Let Freedom Ring.
The Austrian newspaper Der Standard reported on Evo Morales' stay in the Vienna Schwechat airport “live” and with lots of photos. In one picture, Morales appeared to be looking at a cell phone or small computer-type device and smiling, but his foreign minister looked furious.
According to Der Standard, the Bolivian diplomatic mission including Morales complained that the life of the President, Morales, had been threatened by not allowing Morales to proceed as his trip was planned, and Morales was claiming diplomatic immunity and threatening to call in someone from The Hague.
OK. I read German. Most people don't. Der Standard is a pretty reliable news source.
Austria has granted asylum to many political refugees from all over the world. The Austrian Minister of the Interior stated that her country is not afraid and awards asylum to people, but they have to identify themselves and undergo an interview as required by law.
The Interior Minister stated that she understands that many citizens are upset about the revelations on American surveillance and that Germany (Merkel) and Austria have compiled a list of questions that they are submitting to Obama about the program. They are awaiting a speedy response to it.
I posted my translation of the article on DU last night around midnight, Pacific Time.
Conduit and Bing have stolen my computer for the moment. (Joking. I'm a computer Klutz and probably did something wrong. I take full responsibility.) And I am having trouble finding Der Standard. The article I found last night has, of course, been replaced. But things got pretty tense in Vienna last night judging from the pictures, the articles and the "live" coverage.
Everyone will have their own opinion. Was Morales free to go? Did he stay for some reason? Part of the confusion was obviously diplomatic. And if Der Standard reported correctly (and I believe they did), then the Bolivian foreign minister was pretty upset. I would also say he was upset from the pictures of him that I saw in Der Standard. Someone put Morales' life in danger, the foreign minister of Bolivia was reported to have said.
Snowden had better be pretty important because it is not just Bolivia and South America that are upset about this.
I warned that Germany and Austria would not like this at all.
The Germans and Austrians bore the brunt of most of the Cold War. They were on the edge. They lived with the Iron Curtain immediately to their East. The invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the struggle for freedom in Poland killed many dreams as well as some decent people.
I was on a vacation in a campground in Munich the day the Russians entered Czechoslovakia. I will never forget it. We had just been traveling in then Yugoslavia visiting with family. At one point we had stayed in a campsite, lovely place filled with olive trees. We made friends with a vacationing family from Czechoslovakia who had a teenaged son with them. They were so happy about the Prague Spring -- so excited about the future. We drove up to Munich and there we got the news of the Soviet invasion. I was so sad, and when I think of it, I still am.
This surveillance thing is no joke. It is serious. We think we are not the Soviets, and of course we aren't. But the problem is that we are human. We feel fear. We over-react.
The people in the NSA and our government are also human. They want to protect our nation. And because I know that their wish to protect is motivated by compassion and love most likely, I understand that. But the extent of the surveillance that they apparently have in place and the potential for abuse of the system in the future is too great. This system of surveillance is a greater threat in my view than anything it could prevent.
Freedom is a precious thing, as I learned that summer in the Munich campground.
The faces on the Czechs who were visiting Munich, some of them for the first time in the West, were utterly devastating. They were staying in tents, had their cars and all or some of their family with them and in one single day they had to decide whether to leave their whole life, the rest of their families, their jobs, their homes, their family heirlooms, their language, everything behind. In a matter of hours, they had to choose, the West and hopefully freedom or the East and Soviet repression, poverty and misery.
I assure you that if the DUers who are rah-rahing for this surveillance program had been with me at those campgrounds in the then Yugoslavia and then in Munich, Germany, they would be opposing this extreme surveillance and the exaggerated spying as I am.
Freedom is precious. Most of us Americans don't realize how precious it really is.
This excessive and secret surveillance will be abused. It will not make us freer or safer, although it make give us the illusion of safety for the moment maybe, but not in the long run.
It’s almost the Fourth of July. So I want to say thank you to the brave Americans who fought our revolution and gave us our Constitution. And thank you to all who have served and to the families of those who have died or been injured to keep us free.
Whatever difficulties and risks we face in the future: climate change, fuel and food shortages, greedy oligarchs, poverty, disease, let’s face them together as one nation undivided. It is unity that makes us strong. Surveillance inevitably divides. Stop it now.
Let's don't let down our many friends around the world who look to us for an example of how people who are as diverse as we are can live in harmony as a free society.
We have to do better. End the massive surveillance.
I posted a similar post as a response to someone else's post and then posted it as an OP upon request. So if think you read this or something very similar before, you are right.
= new reply since forum marked as read
