Now Today Tomorrow and Always...
On the day that Daniel Ellsberg states that Barack Obama would have sought "a life sentence" for his exposure of the Nixon/Pentagon leaks, Edward Snowden points out the real fear of the inappropriate "elite".
"One week ago I left Hong Kong after it
became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing
the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends
new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never
will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a
faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
On Thursday, President Obama declared
before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and
dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising
not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the
leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my
asylum petitions.
This kind of deception from a world leader
is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These
are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to
frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
For decades the United States of America
has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek
asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article
14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected
by the current government of my country. 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.
In the end the Obama administration is not
afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We
are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is
afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the
constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.
I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many."
Edward Joseph Snowden
