General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Jimmy Carter issues statement on Snowden. "America no longer has a functioning democracy" [View all]deurbano
(2,895 posts)Supporting a country's right to offer Snowden asylum would be a pretty hollow gesture if Snowden could never get there. What would be the point?
Ellsberg broke the law.
The draft resisters who fled (or never registered) broke the law.
And Snowden broke the law.
But, I disagree that Carter is "a man about the law." I think he is a man of principle. Read his NYT editorial from the OP's link. Carter decries human rights violations that are egregiously immoral, yet "legal":
<<Recent legislation has made legal the presidents right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or associated forces, a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.
In addition to American citizens being targeted for assassination or indefinite detention, recent laws have canceled the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications. Popular state laws permit detaining individuals because of their appearance, where they worship or with whom they associate.
Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We dont know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.>>