Snowden’s New Talking Point: Nazi War Crimes Trial

[babylonsister]

http://swampland.time.com/2013/07/13/edward-snowden-invokes-historic-nazi-trial/

Snowden’s New Talking Point: Nazi War Crimes Trial

Can NSA surveillance be compared to Hitler's genocide?
By Michael Crowley @CrowleyTIME
July 13, 20133


In his Friday statement from Moscow‘s Sheremetyevo International Airport, Edward Snowden revealed that he’s asked for asylum in Russia as he tries to arrange travel to a country willing to host him indefinitely, most likely Venezuela.

Along the way, Snowden framed his situation in striking new terms, citing the 1945-1946 Nuremberg trials that convicted several Nazi leaders of crimes against humanity. Here’s how he put it:

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

snip//

Snowden’s invocation of Nuremberg may not be quite so ridiculous, but it’s still a reach. Snowden’s Friday statement may invoke the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.” But the declaration is not legally binding, and few people would equate government surveillance programs with conquering Europe and committing mass genocide. As Massimo noted yesterday, Human Rights Watch is trying to construct a more compelling defense for Snowden. But it appears HRW is so far avoiding reference to Nuremberg.

Snowden isn’t going to convince the U.S. government to treat him like a conscientious objector or a heroic dissident, of course. He’s fighting a battle for international public opinion, including in Russia and other nations that might help him avoid spending the rest of his life in a federal prison. And if an implicit comparison between modern America and the Third Reich seems like a desperate measure, well, he’s a desperate man.

[Blackford]

1. So Snowden has now Godwined himself

I knew he'd go "NAZI!!!!" sooner or later, I just expected later.

[Cha]

2. Yeah, he's desperate alright.. and pure as the driven

snow.

I think he's protesting too much.

[cyclezealot]

3. Taken straight from teh "Iraq Pledge of Resistance. "

Remember Snowden volunteered for the Army and they broke his legs , denying him a chance to go to Iraq..
. Thank you Mr Snowden. You know your history . You resisted the US war machine. Who knows what all you know.
. These fools refuse to accept the fact, you have the solid praise of the American Security Whistle Blower community ; all the while the likes of Booz Allen rip off the American taxpayer to the tune of 80 billion dollars a year by appealing to their paranoia.
Russia is a temporary stop over. May you find peace and continue your work in places such as Bolivia or Uruguay. we've visited those countries , they are beautiful..
In the words of Daniel Ellsberg, don't come back you won't get a fair trial here. And that Obama has broken his promise to enhance Security Whistle Blower protections , allowing them to make their case before being persecuted by the Stasi state.

.From the Iraq Pledge of Resistance...
.Support for a Soldier’s Right to Conscience

The original copy of this statement can be found at Iraqpledge.org

http://www.tomjoad.org/iraqpledge.htm

[FarCenter]

10. "volunteered for the Army and they broke his legs"?

All we know is that he volunteered for the Army, volunteered for Special Forces training, and was in from May to September 2003. It is unlikely that any "they" broke his legs in any deliberate fashion. It is more likely that he screwed up in some exercise and broke his legs, e.g. in parachute training.

At any rate, he seems to have not harbored any ill will towards the Army or the government and was employed first by NSA and then CIA. He said that it was his experience in Geneva in 2007-8 that soured him on the CIA and on the techniques used to recruit agents.

So his military experience is not related to his disaffection with the US government.

[cyclezealot]

13. Never claimed it did..

It might indicate he's come around as to the waste that was Bush's Iraq War. ?
The inference of his Army service. He volunteered for patriotic reasons. Was his claim.

[ucrdem]

11. Nothing you wrote is from that site, which makes no reference to Snowden.

Also, if Snowden by his own account was a volunteer, then by definition he was not a war resistor.

Did you post the wrong link?

[cyclezealot]

15. Being that Snowden's statement was taken from

the Iraqi war resister's website- I think that more than a coincidence. I find the Iraqi war resisters site , a site of conscience and Snowden likely is sympathetic to them. ?

[ucrdem]

16. Are you talking about the Nuremberg quotation?

That's the only overlap I can find between Snowden's statement and the link you posted, and only the first sentence of Snowden's Nuremberg quotation is on the TomJoad site. The second sentence of Snowden's quote isn't on there. And since Snowden is absolutely not a war resistor, and makes no reference to war resistance, I'd say any overlap is coincidental. They're really talking about two different things.

Incidentally the TomJoad Nuremberg page makes it clear just how ridiculous Snowden's Nuremberg invocation is: http://www.tomjoad.org/nuremberg.htm . The "crime" Snowden supposedly revealed, an NSA metadata warrant, is (a) not a crime, first of all, and (b) if it were, it wouldn't come close to the "crimes under international law" covered by Nuremberg, which include crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

[ProSense]

4. The whole

PR event was ridiculous.

How the Snowden Affair Became a Freak Show
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023235597

[sigmasix]

7. thank you prosense for sticking to the facts

There has been a lot of accusations and willfully ignorant mis-statements about the information Snowden has stolen. I've watched Snowden fans purposefully mischaracterize the information he stole to fit the insistence that Snowden could access every American's phone calls to listen-in (completely impossible lie) and Snowden's certainy that president Obama is emulating the Nazis to enact a stasi state that will destroy America and the promise of liberty and freedom for Americans.
The "snowden is a hero" internet meme is in direct violation of what we know to be the truth by reading Snowden's own words and comparing them to what the released documents actually say- as opposed to simple knee-jerk ODS responses to the here-say and hyperbole produced by G G and snowden.

Once again Prosense- thank you for remaining stedfast in your defense of common sense and logic in the face of severe ODS outbreaks and tons of burning hair.

[Waiting For Everyman]

5. This guy is the one equating surveillance with genocide.

Obviously that is not the point that Snowden made. Is this writer too stupid to know that, or is he presenting a false premise on purpose? Either way, this article is bullshit, and this writer is a propagandist. Carrying water for the corporatist surveillance state, considering the spot the 99% are in right now, is pretty damn despicable. So, I might add, is promoting it here.

These aren't nice, safe times in which people are doing ok and it's alright to promote an agenda that nudges the public a little closer to disaster. In case you don't know it, this is fuck-all come-to-jesus-time, these leaks may be our last best chance to resist a security state that we are nearly submerged under.

I have to wonder whether those throwing mud at Snowden have any common sense, or sense of responsibility, or conscience at all right now. Ugly American, ideed.

[frazzled]

6. Because overseeing sending people to the gas chambers is exactly

the same as overseeing a program that mechanically collects phone transactions as data, doncha know. Six million human exterminations = six million phone calls a minute. Making lamps out of human skin is a lot like metadata storage.

You know, the IRS has access to infinite amounts of private information about its citizens: where you're getting your income, what you're paying for alimony, what your medical expenses were, who owns your mortgage, what charities you're giving money to, etc. etc. It can get really personal. Is that a "human rights" violation? Could that information be abused? Sure, hypothetically, by some tyrant or dictator. But it rarely has been. And we accept it because we trust our government to safeguard the information it needs to run our society through taxes ... unless, of course, we're followers of Ron Paul or Tea Partyers. In which case the IRS might be worse than Auschwitz.

This drama-queen hyperbole is starting to irritate the hell out of me.

[FSogol]

9. "This drama-queen hyperbole is starting to irritate the hell out of me. " Same here.

[dtom67]

8. this IS a something to think about...

Just because you are a soldier or a government employee following orders does not relieve you of moral responsiblity. The defense that " I was just following Orders " did not work at Nuremberg . In other words,as vanishingly unlikely as it is, if their were international trials concerning American human rights violations, the indviduals involved could bbe judged and personally held accountable.
No, it will never happen.
The pont is that if you work for the Government and you see, or are ordered to do somethiing illegal or immoral, you must make a choice: blow the whistle OR learn to deal with your own complicity. Just remember that following orders is not justifcation.

[ucrdem]

12. How is lawful surveillance a "crime against peace and humanity"?

This guy never did make a speck of sense, except to the ODS crowd, and they don't need things to make sense.

[hootinholler]

14. Crowley misses the point entirely

To assert the comparison that wasn't made is disingenuous and yellow journalism.