have so many of our compatriots mindlessly branded him a traitor? Because those forlorn consumers have lost track of their rights as well as obligations as citizens, and basically surrendered them to the state. They may also be deliriously ignorant of the warp and woof of the rights inherent in the Fourth Amendment - and we know that polls taken after 9/11 disclose 3 of 5 Americans couldn't name three of the Bill of Rights. The 4th amendment is VERY clear that specific warrants must be issued, not mass warrants! I don't give a fuck how "inconvenient" it is or how long and arduous that process might be. Tough shit! Either adhere to the principles or admit you're traitors to your constitutional oaths. People can read the words of the Fourth for themselves below:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Read it slowly and carefully, especially the emphasized portions over again. Clearly, the NSA MASS-grabbing of data embodied in PRISM, 'Boundless Informant', XKeyscore, etc. directly violate the 4th amendment, and yeah, I'm as much a stickler about the 4th as the gun people are about the 2nd.
Am I a civil liberties “extremist”? Damned right if that means a citizen who understands that the Constitution is not just “a piece of paper” (as Bush once called it) and that the rights inherent in the Bill of Rights are real, apply to individuals, and not mere “compromise abstractions” but rather hold the key to American identity – what truly sets us apart. And once those rights are gone, believe me they won’t be coming back! Once they are gone we will cease to be the nation my ancestor, Conrad Brumbaugh, envisaged and fought for in the Revolutionary War as one of the Pennsylvania Regiment.
We all owe Snowden a debt of gratitude and those who say otherwise have no business calling themselves patriots or Americans. They belong to the same class of vermin as Joseph Goebbels, Herman Goering, and the other Nazi scum who used (via the Gestapo) their own extensive methods to grab up power more than 70 years ago.
As for 'Lurch' Kerry, he isn't even fit to lick the bottom of Snowden's shoes. Kerry, a Neolib punk who wouldn't even stand up for himself against a torrent of abuse in an election - doesn't belong in the same room with a real patriot and hero. The fact Kerry could brand Snowden a "fugitive" and demand he "man up" (to turn himself in and face Kangaroo court justice) shows how little he grasps of the core issues at stake here. But if this fool, tool and hypocrite couldn't even grasp that the U.S. violated international law when it illegally invaded Iraq (while branding Russia the bad guy for occupying Crimea) then we see what a poseur he is. It's Neoliberal weasels like John Kerry who will spell the end of this Republic, not red-blooded American heroes like Edward Snowden!
-----------
Footnote: The NSA claims it's only been able to recover "one email" of Snowden's to the effect he made any effort to bring his concerns to the attention of higher ups. Now, if anyone really believes that this is all the spooks could really turn up, well, I have some prime beach front property in Barbados to sell you for a song!
See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/alfredo-lopez/56122/usa-freedom-act-has-nothing-to-do-with-freedom-phone-surveillance-reform-bill-passed-by-the-house-is-
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/29/watch_highlights_from_edward_snowdens_interview_with_brian_williams/
No comments:
Post a Comment