Edward Snowden, 29, is now a hunted man. The media this morning has moved from the shock over the massive surveillance of citizens to attacking Snowden as a leaker. Indeed, this morning, CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst Jeff Toobin denounced Snowden as a “clown” and someone who should be denounced. Toobin and I have been disagreeing a great deal lately. While I respect Jeff Toobin, I was surprised last week when he defended aspects of the investigation of journalists and later the massive surveillance programs. However, I was taken aback by the attack on Snowden. There certainly is a basis for criminal investigation — a point no one denies. He will have to answer for any violation of his clearance agreement and national security laws. However, it is the tenor and shift of the comments this morning that so surprised me. Rather than continue the debate of the loss of privacy, political and media figures are focusing on Snowden rather than the programs. You can disagree with his methods just as you can disagree with Julian Assange. However, there is an obvious effort to (like Assange) make him look unbalanced and dangerous. The story appears more complex. This is a man who gave up a $200,000 a year job and his likely freedom to reveal something that he felt the public should know about in the interest of privacy. You can disagree with his method, but few of his critics would even consider such a sacrifice for principle. Yet, the coverage this morning is largely on how to catch him and punish him. Over the weekend, the White House said it would find the person responsible and punish him. Snowden then self-disclosed his identity.
Ironically, President Barack Obama told the public that he was happy that we could have this debate over the balancing of privacy and security. However, he wants the person responsible for that debate to be prosecuted. Without Snowden, the program would have remained secret and no debate would likely have occurred. While aspects of these programs were previously discussed in 2006, this was the first confirmation of the programs from the government.
U.S. Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, called Snowden “a defector” and said “this person is dangerous to the country.” That is the new spin: the “high school dropout” and “clown” who fled to Hong Kong. Indeed, many news outlets are focusing on the fact that he allegedly had a $300 night hotel in Hong Kong before checking out. (Anyone who has traveled to Hong Kong will tell you that this expense for a room is not uncommon and it is certainly not “one of the priciest” rooms for the city). Much of the focus will be on Snowden and his case as opposed to the massive surveillance program. Many believe, like Snowden, that the greater danger to the country is the loss of privacy — as discussed in my column today in USA Today. What is clear is that this massive security state, and its contractors, are irate about these leaks, which have given critical information to the public that has long been denied to it by its elected representatives. It is a closed system that is represented vividly by Booz Allen. The current head of national intelligence (Clapper) is a former company executive. The prior intelligence head is now leading the company. It is part of a security state that generates hundreds of billions of dollars and we are the subject of their work under these and other programs. They do not like people causing the public to ask questions.
Snowden acted from within this closed system. We have a democratic system that seems entirely unconnected to the public. From the continuation of our fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to warrantless surveillance, the views of the public seem entirely immaterial to our leaders. They offer rhetorical responses but largely act within a system controlled by two parties and their leaders. Congress itself has proven, yet again, to be entirely disinterested in civil liberties or privacy values. The courts have refused to hear dozens of public interest lawsuits seeking review of such programs. In this environment, whistleblowers often feel that they have no recourse but to go to the media. Of course, this Administration has not only attacked privacy but the free press in the recent scandals.
What is striking is the anger directed at Snowden from the media. He will be held accountable for any crime, but he is also someone who acted at great peril to himself. I do not believe that that makes him a “clown” and I hope that some attention will remain on the attack on privacy represented by these programs.
What do you think?
Heil Tooben!
Wikepedia summarizes Toobin’s career and there was no time when he actually practiced law much less tried a jury case. How can CNN put this schmuck on television as an expert? Where does he get off calling the whistleblower guy a “Clown” when that is his nickname amongst the folks he works with at CNN. Toobin the Cheater, the two hearted clown.
I think we need a blog topic on CNN and the various schmucks who pontificate every night.
Ok, BarkinDog and itchinBayDog, you have said some things about Jeffrey Toobin on this blog but the question arises: Has Jeffry Toobin ever tried a jury trial as an attorney in his whole life. We are not talking about being a clerk for some schmuck judge. He is always pontificating about the Zimmerman case and other jury trial cases and it has been alleged that this schmuck has never tried any case before a judge, whether jury or non jury, civil or criminal. Can someone chimne in on this?
Regarding Toobin: Watch out for this Cheater, this two headed Clown. Listen to the Bob Kuban and the In Men album which can be found on Google, song and all. It tells the story of Toobin, the guy who porked another guy’s wife and sired a child. Toobin: The Porkin Cheater. Coming to a theatre near you. You can see this dork virtually each night of the week on CNN and listen to him prognosticate on legal matters.
Here is something to ponder about International Human Rights while we ponder about Toobin the Clown calling the whistleblower a clown.
PREAMBLE
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
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Article 1.
•All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
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Article 2.
•Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
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Article 3.
•Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
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Article 4.
•No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
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Article 5.
•No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
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Article 6.
• Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
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Article 7.
• All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
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Article 8.
• Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
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Article 9.
• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
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Article 10.
• Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
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Article 11.
• (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
• (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
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Article 12.
• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
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Article 13.
• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
• (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
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Article 14.
• (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
• (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
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Article 15.
• (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
• (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
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Article 16.
• (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
• (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
• (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
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Article 17.
• (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
• (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
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Article 18.
• Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
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Article 19.
• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
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Article 20.
• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
• (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
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Article 21.
• (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
• (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
• (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
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Article 22.
• Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
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Article 23.
• (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
• (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
• (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
• (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
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Article 24.
• Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
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Article 25.
• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
• (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
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Article 26.
• (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
• (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
• (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
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Article 27.
• (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
• (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
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Article 28.
• Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
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Article 29.
• (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
• (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
• (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
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Article 30.
• Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
—
end.
These Articles were framed in 1948. One would think that Jeffrey Toobin and his law pals would recognize an International Human Rights issue and not resort to calling this Snowden guy a “Clown”.
This blog needs to examine the international human rights laws which “Some” nation states have adopted. We need to outline the various human rights entities in the world and examine the participation of the United States. Afterall, we are the Exceptional Nation which went after the Nazi criminals at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII. That was fifteen years before Toobin the Clown was even born.
Gene: (pudding) “All in all I learned a lot more about the subject than I had intended, but those are the high points.”
**
Lol, or that you ever wanted to know! Thanks for the inquiry, your mom and you have been helpful in the quest for the perfect banana cream pie; or at least one that doesn’t get watery.
I use packaged cook type pudding. Scratch pudding is better and time consuming but I make a mean scratch chocolate pudding. About once a year. I’m going to have to do some research, it could be something specific to the bananas, they get funky very fast and break down quickly, that’s why I thought cooking them and enrobing them in a sugar sauce would help. I’ll keep working on it. Thanks.
Haven’t you heard about the clown, known as Jeff Toobin?
This is regarding Jeffrey Toobin from Wikipedia:
“In 1986, he married Amy Bennett McIntosh.[13] He met Amy while they worked at the Harvard Crimson newspaper together in college. She is a 1980 Harvard graduate[14] and has held executive positions at Verizon and Zagat Survey.[15] They have two children.[15] He was reported by the New York Times to have had a long term extra-marital affair with Casey Greenfield, daughter of American television journalist and author Jeff Greenfield, which resulted in a paternity suit. Toobin was eventually confirmed as the father of the child. Greenfield has sole custody.[15][16]”
Regarding Jeffrey Toobin: There are ego trippers and then there are ego trippers who trip on acid. Sooooo self absorbed.
LK,
OT: I asked my mom today about your banana/pudding issue. Her first question was “Does she use instant pudding.” I said I didn’t know. She said if you use instant pudding, you’ll never avoid the sweating issue. It just doesn’t bind to the milk as well as a cooked pudding. She went on to say that even prepacked cooked pudding might not get the job done, further stating that the only way she’s been able to avoid it consistently is to make the pudding completely from scratch using an egg based recipe (she also added that if you’ve never made pudding from scratch that way that the tricky part is adding the eggs at the right temperature to avoid scrambling and to constantly stir it until it starts to set. And she was adamant about the word “constantly”.).
All in all I learned a lot more about the subject than I had intended, but those are the high points. 😀
Oky1, NAZI and nazi are very specific words, an acronym for the German NAtionale SoZIalist Workers Party, as practiced by Hitler’s regime after 1933. It has a very specific historical context. You can be a fascist and not be a nazi. I may hear some story of governmental abuse on TV and think to myself “F^&k$#@* nazis” as personal shorthand but I wouldn’t write that publicly since it isn’t correct. If you ant to talk about how closely America has drifted toward fascism, well, that’s something else.
I am familiar with the planning for an attempted coup you refer to and all of your other illustrations. The question I feel more appropriately asked is are they traitors and/or fascists? Yea, sure. They should all have been tried on that charge- Ollie North (spits) walks free and with some measure of favorableand profitable celebrity and that is a crime in itself. I could make an argument that ‘nazi’, given the appropriate set of class-based conditions, would be appropriate but we’re not there yet. If we’re drifting in that direction is an argument for a different thread. I could make that argument.
Laws and court decisions secured by blackmail? I don’t think blackmail is necessary, money and influence is less difficult and more effective currently as a tool. When people here say that we have the best government money can buy we’re not kidding.
I will readily concede that for a smoothly running state with a totalitarian bent a tool as effective as the NSA spying technology (and license to use it) is the high-tech equivalent of Hoover’s files. I have my own ideas about that situation and how it could play into the new feudalism.
You’re not going to find any nazis on this blawg. Some unhappy liberals for sure, but no nazis. I’ll let you sort the rest of our commenter’s for yourself. 🙂
Man down..no dude, no shots were fired.
8-year-olds, Dude…
Gyges,
No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Gene,
A hole in the ground … I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.
Funny. Are hospitals terrorists for killing 100,000 each year because of poor bacterial containment? It’s all BS. These homeland security departments need to justify their existence and that is with fear and secrecy.
Too bad you can’t tell a real Nazi from a hole in the ground, Oky.
The value of an observation is intimately linked to the (mis-)perceptions of the observer. When it comes to political science, if you think Smom is a Nazi, then your perception is way out of whack. I say this as a trained observer in the arena of political science (among others).
Provide some proof she’s a Nazi. Use quotes and links. Be specific in your evidence.
Otherwise, it’s not even an observation. It’s just an unfounded opinion. And you know what they say about opinions. And you know what Richard Pryor said about assh*les. Do the math.
SwM,
OT … note the appearance which never fails … I rest my case
U.S. Rep. Peter King is a crypto-fascist who is willing to sellout the Bill of Rights for political expedience.
This is from Greenwald: http://www.people-press.org/files/2013/06/6-10-13-4.png It shows how views of surveillance changed by party over the years. It shows: 1. the effectiveness of propaganda and 2. the need for people to adopt a coherent ethical stance, not one dictated by party affiliation.
I agree with Gyges and Dredd. This criminal govt must be confronted with soul force.