Yes, those two words are probably not precise enough to describe the situation.
However if you read the context, what is being said is pretty much true: they are using citizenship as a weapon in order to deny him the human right to seek asylum.
"The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy
of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted
of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport,
leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order,
the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a
basic right. A right that belongs to everybody.
The right to seek asylum."
Pay too much attention to individual words and you fail to understand the big picture...
He _broke the law_ and is a fugitive from justice. He wouldn't be a hero if he wasn't risking consequences, and it should have been obvious from the start that he was going to be apprehended by the US eventually.
EDIT: Also, the concept of "a human right to seek asylum" is meaningless. Asylum is a two-party arrangement. Is that a legal obligation for all nations to _grant_ asylum to seekers, regardless of circumstances?
Yes, he did break the law but it is absurd for you to use the word 'justice'.
Justice: The quality of being fair and reasonable.
He's not running away from something which is 'fair or reasonable', his human rights are in grave danger.
He is a fugitive from injustice.
I do not care whether he is a hero or not, but I do care about whether it was a right thing to do and whether he is treated as a human should be treated. These are principles worth upholding.
> He's not running away from something which is 'fair or reasonable', his human rights are in grave danger.
How so? I mean this sincerely.
What do you think will happen to him when he is arrested? There's no brig to throw him in, as he's a civilian. Snowden was very concerned about the lack of judicial oversight in what he saw with PRISM, so why would he assume that very same judicial system would mark him for special treatment when people like Hanssen, the Walker gang, and even Aaron Hernandez have not received such?
If Snowden really felt beforehand that the civilian justice system was so completely inequitable it seems weird that he'd have been so insistent on its involvement elsewhere.
>> If Snowden really felt beforehand that the civilian justice system was so completely inequitable it seems weird that he'd have been so insistent on its involvement elsewhere.
The 'justice' system fulfils what power requires from it. It will be as inequitable with a trial as it has been with this whole fiasco.
>Then there was never a reason to involve the 'justice' system in surveillance measures at all, was there?
"...But Obama’s Justice Department, like Bush’s, has not been above an opportunistic (and occasionally downright Procrustean) reading of particular statutes to permit whatever it is that the White House wants to do."
Well... that was bad, but it was bad for different reasons. Mitnick himself waived his right to a speedy trial. The government swamped him and his court in so much shit that he'd have a difficult time preparing a proper defense otherwise.
The flipside for Snowden is that at least it will count as time served so if he gets sentenced to more than 2 years it might actually be beneficial as I'd imagine you get to meet with your lawyers more often while prepping for trial.
This, the US gov't has plenty of backdoors and sleazy dealings to circumvent a speedy trial by ones peers. It is why most criminal sentences aren't heard by juries, because the system is rigged and intentionally bullies the accused into taking plea bargains.
> He _broke the law_ and is a fugitive from justice.
This, while seeming important, is basically irrelevant as long as the US is demonstrating their willingness to torture accused people prior to trial for crimes such as these.
He could have done something 10x worse and it still wouldn't matter. Nobody should ever be subjected to torture - even if convicted. They're torturing people for years before trials even start, if they start at all.
He cannot anticipate anything resembling justice in the US.
Yes, this whole line of argument that Snowden has put forward is beside the point. Whether you call it "exile" or not, it is perfectly reasonable for the US to revoke his passport. It is certainly not "extralegal." It's not even unusual. It is what happens when you're charged with a felony by a US court.
Revoking his passport is not extralegal. Nobody's arguing that.
Exerting unknown influence behind closed doors with those who have the ability to grant or deny his requests for asylum is an entirely different matter, though.
Bradley Manning was submitted to sleep deprivation & extreme isolation, both of which are widely regarded as torture by civilized people. Given that it seems reasonable for Snowden to believe he will be tortured on his return to the US and unreasonable for someone to say that he certainly won't be tortured.
Not everyone who is convicted of a crime by the government is tortured and not every trial is a mocking pretense. Maybe, just maybe, Edward Snowden is speaking through the filter of his own prejudices and biases, which may not necessarily 100% reflect reality.
Maybe we should put it this way: the last person that the U.S.A. got its hands on that caused a similar amount of embarrassment to the U.S. government was brutally tortured.
Snowden would prefer not to find out if that trend is going to continue.
What you call brutal torture is certainly nothing anybody wants to experience, but the implication that it is legally unprecedented or obviously illegal is not correct, particularly for someone who is both subject to UCMJ and is reasonably deemed a suicide risk.
Nice torture justification, bro. You should be proud of yourself: you've stood up for humans beings torturing other human beings. Probably the highlight of your life to date.
Hint: nobody has ever said they thought Manning was a suicide risk except for his torturers. All qualified medical personnel that have ever examined him (including the prison psychologist) have insisted that he wasn't. Hint 2: doing sleep deprivation and humiliation is not the way to reduce someone's chance of suicide, if you honestly believed they were a risk. Which no one did.
You seem awfully sure about this. Being a US citizen myself I would certainly hope you're correct, but given the excesses that the government has already hidden or excused with "but... terrorists!!! fear!!!" I think there is an outside chance that he has legitimate cause for concern.
It's not an outside chance. The last guy who leaked classified US military information to the press to expose a systemic coverup of abuses was tortured for several years prior to his trial beginning:
Additionally, Obama himself declared him (Manning) guilty in public before his trial even began. (I wish I was making this up.)
It's not speculation. We've watched it happen, and recently. They are condemned before the trial even begins, and denied basic human rights from the outset - rights we shouldn't even deny convicted mass murderers.
It's an incredible shame for everyone who used to be proud to be from the USA.
> The last guy who leaked classified US military information to the press to expose a systemic coverup of abuses was tortured for several years prior to his trial beginning:
Last time I checked May -> April was still 11 months, and definitely not "several years".
> Additionally, Obama himself declared him (Manning) guilty in public before his trial even began. (I wish I was making this up.)
As far as I can tell from Googling, he said in a conversation, in the context of the rule of law, the "he broke the law". And that was it.
Am I missing something?
The rest of the context from the sites Google finds seems to indicate that Manning can't possibly get a fair trial, because the officers who would have to decide his guilt would treat that as some kind of order. Which is simply untrue, as evidenced by Manning's own reaction by asking for a bench trial.
If he had asked for a jury trial he would have had many more people to possibly conceive of his innocence. And the jury pool would have contained enlisted members as well, not just officers.
By asking for a bench trial he's one, and only one, commissioned officer away from being found guilty. That would be an insane choice, if this officer were really that susceptible to finding Manning guilty simply because Obama failed to use the word "allegedly" in a conversation.
Luckily, as Manning realizes since he's actually in the freaking military, that isn't the case at all.
If "being a hero" requires risk (which I disagree with), then whenever it is possible to take the actions of a hero without the associated risk then it in fact becomes preferred that people not be heroes. Nobody has an obligation to become a martyr; there is no obligation to seek out risk, or to not evade it.
To your edit: See Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
To the UN document (which has dubious jurisdiction, but I'll play along):
"Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution"
Which is followed by:
"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"
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has no jurisdiction, it is not a law... If you are confusing it for one, then I think you have some reading to do.
Most political charges are dressed up as non-political. Does this surprise you?
> I don't understand what your point is about the nature of heroism
If your intent for bringing up heroism was not to imply that he should be "brought to justice", "turn himself in", "should not have run", or any variation of those, then consider my point about the nature of heroism to be an aside.
> Most political charges are dressed up as non-political. Does this surprise you?
Snowden's own father says he broke the law... but he wasn't a traitor in doing so. But I don't believe the UDHR talks about treason in their exception request.
He broke the law, and fled to avoid justice. All quite reasonable, from his perspective.
But why is he trying to claim something different? He claims the U.S. pursuit of him is somehow extralegal or some kind of perversion of justice. It's neither.
Snowden decided that the need of the public to know about PRISM was more important than the loss of national security value that would come from revealing the details about it. While that's his decision to make, it's not weird that there are laws in place to protect national security. His father acknowledges that. Hell, even Putin acknowledges that; why can't Snowden now? If you're going to go on the lam then hey, I see why.... but don't act like the government did anything weird in that regard.
He is fleeing "justice", he believes that the US is using extralegal, political, methods to pursue him in order to "bring" him to justice, and he finds it plausible that "justice" will involve a gross violation of his human rights.
I am not seeing the problem here that you seem to think there is. What are you expecting him to say, "The only reason I am running is so that I am not subjected to a fair trail and humane punishment."?
> What are you expecting him to say, "The only reason I am running is so that I am not subjected to a fair trail and humane punishment."?
He could just say "I broke the law for the public good, there's no way to get this issue the attention it deserves otherwise. I intend to remain free even if I have to be in exile, as that is how I can do the most good for the people!" etc etc. Not really that hard, you know. :P
It has influenced the creation of laws much like many other documents that lay out rights have. It itself does not carry legal force, though there are laws that implement ideas laid out by it that do.
> Is that a legal obligation for all nations to _grant_ asylum to seekers, regardless of circumstances?
No, it's a legal obligation to not infringe on the right of people to seek and enjoy asylum. Of course, it's the UN, so it's debatable how much of a "legal obligation" any of it is, especially for the USA.
Based on my reading of the article, yes. It's important to note, however, that the article does not apply to "prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations." Presumably the definitions of those terms would be determined on a case-by-case basis by the International Court of Justice.
"Without any judicial order,"
The federal arrest warrant gives the State Department the ability to revoke passports it isn't 'unilateral' nor can the
'administration' revoke a passport for any reason.
That makes no sense. 'Asylum' is a negotiation between the victim and the destination state. The origin state (USA) isn't a relevant party to the decision-making process. That's the whole point of the concept.
Well it's quite clear they're a party in the decision-making process if they are able to call up those countries and twist their arms into refusing it, so I don't really understand what point you're making - I guess in theory they're not a relevant party ...but in practice?
However if you read the context, what is being said is pretty much true: they are using citizenship as a weapon in order to deny him the human right to seek asylum.
Pay too much attention to individual words and you fail to understand the big picture...