‘America has no functioning democracy at this moment’ – Jimmy Carter on NSA
rt.com
rt.com
Perhaps the most visible outlet to include the quote was The Huffington Post, but they can't be bothered to do their own translation. So they cover it via a link to The Inquisitr, which can't bring itself to validate the source, questioning the accuracy of the German newspaper Der Spiegel (which it calls "Die Spiegel").
Note: Carter made this statement in Atlanta, Georgia, not Germany.
Maybe Carter should have also said "America does not have a functioning news media at this point in time."
http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
I agree this is causing a great deal of damage to democracy around the world, I'm just pointing out that it has been going on for a very long time.
Thanks to the Google News archive, you can see lots of examples of those CIA "journalists" advancing the interests of the CIA throughout the '50s and '60s. It is fascinating to compare that known manipulated media content to what is now contained in the historical record about those same events. You'll also see many striking similarities to the way every modern story is reported and commented on in the modern media.
"We kept our country at peace. We never went to war. We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. But still we achieved our international goals. We brought peace to other people, including Egypt and Israel. We normalised relations with China, which had been non-existent for 30-something years. We brought peace between US and most of the countries in Latin America because of the Panama Canal Treaty. We formed a working relationship with the Soviet Union."
What makes you think that Carter, who was President during that time and initiated the large military buildup that Reagan is often credited with to maintain that peace, is too naive to recognize that?
Actually it was never de-mobilized because the US needed it to play the role of a world hegemonic power -- to control other places with diplomatic and military might, grab resources and such. It was its opportunity to step on to that role, since WWII had destroyed the European colonian empires.
As for Europe, defend itself from what? With the exception of right wing nuts in power, Europeans didn't feel threatened by the USSR. The people of (non Eastern) Europe, were half and half in favor of communism (huge following in Italy, France, Greece, etc. In Western Germany there were lots of sympathizers too, but the communist party was crashed by Hitler (and then the country was divided post war). That would also be the case in Spain and Portugal, if it wasn't for the dictatorships.
Some Europeans certainly didn't, but many of them, in fact, did feel threatened by the USSR: the ruling classes.
Also, opinions on the USSR were quite divided even on the left, with (Moscow-sponsored) hardcore Communist parties being on very different terms with it than traditional Socialist movements.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Canada_(1775)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian_raids
(Does the lack of American effort to impede the Fenian Raids make them an American invasion? It's judgment call.)
The more patriotic among us refer to it as, "The Whitehouse Renovation Project of 1812".
The Barbary threat led directly to the creation of the United States Navy in March 1794 [1]
Then don't forget the Mexican-American war, which started with our annexation of Texas and ended with our "purchase" of 1.2 million square miles of territory at firesale prices from a conquered opponent.
Earlier, Simon Bolivar, who liberated most of Latin America from Spanish control and laid their democratic foundations, loved the American founding fathers, especially Jefferson, and even sent his nephew to the University of Virginia.
"Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear. I’m glad that that’s being changed."
Before it could afford that military might, it required a substantial economy to pay for it all.
Land, natural resources, enterprising & hard working immigrants, low regulation, the protections enshrined in the Constitution, ease of starting a business, labor mobility, strong judicial system, checks & balances restraining and slowing down government abuses - just a few of the actual reasons America became what it did.
Carter didn't claim to have opened up relations with China, he claimed to have normalized relations with China.
> and it probably could only have been a Republican who took that first step
While there was a popular saying relating to that about Nixon, it doesn't really stand up too much; its hardly as if Kennedy and Johnson were perceived, at home or abroad, in ways which would have made that difficult in any way that it wouldn't be for Nixon. What really set the stage in the 1970s for the opening in relations that began under Nixon and culminated under Carter wasn't the political party of the US participants but the growing rivalry between the USSR and PRC.
As soon as the Soviet threat was gone, the US devised the new concept of evil - terrorism - and, with no viable checks and balances, went on fighting it around the world.
Except that, in time, the notion of terrorism became very vague and murky. Anyone is a potential target now.
His predecessor presided over the end of Vietnam, and there were plenty of casualties.
His successor was involved in lots of hot conflicts, from illegal covert operations to the invasion of Grenada to the bombing of Libya.
Why did the Cold War not keep that from happening?
The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world's exportable oil.
The Soviet Union was in Afghanistan which has no oil. President Carter seems to making a very tenuous connection between Afghanistan and the Middle East.
The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow.
Looking at the Straits of Hormuz on Google Maps, it appears to be not even close to Afghanistan which isn't surprising considering Afghanistan is totally landlocked. Again, President Carter appears to be trying to link Afghanistan to the hot-button topic of the day. i.e. Stop the Soviet Union or they'll be able to stop the flow of oil!
Afghanistan is the neighbour of Iran and is more or less the same distance from the Straits of Hormuz as LA is from San Francisco.
Certainly, democracy must have flourished during the time where the administration waged an undeclared war in Central America that sponsored death squads and brokered arms deals with the Iranians, in part as an effort to undermine the campaign of the preceding incumbent President.
And democracy was no doubt stronger during the era of the Vietnam Draft.
And it absolutely had a functioning democracy during a time when the House had a committee on "Un-American Activities" that subpoena'd citizens and had them testify under penalty of perjury --- a penalty that actually imprisoned Americans --- for merely sympathizing with the aims of Communism.
And surely we had a functioning democracy during the times where voting was controlled by literacy tests --- "Question 13: Spell Backwards, Forwards" and dogs and firehoses greeted people who dared challenge enforced, legal segregation.
The idea that it's never been worse in American, because some government agency might be reading your Facebook posts, is lunacy; an insult to people who actually stood up to real malignant government power. It's an easy mistake to make: it's the availability heuristic. You understand the implications of worldwide Internet surveillance, but barely remember (if you even knew about in the first place) HUAC.
I don't know what Carter's excuse is, though; he surely knows about Watergate, Iran-Contra, HUAC, Tuskegee, COINTELPRO, and the Hoover FBI. Carter is just being a coot.
That president was forced to resign after public, televised House hearings showed the country what was going on.
Certainly, democracy must have flourished during the time where the administration waged an undeclared war in Central America that sponsored death squads and brokered arms deals with the Iranians, in part as an effort to undermine the campaign of the preceding incumbent President.
The public Iran contra hearings exposed what happened and sent Oliver North to jail.
And democracy was no doubt stronger during the era of the Vietnam Draft.
Nightly news programs showing the war and giving the count of US deaths led to protests that ended the war and the draft.
And it absolutely had a functioning democracy during a time when the House had a committee on "Un-American Activities" that subpoena'd citizens and had them testify under penalty of perjury --- a penalty that actually imprisoned Americans --- for merely sympathizing with the aims of Communism.
And those public hearings ultimately led to the downfall and disgrace of McCarthy.
And surely we had a functioning democracy during the times where voting was controlled by literacy tests --- "Question 13: Spell Backwards, Forwards" and dogs and firehoses greeted people who dared challenge enforced, legal segregation.
Would those tests have ever ended if they were not publicly known?
The idea that it's never been worse in American, because some government agency might be reading your Facebook posts, is lunacy; an insult to people who actually stood up to real malignant government power. It's an easy mistake to make: it's the availability heuristic. You understand the implications of worldwide Internet surveillance, but barely remember (if you even knew about in the first place) HUAC.
You're purposefully trivializing what has been going on. All of the situations you described were ended by public knowledge of what was going on. In the current case not only is there no public knowledge, there is the threat of imprisonment for those who discuss what they know publicly.
I don't know what Carter's excuse is, though; he surely knows about Watergate, Iran-Contra, HUAC, Tuskegee, COINTELPRO, and the Hoover FBI. Carter is just being a coot.
Carter has always listened to a different drummer. He's also been willing to speak for others. In this case he happens to be speaking out for us.
Watergate, Iran-Contra, Vietnam, and McCarthyism each took years to run their course to a good resolution. The U.S. federal government is not optimized for speed, it's optimized to achieve the best result...eventually.
We should not raise a peep against the NSA, afterall, as you state - its lunacy to think we are not better off now than we were in the past. Further, who should complain about a government agency given supposed "legal" freedom to do absolutely anything it wants with any and all human communications across the globe!
All this in a time where the reach of the US military is literally global and can kill any stated enemy combatant at the push of a button. If you're innocent little snowflake is killed in that attack, gee, sorry about that, we must have had bad intel!
So, in the end, while your comment that things were also bad "back in the day" -- this in absolutely no way should preclude anyone from complaining about the excessive, tyrannical over-reach of the NSA and the USG. So to that end, I say fuck your argument, completely because its a cop-out to the fact that the world, and the NSA in particular, have gone to far.
I want my privacy, my freedom and my safety (even from the arm of the USG) and all at the same damn time!
These actions, now and in hte past, are unacceptable. Period - under any government in any era.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-l...
Bad things have happened in the past but we shouldn't discredit what is happening now.
Just like the past, Americans as citizens of the world need to take action against the wrongs that are being done.
The scandals you list at the end of your comment had, largely if not entirely, investigations and consequences. The NSA scandals largely have not. (The chief counsel to the Director of National Intelligence got laughs when he testified that his office had tried and obviously failed to hide mass collection of phone records. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/nsa-admits-i... )
I would say Jimmy Carter has admirably high standards for our country, except that's not it. The rest of us, generally speaking, simply have very low ones.
(Actually, I'm pretty sure democracy WAS functioning quite well in that instance. democracy is inherently unstable, per Aristotle)
I'm getting to really, really dislike even seeing or hearing the word 'democracy'. No coincidence, it's one of dubya's and bummer's favorite words.
I would agree that his comment is somewhat hyperbolic, but I think there's enough truth in it that I'm glad he said it. I'm also glad to see him publicly defending Snowden.
And although there certainly have been times that our government kept secrets from us that we would have wanted to know, I am inclined to think the danger is greater now. If Carter's statement wakes even one person from the complacent slumber that so many seem to be enjoying, I think it will have served its purpose.
Obama seems, to me, to be a democrat for "Reagan's America." Socially liberal, but as willing to blow up random people in the Middle East as anyone who has come before him. When Obama killed Bin Laden and ran with that during the 2008 campaign, I could distinctly perceive democrats thinking: "we found our Reagan." It's no surprise then, that Obama's approval ratings on his handling of the war on terror are still in the black, and are surprisingly good overall for someone whose entire presidency has been mired in a terrible economy.
That doesn't seem to me to be a democracy that isn't functioning. It seems to me to be giving people what they want.
However, I do believe that it is hard to underestimate the power of the media and propaganda that has been and is going on, not only in the US but almost anywhere in the world. Of course there is some predisposition towards power and everything that comes with it, but it's fueled, driven and used by the media and people who control it. And people can change quickly if they realize that this has gone to far.
Just look at Germany after WWII, it's now one of the least aggressive states there is and I can tell you from personal experience that there is no predisposition towards military aggressiveness whatsoever... And we (as I am German) are still the same kind of people who we have been during Nazi time, just differently educated or indoctrinated, whatever you want to call this.
Today, I believe we HAVE a chance to change. There is blatantly obvious mischief going on and they are struggling to hide it. We have a whistleblower with accurate information (it's funny/telling how not even the Gov is trying to dispute the facts - they are just redirecting the attention), services and platforms to distribute that information and I HAVE to believe that we can use these means to initiate this change. What would be the alternative? Keep on going? I don't want to know how that would turn out.
So you might say that his actions in the long term pushed us towards a dependence on what the NSA does, especially in a "War on Terror" where image reconnaissance is of limited utility.
Maintaining listening posts and other intelligence infrastructure is a massive economic and political undertaking, and the vacuuming of everything reduces dependence of third-parties.
Carter wanted to do something about the energy crisis and peak oil. Reagan tore down the solar panels (it's symbolic, OK?). Now we have massive debt and an attempt at empire to capture remaining fossil fuel resources, as well as a blossoming police state to wrap a bow around the package.
edit: I'm in the US; My browsers aren't configured to use google for address bar/search box searching. I may have explicitly searched for Snowden via Google at some point, but I don't really use Google for search anymore, so that feels unlikely.
Searching directly from www.google.com, I get the suggestion at "edw".
Though searching from news.google.com, I don't get an auto-suggestion, even if I type out "Edward Snowden" in its entirety.
Amusingly, at "ns" I get "NSA warrantless surveillance controversy" as the first suggestion.
No, it didn't.
Warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance was already legal on US soil; at least, that was the conclusion of the two federal appeals courts which ruled on the issue. And, were it an issue where the Fourth Amendment required a warrant, it would take a Constitutional amendment, not a statute, to change it.
> Some people would argue the US Constitution's fourth amendment applies to all men and women, even those that are the subject of foreign intelligence surveillance.
Some people did argue that in the US federal courts before FISA, and they lost, at least insofar as those courts found that however the Fourth Amendment might apply to them, it didn't require warrants for that kind of surveillance. (Note that the Fourth Amendment doesn't require warrants for all searches and seizures, it requires them to be reasonable, and sets a standard for warrants when they are issued; it has been held by the courts that warrants are generally required for reasonableness, but that there are a wide array of circumstances for which reasonableness does not include a warrant requirement.)
(407 U.S. at 321-22). "We have not addressed, and express no opinion as to, the issues which may be involved with respect to activities of foreign powers or their agents." [1]
United States v. Clay, 430 F.2nd 165 (5th Cir., 1970), this was reversed on other grounds, but is important because the relevant part of the holding was the basis for the holding regarding foreign intelligence surveillance in the following case, referring to warrantless wiretaps authorized by the Attorney-General on behalf of the President: "No one would seriously doubt in this time of serious international insecurity and peril that there is an imperative necessity for obtaining foreign intelligence information, and we do not believe such gathering is forbidden by the Constitution or by statutory provision"
United States v. Brown, 484 F.2d. 418 (5th Cir., 1973).
United States v. Butenko, 494 F.2d 593 (3rd Cir., 1974) explicitly found that the Fourth Amendment did apply, but warrants were not required for reasonableness of foreign intelligence surveillance, as: "Certainly occasions arise when officers, acting under the President's authority, are seeking foreign intelligence information, where exigent circumstances would excuse a warrant. To demand that such officers be so sensitive to the nuances of complex situations that they must interrupt their activites and rush to the nearest available magistrate to seek a warrant would seriously fetter the Executive in the performance of his foreign affairs duties."
FISA wsa the law that was broken by much of the post-9/11 surveillance, and that it was the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 which weakened the restrictions put in place by FISA and immunized those who had illegally cooperated in the illegal surveillance that led up to it.
I don't think Carter was aware that FISA's restrictions would be casually cast aside within living memory of the abuses which spawned it, but I think he was quite aware of the kind of things that could happen if those restrictions were either not in place or not enforced.
By which I mean he's a good, well intentioned, honest man.
It's interesting to note that he was an actual terrorist financier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T._King#Support_for_the_I...
http://www.rotten.com/library/history/political-scandal/wate...
You must believe there is no recourse from within the system for which to correct it if you believe that acting outside of the system is a valid strategy.
I applaud Jimmy Carter for being consistent, at least.
The system is utterly worthless if you don't believe it can correct egregious errors. It's the mundane errors (parking tickets, etc.) which aren't so important, not the other way around.
So, a system that corrects 99.9% of egregious errors, while alternatives correct 20%, is utterly worthless?
If your 20% system of government prevents all such egregious acts, then it's more effective than your 99.9% government.
People do, so obviously you can.
You may believe you shouldn't, but you haven't really presented a coherent argument as to why that is the case.
So to believe in a system of government, you must therefore accept that this system of government is the most effective way by which to manage a group of people. If you believe this, then you necessarily must believe that to break the rules of this system of government is to introduce a less effective means by which to govern a group of people. It's simply the inverse of the belief.
If you believe the US government is an effective method of governing a body of people, then you must believe that to move outside of the system is to be less effective at governing a body of people. In its strictest sense, this means that you believe in every law and every process by which these laws came into being. In a more realistic sense, you understand that a body of people will want different things amongst different internal groups, and a government's job is to balance those wants and needs against one another.
Edward Snowden broke the rules of the system of government. If you believe the US government is effective, then (because of the argument outlined above) you believe he has introduced inefficiency, and is making the governing of the people of the US more difficult.
So when you say "people do [believe in a system of government and also act outside of it ]" you are incorrect. The act of moving outside of the system demonstrates, as outlined above, a lack of belief in the system of government which is being acted outside of.
Anyone who breaks laws as a means of enacting change does not believe in the incarnation of the system of government for which they're attempting to change. Martin Luthor King Jr. Oskar Schindler. Timothy Mcveigh. Osama bin Laden. Every one of them attempted to enact change by working outside of the system in which they were attempting to change.
It should be an indication to you that you find such an idea to be negative in the first place when Snowden is brought up. Why exactly do you think it's so negative that I say he doesn't believe in the US system of government? Perhaps because what he's specifically done in terms of actual policy change could have been accomplished without breaking any laws?
A secondary problem is that you conflate belief that a system is "an effective means" (your first paragraph) with the belief that it is "the most effective means" (your second paragraph). These are obviously very different beliefs.
> It should be an indication to you that you find such an idea to be negative in the first place when Snowden is brought up. Why exactly do you think it's so negative that I say he doesn't believe in the US system of government?
I never said I found it to be negative. Saying that I think the logic of your argument is invalid is not saying I believe the statement it was offered to support is negative.
Why?
> These are obviously very different beliefs.
Then make them both "the most effective means", if that makes it easier to understand.
> Saying that I think the logic of your argument is invalid is not saying I believe the statement it was offered to support is negative.
That's not what you're saying, however.
Because belief isn't all-or-nothing.
> That's not what you're saying, however.
Yes, it is exactly what I'm saying.
Why not?
> Yes, it is exactly what I'm saying.
Here, let me save us a few rounds:
No it's not.
Yes it is.
No it's not.
Yes it is.
No it's not.
Now how about you rephrase what you wrote so we can move forward?
> Why not?
There a point that can be reached in a discussion where you realize that (assuming the other participant is honest, without which there are other insurmountable problems) you just don't have the requisite common understanding of reality to have a fruitful discussion.
The point at which you question the idea that belief, in general, isn't necessarily absolute is that point, for me, in this discussion.
I agree. It is at this point when I cannot continue a discussion. Have a good day.
Meanwhile, we might all do well to read and reflect on http://lesswrong.com/lw/kg/expecting_short_inferential_dista...
A part of it that this comment misses, though, is that there's a difference between "system as described by the text of laws" and "system as it is run on actual humans." It is entirely possible that the optimum system as run on actual humans is produced by a set of laws that doesn't match it exactly. One can still "believe in" that system of laws, in that one believes that it is the system of laws that should be implemented because it produces optimal results, while still understanding that actual human behavior will differ sometimes and that that won't always be a bad thing.
Edited to add:
On reflection, I think you may be confusing morality and legality. It is true that you cannot derive morality without some starting point. However, once you have picked what you value, it does not follow that legality should match it precisely. Legality should be such that it optimally produces the most moral (and best by any other criteria, ideally) outcomes.
How is life outside America? It's either the same or not as good. Count your blessings. Americans have it good. Land of milk and honey. Take a deep breath and breathe that glorious American air. Freedom! Love it, live it!