The Good Germans in Government

[woo me with science]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/the-good-germans-in-gover_b_3494768.html

The Good Germans in Government
Posted: 06/25/2013 8:25 am
Robert Scheer

What a disgrace. The U.S. government, cheered on by much of the media, launches an international manhunt to capture a young American whose crime is that he dared challenge the excess of state power. Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic obligation.

Yes, Snowden has admitted that he violated the terms of his employment at Booz Allen Hamilton, which has the power to grant security clearances as well as profiting mightily from spying on the American taxpayers who pay to be spied on without ever being told that is where their tax dollars are going. Snowden violated the law in the same way that Daniel Ellsberg did when, as a RAND Corporation employee, he leaked the damning Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War that the taxpayers had paid for but were not allowed to read.

In both instances, violating a government order was mandated by the principle that the United States trumpeted before the world in the Nuremberg war crime trials of German officers and officials. As Principle IV of what came to be known as the Nuremberg Code states: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order 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."

That is a heavy obligation, and the question we should be asking is not why do folks like Ellsberg, Snowden and Bradley Manning do the right thing, but rather why aren't we bringing charges against the many others with access to such damning data of government malfeasance who remain silent?
....

[patrice]

1. Individual conscience is predicated on accepting the consequences of authentic action & actions

that pretend consequences are other than what they are are not authentic.

[DirkGently]

8. Ethics. How refreshing. n/t

[patrice]

2. I'm sorry, are we supposed to be prejudiced against Germans now too? Please clarify. nt

[ConservativeDemocrat]

38. He's calling everyone who believes that the U.S. should have intelligence services NAZIs

Germans who went along with the NAZI genocides without objecting were called "Good Germans". That's where it comes from.

Because, apparently, a legal court order to a mega-corporation to turn over records so they may be searched for potential terrorist connections is just exactly like shipping millions of innocent civilians off to death camps.

It's also a classic of Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

I particularly like one of the corollaries to that law. "Anyone who invokes Godwin's Law immediately loses."

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[reusrename]

54. Those weren't just any death camps.

They were legal, court ordered death camps.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

56. I know you're just being snarky...

...but you're also wrong (of course)

From The U.S. Holocaust Museum's "Law and Justice in the Third Reich":

With the reinterpretation of "protective custody" (Schutzhaft) in 1933, police power became independent of judicial controls. In Nazi terminology, protective custody meant the arrest--without judicial review--of real and potential opponents of the regime. "Protective custody" prisoners were not confined within the normal prison system but in concentration camps under the exclusive authority of the SS (Schutzstaffel; the elite guard of the Nazi state).

Not to mention illogical. So because the NAZIs did terrible things they called "legal" we should get rid of all laws lest be be like them?

I don't even know where to begin.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[reusrename]

57. I honestly don't see your point.

But I can help by telling you where to begin. It's very simple.

Start with dropping your whole "well, a secret court says the secret interpretation of the secret law is legal" routine.

Not only is it annoying, it is also illogical.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

58. Your inability to see a point is both obvious, and not my problem

And your feeling entitled to pretend that the crap you just made up are actual "facts", makes it not worth anyone's time to engage you.

Just for example in the post above, the law you pretend is secret is actually quite public. And, of course, legal - as many many courts have reiterated over the last several decades. (The proceedings it authorizes are, of course, secret - but the law itself is public.)

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

// Debating an extremist is like trying to play chess with a pigeon: it knocks over all the pieces, shits on the chessboard, and then flies back to its bird-brained flock to declare "victory".

[reusrename]

60. Hey, if this stuff is being made up, it isn't by me. Go waller some more in your pigeon shit.

“It is impossible for the American people to have an informed public debate about laws that are interpreted, enforced, and adjudicated in complete secrecy,” Wyden said. "When talking about the laws governing Intelligence operations, the process has little to no transparency. Declassifying FISA Court opinions in a form that does not put sources and methods at risk will give the American people insight into what government officials believe the law allows them to do.”

http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senators-end-secret-law

Secret interpretations of secret laws by secret courts.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

63. Again, you clearly can't read.

It's...

Secret interpretations of private public laws by secret courts. Wyden never says the law is secret. Because it's not.

And Senator Wyden, unlike you, is someone who actually has credibility. He doesn't flat out lie like you do, can read, and is basically an all around great Democrat - who I happen to disagree with on this issue. I voted for him, and convinced many of my East side Republican friends to do so as well.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

/ Go peck at seed somewhere else

[reusrename]

64. 26 additional senators, together with Senator Wyden, are much more credible than you think.

“We are concerned that by depending on secret interpretations of the PATRIOT Act that differed from an intuitive reading of the statute, this program essentially relied for years on a secret body of law,” the senators wrote in the letter. This and misleading statements by Intelligence officials have “prevented our constituents from evaluating the decisions that their government was making, and will unfortunately undermine trust in government more broadly. The debate that the President has now welcomed is an important first step toward restoring that trust.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/28/senators-letter-james-clapper

If you don't understand how the secret court's interpretation becomes law, I will gladly try and explain it for you.

My guess though, is that you already know this stuff and are projecting here. You know, liar, liar, pants on fire.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

80. Their credibility isn't in question.

Please note though, that the key word in that quote is "essentially". As illustrated by the phrase "he was essentially faithful to his wife", that word is not an actual factual argument about law - more of a rhetorical one.

Now, unlike you, I've written half a dozen times that I don't take issue with people on the other side of this debate using rhetoric. If you wish to argue that the law is legal, but it is bad and should be changed, that does not make you an extremist - because you at least acknowledge reality. But when you start throwing around the words "Unconstitutional" and "Illegal" to things that have repeatedly been found the opposite at every opportunity for the courts to review it, then you are off into places where we can't even begin to have a debate.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[reusrename]

81. Feel free to fabricate an argument that I haven't made and then shoot it down.

That's not the same thing as having a conversation, but I guess you may not be interested in a real discussion.

Like I said before, maybe you should consider dropping the ridiculous argument that everything is fine because "a secret court made a secret ruling about a secret law."

That's all I got. Carry on.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

82. So are you withdrawing the argument you just made?

Your original statement wasn't:

"dropping the ridiculous argument that everything is fine because a secret court made a secret ruling about a secret law".

It was:

"well, a secret court says the secret interpretation of the secret law is legal"

...a completely different statement. Legality and "ridiculousness" are two entirely different things. And while I do basically argue that everything is fine, that at least is something subject to honest differences of opinion, rather that your previous outright out-of-ass fact pulling.

Note however that even then, you are still deliberately misstating the truth. It is not "a secret court made a secret ruling about a secret law". It is that "a secret court publicly known about court made a secret ruling about a secret public law".

As,

A] The FISA Courts have been known about for decades, so even if their proceedings are necessarily secret, they are not, and

B] The law that authorizes all of this is part of the public record, even if the court's interpretations are not.

So don't accuse me of "fabricating" an argument that you "haven't made", on the argument that you just made - while at the same time subtly shifting your argument so that it is more factually founded. (While I appreciate that latter, you should at least acknowledge that this is what you are doing.)

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[reusrename]

83. Yes, I withdraw my advice to you.

Carry on!

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. The fact that 69 years later some people still ask, "How could that have happened?" just shows how

desperately people want to avoid responsibility for their actions. They will go to any length to evade the terror that realizing it is your own fault evokes.

[galileoreloaded]

22. this. this. this. a hundred times this. our culture is ill. nt

[KittyWampus]

40. Worse, are those reactionary screamers constantly crying "IT'S HAPPENING"!" since it helps inure us

to when it actually is happening.

[Egalitarian Thug]

77. You've made the OP's point all over this thread. n/t

[reusrename]

55. That's very close but it misses the mark slightly, I think.

People are more comfortable blaming the victim (i.e. the Jews should have fought back harder) than they are in assessing their own vulnerabilities.

I was once asked whether I believed like Patrick Henry did: "Give me liberty or give me death!"

To be honest, I don't think I'm that exceptional. Not at all. I would probably just take my bar of soap and step into the shower along with everyone else in that situation.

Thinking about it a little deeper though, I came to realize that I don't think I could ever be forced to be the person to hand out the bars of soap. Something, I don't know quite what it is, that I feel is in me would just not allow it. I hope I would rather die first.

It's more like a "Give them liberty or give me death!" view of things. I am sure that Snowden is of this mind.

[DirkGently]

4. It is eerie hearing supposed progressives scream for the blood of the "disloyal."

Engaging in bad-faith smearing of truth-tellers. Citing "the law" as reason why people must be silent and assent to whatever they are told, and why the disobedient must be tracked down and made an example of. Conflating embarrassing the "regime" with harming the country.

We've always had fascist / authoritarian tendencies in this country. Bit shocking to see how much convoluted thinking and brazen propagandizing some are willing to embrace to put conformity and partisanship over people.

We're supposed to be better than this.

[woo me with science]

5. I think "supposed" is the key word in that sentence.

Along with the surveillance state, a wide-ranging propaganda machine is in place now, too...

[DirkGently]

7. And we will find the motivation, ultimately, is power / money for

... private interests. There's always a bogeyman to justify it. Commies. "Terror." Whatever it takes to make some people fearful enough to shut up and play along, so others can consolidate wealth and power.

It's not like it's a new thing. There are reasons we purport to protect a free press and require a reasonable showing before search and seizure.

Why some think we are now somehow immune to the oldest evils of authoritarian power consolidation, and don't need all these old-fashioned protections for the good of the actual people is a mystery.

[KoKo]

24. Agree the revelations of who benefitted from this information are

the next step. This isn't being done just to find Terrorists. There is profit in this. Particularly knowing that EU was being bugged during negotiations of how to deal with the Global Financial Crisis (which is still ongoing) and who would profit from knowing what international deals were being made (within the EU) in advance to deal with regulating the banks, bail outs and covering up the criminality that went on that led to the crash.

[DirkGently]

31. There's long been a deliberate conflation

of "American interests" with "interests of the few and the powerful."

It's not a uniquely American evil -- we regularly call it out and cluck when we see Russia, China, et al transparently supporting some dictator they're selling weapons to or buying things from. It's a human evil as old as time. People ascribe false, beneficial motivations to selfish interests.

But I'm not sure anyone's doing it to the extent we are right now. It's a PNAC-flavored extension of trickle-down theory, really. We use the military and intelligence strengths we have not for defense, but for offense, and specifically, to obtain power and wealth for the influential and well-connected.

It's only a matter of time before we discover which American private interests are being fed intel on their competition and their critics. We saw one tip of the iceberg with the BOA / HBGary proposal to "destroy Glenn Greenwald" (him again) through dirty social networking tricks.

Nobody needs ten zillion phone records or e-mails to watch out a handful of poorly-armed foreign zealots who, we should remember, premise their attacks on us on the idea that we are already interfering with their countries and their politics.

This stuff is the current version of the CIA setting up banana republics in South America, or the Bush family invading countries in the Middle East. It's quiet and (theoretically) bloodless, but the motivations are the same. And the winners and losers will be the same.

The American public is not in the "win" column.

[HiPointDem]

35. +

[woo me with science]

59. Good post.

Thanks.

[TheKentuckian]

62. Fucking A.

The Holistic Detective gets it out there again.

[reusrename]

65. Sounds right to me.

By the way, Monsanto just bought Blackwater.

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/07/yes-monsanto-actually-did-buy-the-blackwater-mercenary-group-2-2698594.html

[DirkGently]

84. Jesus. This kind of stuff makes paranoia redundant. n/t

[patrice]

13. There's a lott of stuff that is supposed by those who don't admit that they don't know what they

don't know; that could be a matter of life or death and all of that supposing adds up to a lot of woo woooo.

My position isn't a lot stronger for similar reasons, but I'm willing to begin by admitting that rather than pitching a bunch of authoritarian propaganda that tells people what they can and cannot say in the name of the great cause and could cost others their lives for some authoritarian principle that refuses to identify itself for what it REALLY is.

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden CHOSE to break their oaths and now they want their cake and to eat it too, while others who had similar choices of the opposite sort, chose not to and paid with their lives and limbs. I'm not saying that Manning & Snowden had no right to do what they did, but please let's cut the hero worship that seeks a PRIVILEGE for them that others who paid more for their choices are honest and strong enough not to demand, especially at significant cost to other people's lives.

There's some fucking ethics for you.

[patrice]

17. Do you think the word "supposed" doesn't apply to you too? nt

[Fuddnik]

36. I'm re-reading "Manufacturing Consent" right now.

Really brings the propaganda models into focus......again.

[KittyWampus]

41. well, I'd suppose the reactionary screamers aren't liberals either.

[patrice]

10. I'm not one calling for "blood". Only honesty about our differences & our similarities, which

similarities include one hell of a lot of unknowns that too many people around here seem to want to pretend are insignificant.

Let's take a step to remedy that situation; I'll try to answer a question if you will answer one. Here's mine:

Which social and economic justice issues are you willing to sacrifice and in what order of priorities in order to attain success against NSA surveillance? If you/yours makes into the back rooms behind the back rooms behind the back rooms, which of us will you throw under the bus to get the deal that you want?

[DirkGently]

16. Oh. Nihilistic pragmatism? No thanks.

I thought that when you made that statement regarding ethics above, calling for recognition of the actual, rather than imaginary, consequences of action, that you were speaking about the disingenuous support for illegal / unconstitutional / or unethical surveillance -- being for our "protection" and so forth.

Are you instead suggesting that these secret surveillance activities ARE wrong, and harmful, and in need of change, but there is simply too much political leverage / money involved for us to do anything about it?

That we need to prioritize other things -- things like partisan political victory -- ahead of it?

Asking how many babies you would skin and eat if it would stop 9/11 -- that sort of thing? That's nonsense.

NOTE: I'm not sure that's what you actually said, but if it is, it runs counter to the ethical premise you set out earlier.

You don't start from the premise everything is a zero-sum exercise in the soulless exercise of power, and that you just trade bad here for less bad there. Take what the existing forces will give you. Not as a citizen you don't, anyway. That's a game for mercenaries.

You start with principle, and the rational contemplation of what helps, and what harms, and you push in all directions at once. You build consensus. Raise awareness. CREATE leverage out of consciousness and the awareness of true consequences. Once there was no leverage for women to vote, or to curb pollution, or to end segregation. We didn't trade our souls to anyone to make those changes.

Your premise -- again, if I'm reading you correctly -- is simply false. You're asking us to presume consequences and tradeoffs not in evidence.

If you think you know more about what they are than the rest of us, lay them out.

[patrice]

33. Can't function without labels? Nihilist? Just because you won't/can't perceive

something that doesn't mean it isn't there and to assume that it isn't misses nearly a universe of potentials.

I don't assume/presume those consequences, I say they are possible and they are also possibly significant in ways that amount to everything from losing real human value to lost lives and anyone who says they aren't possible and refuses to deal with them process-wise is whistling past the graveyard and NOT to be trusted.

....................

I must go exercise and get some paperwork done, have been here too long today already and if I don't go, I won't, so I will return later and read your post more carefully.

[TheKentuckian]

61. Patrice how is one supposed to deal with costs process wise? We don't have any data

and don't know the connections. You can't demonstrate any costs either so it seems to me and I think the the poster you are responding to would agree that absent that you've asked for horse trading proposals with no value on what is being traded for or who the trade is with and what they want. It is an odd default position, it isn't reasonable without a hell of a lot more information, and yeah, I can see how it would seem kinda nihilistic and definitely fatalistic to just assume that someone has to be thrown under the bus or have their economic/social/civil rights trashed to protect against absurd assaults on an already enumerated right.

Are you saying human rights are a pie and to get anymore some must be given up?

Sounds really evil and shitty, how about "an offer that can't refuse" for the wicked scum in the backroom behind the backrooms?

How about the old Russian solution, no offers? No trades just eradicate the pestilence, their progeny, relations, and associates and plunder all they have?

No one can tell you anything about what they would sacrifice because your question is open but the cost is not. You can't even be sure there is a cost of any consequence or anyone to deal with.

I also argue that the cost has already been paid in full, we didn't come to that enumerate right for anything like free. Many lives, much blood, and huge hardship over hundreds and thousands of years paved the way to what you dismiss far too easily.

The question can also be flipped, what is the payoff that you think you are getting for tossing privacy and protection from illegal and unreasonable search and seizure under the bus? In fact, that might help answer yours. If we know the benefit then we have a starting price in our "rights auction"

[Doctor_J]

53. I don't think these are progressives doing the screaming

In fact the ones calling for Snowden's head are the ones who now use liberal as an epithet.

[backscatter712]

67. Exactly. It's Skinner's choice, but these authoritarian "Democrats" shouldn't be here.

Whatever happened to "Don't be a right-winger."?

[WillyT]

6. K & R !!!

[leftstreet]

9. DURec

[flamingdem]

11. Criminal or thief is the correct term

Those do carry repercussions. If he faced those he'd do more for his message.

[patrice]

15. Right on, but it won't happen because bourgeoisie think revolution is a fashionable cake walk. nt

[flamingdem]

20. True. Assange thought so and it's not so bad living at his pricey London address

Ecuador's famous beaches and lovely colonial architecture awaited Snowden ... as you say a bourgie cakewalk ... but now it might be a Russian flat with cold water and no internet connection!

I can't imagine Snowdon is feeling well at the moment. Assange on the other hand is back in the news and feeling his oats.

[patrice]

26. Snowden will probably end up in Rio de Janeiro. Service worker #2 for the stateless

citizens of the archipelago, with Greenwald as #1.

..................

Btw, have you seen property in Belize being advertised on CNN? It'd be interesting to go check how much coastline Belize is losing every year.

[flamingdem]

32. Why did you mention property in Belize?

Are you spying on me!n lol Maybe we discussed this before, please forgive if I forgot the details. I have a connection there. What's going on with the CNN ads? Very curious. Losing coastline to foreign buyers?

[patrice]

37. I don't watch CNN much, but it was on in the IRS waiting room the other day and I happened to

notice some beautiful advertising for property in Belize, so, maybe I'm a little worried about climate change, and I started wondering about coastal land loss due to rising seas.

..........................

I need to double check this, since I just saw it the other day in browsing: there's been flooding up in Canada in that region that feeds one of the water ways that could figure big in the North Atlantic Current pattern, which if that pattern gets interfered with because of the melting ice-cap up there and other climate changes, that could be a pretty bad thing if that current pattern is altered due to a change in water salinity or temperature.

[flamingdem]

45. I think the keyword is adaptation

That will be easier there to plan for rising seas than in Miami, for sure.

Belize is one of the few places left where land on the Caribbean is affordable, relatively.

I wonder if its the government running those ads. Foreign properties always seem like risky investments.

Belize is known for harboring fugitives, though now there's money if they catch them, so Snowden might not feel at home there.

[KoKo]

29. The Equadorian Embassy is one floor in a large building..Assange has one room.

with one window. He is not allowed to walk outside...he is confined to one room in a very small embassy floor.

[Savannahmann]

49. Question about facing consequences.

Those folks, the representatives who signed the Declaration of Independence ran. They ran, and they organized, and they hid out from the British. Would they have done more for their message if they had moments after signing the document of fame and legend, walked down and turned themselves in? They were traitors to the Crown, the legal government of the British Colonies right? Some were caught, and hanged as traitors. Some survived the war penniless.

George Washington spent the first two years running from the British, keeping his army together, using his ability to run as the only frustration he could offer the British until they were well trained, and equipped enough to take on the enemy. How much more would they have done for their message by marching forward to die gloriously?

World War I. The French and British ran away faster than the Germans could chase in August 1914. Imagine how much more they could have done for their message if they had just stood and faced the Germans, and died like the German Plan called on them to do.

World War II, the French could have exiled themselves, and run to Africa, and continued the fight from the French Empire. They could have sent their ships out to make sure they were available to continue the fight against the Fascists. Instead, they surrendered, and the Vichy government worked to placate the Germans. We all know how well that went for France. Facing the consequences was no better for the French people than it would have been to continue the fight from the last stronghold of the French Empire. Instead a minor General named De Gaul became famous, because he ran, and he continued the struggle for French Freedom.

Georgie Markov, exiled from Bulgaria, hiding in London. Getting his message out on the BBC and other radio stations. Telling the Bulgarians, the subjects of the Soviet Empire, that freedom was a good thing, and worth working for. Wouldn't he have done so much more if he had like Nelson Mandela gone to prison instead of running for freedom? The Bulgarian secret police got to him anyway, and assassinated him in London. Did his facing justice that way make his cause more or less valid?

The point you miss entirely. In order to get your cause discussed, you have to be free. None of those things he stole would have ever seen the light of day if the CIA/NSA/Does anyone know all of the groups/FBI had captured him before he could release them. As long as he's free, he's still getting his cause talked about. Marching into the lions den makes you a martyr but it doesn't necessarily get your issue discussed. It may help your cause, or it may hurt your cause. Marching into the arms of the authoritarian state that is spying on it's citizens may be a good idea to you, but staying loose, staying free from them is a much more recognizable good idea for the rest of us. Nelson Mandela was a hero for enduring prison for all those years. Imagine what he could have done if like Gandhi, he had been free to keep talking, and inspiring with words instead of his suffering.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Ellsberg, Manning & Snowden refused to "just follow orders" and be "Good Americans".

[patrice]

14. Highly principled persons do make opposite choices just as freely and don't seek PRIVILEGE for

their choices, because their choices are more free than those who cannot live with the real world consequences of their own actions.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

18. Are you saying that Ellsberg, Manning, and Snowden didn't face consequences?

In the "real" world?

[flamingdem]

21. It seems like Snowden thought he'd be fine in Hong Kong

but that was not convenient to the Chinese. Then he thought he'd be fine in Ecuador, and that was going well but ill planned by Assange, and then Biden intervened.

The consequences are only a result of bungling, not something he expected.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. It seems like?

[flamingdem]

25. Well he chose to travel there and he had contacts there

so I doubt he thought it was a problem spot.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

27. Well, he could have fled to Chicago or Tupelo I suppose.

Just like Einstein could have fled to Berlin or Munich....and faced the consequences.

[flamingdem]

28. He would have been better off to be less spectacular and more

deadly with the information, but he had heroism on his mind, Assange took full advantage of that naivitee

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

30. The information is, however, getting out to our benefit.

[patrice]

42. No, I'm saying that any decision to act includes the consequences of action. Freedom isn't no

consequences; it's the ability to choose despite the consequences, not JUST gambling that you'll avoid them and then crying foul when you don't. That's one of the things that make people like Bishop Mandela so great and powerful. It's not good that he was jailed, but he didn't let that stop him nor change him when he was. He chose and he didn't try to inflict his principles on others without THEIR choosing, so he made his life an example of that and called on them to freely choose too.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

43. That would be President Mandela not "bishop". Maybe you're thinking of Bishop Tutu.

Who said:

"The words attributed to Manning reveal that he went through a profound moral struggle between the time he enlisted and when he became a whistleblower. Through his experience in Iraq, he became disturbed by top-level policy that undervalued human life and caused the suffering of innocent civilians and soldiers. Like other courageous whistleblowers, he was driven foremost by a desire to reveal the truth" and, "The military prosecution has not presented evidence that Private Manning injured anyone by releasing secret documents... Nor has the prosecution denied that his motivations were conscientious;"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu#Imprisonment_of_Bradley_Manning

[forestpath]

19. K&R

[baldguy]

34. Robert Scheer is taking notes from Glenn Beck & Alex Jones, now?

What a disgrace.

[Fuddnik]

39. You either forgot your sarcasm thingie

Or you need to get checked out.

[baldguy]

46. No sarcasm. The nutcases on the right have made a cottage industry out of the false claim

of "Democrats = Nazis" and "Obama = Hitler". Someone like Robt Scheer should know better.

[Savannahmann]

47. Actually they usually compare us to Soviets

We're the Soviets to them, and we call them the Nazi's. Although in the end, there isn't a dimes worth of difference between the two totalitarian societies.

[Douglas Carpenter]

44. knr

[xchrom]

48. I see the Stasi Comformists have shown up.

All together now: America the Beautiful!

[Savannahmann]

50. Yes, they would have been more relieved

If Snowden had stolen the documents, and then walked into the FBI office, and turned himself in. That way the secrets would be safe, and unrevealed to the public. If only we could arrest him we can make this go away.

I think that was the justification to murder Georgi Markov in London wasn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Markov#Assassination

[backscatter712]

66. "NSA! NSA! NSA!"

I'm trying to track down that cartoon... But I'll say that the police-state apologists are acting just like teabaggers.

[patrice]

51. If the word "supposed" doesn't apply to you, that's argument from AUTHORITY, which makes you

an AUTHORITARIAN, no surprise to me from the first day that I noticed you here pitching some pure woooo oooooo oooo about how the DU = what you say it is, not only the very essence of fascistic supposition, but also pure BS "science" too.

[xchrom]

52. ignorant. do you know who robert scheer is?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scheer

Robert Scheer (born April 4, 1936)[1] is an American journalist who writes a column for Truthdig that is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate in publications such as The Huffington Post and The Nation. He is a clinical professor of communications at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California and co-hosts the weekly political radio program Left, Right & Center on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, California. Scheer is editor-in-chief for the Webby Award-winning [2] online magazine Truthdig.[3] The Society of Professional Journalists awarded Scheer the 2011 Sigma Delta Chi Award for his column.[4]

Beginnings through Vietnam[edit]

Scheer was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City.[5] His mother, Ida Kuran,[6] was a Russian Jew, and his father, Frederick Scheer was a Protestant native of Germany;[7] both worked in the garment industry.[8] Robert graduated from Christopher Columbus high school in the Bronx. After graduating from City College of New York with a degree in economics, he studied as a fellow at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, and then did further economics graduate work at the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley. Scheer has also been a Poynter fellow at Yale University, and was a fellow in arms control at Stanford University, the same post once held by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In 1962[9] in Berkeley, California, Scheer along with David Horowitz, Maurice Zeitlin, Phil Roos, and Sol Stern founded Root and Branch: A Radical Quarterly, one of the first campus New Left journals.[10][11]

While working at City Lights Books in San Francisco, Scheer co-authored the book, Cuba, an American tragedy (1964), with Maurice Zeitlin. Between 1964 and 1969, he served, variously, as the Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor-in-chief of Ramparts magazine. Scheer reported from Cambodia, China, North Korea, Russia, Latin America and the Middle East (including the Six-Day War), as well as on national security matters in the United States. While in Cuba, where he interviewed Fidel Castro, Scheer obtained an introduction by the Cuban leader for the diary of Che Guevara — which Scheer had already obtained, with the assistance of French journalist Michele Ray, for publication in Ramparts and by Bantam Books. After Ramparts collapsed, Scheer became a freelance writer who was published in major magazines including Playboy, Look, Esquire, Lear's and Cosmopolitan.
During this period Scheer made a bid for elective office as one of the first anti-Vietnam War candidates. He challenged U.S. Representative Jeffrey Cohelan in the 1966 Democratic primary. Cohelan was a liberal, but like most Democratic officeholders at that time, he supported the Vietnam War. Scheer lost, but won over 45% of the vote (and carried Berkeley), a strong showing against an incumbent that demonstrated the rising strength of New Left Sixties radicalism.
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the Vietnam War.[12]

In July 1970, Scheer accompanied as a journalist a Black Panther Party delegation, led by Eldridge Cleaver, who also wrote for Ramparts, to North Korea, China, and Vietnam. The delegation also contained people from the San Francisco Red Guard, the women's liberation movement, the Peace and Freedom Party, Newsreel, and the Movement for a Democratic Military.
In the November 1970 California election, Scheer ran for the U.S. Senate as the nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party against Republican Senator George Murphy and Democratic Congressman John V. Tunney. Scheer received 56,731 votes and lost the election to Mr. Tunney.[13]


***you might want to educate your self -- before you show your ignorant ass.

[patrice]

68. Confirmed. It is argument from authority. ALL HAIL Authority, as long as it isnt Barack Obama. nt

[patrice]

69. My questions still stand: How many dead people does Robert think the possibility of being WRONG

is worth?

[patrice]

70. How come I can't get Robert, the AUTHORITY, to tell us which issues & in what priority he's willing

to throw under the bus in order to succeed against the NSA & President Obama.

[patrice]

71. How come I can't get Robert to tell us whether he's a Libertarian or not. You'd think such a great

authority would be proud to say what he is.

[patrice]

72. How many people does Robert think should die for unregulated PRIVATE assault weapons trade around

the World?

[patrice]

74. *** you might want to ask yourself if you don't have a slight case of sycophancy, no wait, make

that sycoFANTASY.

Which would be just fine if that's what you like, but you don't have the right to risk other people's lives for your ideology.

[patrice]

75. *** you might want to educate yourself on the philosophy & nature of sciience, anyone who CAN'T

admit the possibility and consequences of being WRONG is NOT RATIONAL.

[patrice]

79. Let me amend: anyone who CAN'T admit the possibility and consequences of being WRONG is

either not rational or up to something more covert than what they are willing to admit and when it comes to the right to live, all of us have an ethical responsibility to ask questions about that even if it displeases Robert's fascistic DU elite.

[patrice]

73. Yeah, those evil Germans, you know, the ones who have Labor's right to organize institutionalized

right in their constitution right up there with corporate persons and government.

[randome]

76. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

But those who live in the Past are unable to clearly see the Present.

And the obligatory comparison to Ellsberg. Ellsberg had evidence, the Pentagon Papers themselves.

Snowden has...PowerPoint slides.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[patrice]

78. Not everyone that you assume is forgetting history & people can think outside of the box in

diverse ways.