Jimmy Carter Defends Snowden, Says U.S. Has No "Functioning Democracy"

[Purveyor]

"America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time," former President Jimmy Carter (shown) said this week, according to a report in the German newspaper, Der Spiegel. Carter was quoted as having made that remark at a closed-door meeting of Atlantic Bridge, a research and education organization supporting cooperation between the United States and Great Britain on political, economic and defense issues. The former President reportedly said the National Security Agency's invasion of privacy has gone too far, as he defended that actions of Edward Snowden, the American now seeking asylum in Russia after leaking classified documents revealing the massive NSA interception of communications between citizens and among government officials worldwide.

The English translation of Carter's remarks was published in the online news source, Inquisitr.com. No American media outlets reported on the closed meeting and it was not clear where Der Spiegel got its source, Inquisitr noted. But both Inquisitr and Huffington Post, which also carried the story, noted that the quotes were consistent with previous published remarks by the former president.

In June, Huffington Post noted, Carter addressed the Snowden controversy in an interview with CNN after the 29-year-old intelligence analyst had flown from Hong Kong to Moscow in his quest for asylum from the U.S. government that is seeking to prosecute him for espionage and theft of government property.

"He's obviously violated the laws of America, for which he's responsible," Carter said at that time, "but I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far." The Georgia Democrat also said nations that were offering asylum to Snowden were acting within their rights. "I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial," Carter said.

more...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/16043-jimmy-carter-defends-snowden-says-u-s-has-no-functioning-democracy

[NYC_SKP]

1. Recommended. (nt)

[Warpy]

2. Right again, Mr. Carter

[limpyhobbler]

3. This is not news. Everybody knows the US has no functioning democracy. nt

[emsimon33]

4. Carter is not timid when it comes to telling the truth!

[tblue]

5. Agree with this.

Sad to say.

My family thinks I'm crazy. They don't want to hear it.

[struggle4progress]

6. We don't actually have a verifiable Carter quote from Der Spiegel

It's of the nature "Der Spiegel says somebody says Carter said"

The claim is that he made the comment at a week-long meeting of a secretive German organization, meeting at an unspecified location in Georgia, with the exact agenda and the list of participants undisclosed

[JDPriestly]

7. If Der Spiegel reported Jimmy Carter's speech inaccurately, I am sure that Jimmy Carter

will correct their report.

The organization is called Atlantik-Bruecke. That means literally the Atlantic bridge.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/18/1224679/-Jimmy-Carter-Defends-Snowden-and-Says-America-does-not-have-a-functioning-democracy

Atlantik-Brücke (German, Atlantic bridge) is the leading private non-profit association to promote German-American understanding and Atlanticism. Founded in Bonn in 1952, it is now located in Berlin.

The association organizes invitation-only conferences, seminars and colloquia. Through various programs for "Young Leaders," military officers, journalists, and students, Atlantik-Brücke fosters social networks among current and future leaders in business and world affairs. Atlantik-Brücke also awards prizes in honor of Vernon A. Walters and Eric M. Warburg.

. . . .

Prominent Young Leaders alumni

Christian Wulff, Former Federal President of Germany
Thomas de Maizière, Federal Minister of Defense
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Former Federal Minister of Defense
Michael Otto, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Otto Group
Jürgen Großmann, Chairman of the Managing Board of RWE
Thomas Enders, President and CEO of Airbus Industries
Paul-Bernhard Kallen, Chairman of the Board of Hubert Burda Media Holding
Hans-Gert Pöttering, Former President of the European Parliament
Charles Schumer, Senior U.S. Senator from New York
Cem Özdemir, Chairman of Alliance 90/The Greens
Edelgard Bulmahn Member of Parliament; Former Federal Minister of Education and Research
Michael Vassiliadis, Chairman of the Board of IG BCE – Mining, Chemical and Energy Industrial Union
Wolfgang Ischinger, Former German Ambassador to the United States
Richard Burt, Former United States Ambassador to Germany
Silvana Koch-Mehrin, Vice President of the European Parliament
Craig Kennedy, President of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S.
Kai Diekmann, Editor-in-Chief of BILD Zeitung
Katja Gloger, Editor-at-large, STERN Magazin
Joshua Bolten, Former White House Chief of Staff, President George W. Bush


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantik-Br%C3%BCcke

Maybe we should ask Charles Schumer and Josh Bolten how secretive the Atlantik Bruecke is.

It is very unfortunate that our "free press" has published no independent report on this speech.

Apparently our "free press" did not bother to attend the event much less report on it independently or interview Carter about it. Can't have any criticism of this program now can we? Certainly not in our "free press." Our "free press" has better things to do.

The blame for the failure to report this story should not be placed on Carter or Der Spiegel but on our media which employs mostly uneducated fools whose primary talents are looking good on TV and never rocking the boat of state.

[struggle4progress]

12. So -- where exactly was this Georgia meeting held, what was the agenda, and who attended?

If you can find any of that out, you'll be doing better than I did

Do we have a transcript of Carter's remarks or even a more extensive snippet that provides better context?

[JDPriestly]

23. Here is a picture of Carter at the meeting and an article from Die Krone.

Former US President Jimmy Carter (photo) strongly criticized the current US administration's NSA spy program. "America does not at this time have a functioning democracy," the Nobel Peace Price winner stated at a meeting of the policy organization, "Atantik-Bruecke" on Tuesday according to e "Speigel Online."

Heftige Kritik hat der ehemalige US- Präsident Jimmy Carter (Bild) im Zusammenhang mit den umstrittenen NSA- Spähprogrammen an der amtierenden US- Regierung geübt. "Amerika hat derzeit keine funktionierende Demokratie", sagte der Friedensnobelpreisträger bei einer Veranstaltung des Politiknetzwerks "Atlantik- Brücke" am Dienstag, wie "Spiegel Online" am Mittwoch berichtete.

The former President HAD EARLIER (my caps) criticized the US secret service (literally). "I believe that the invasion of privacy has gone too far," said Carter to CNN. Therefore Carter further said, the secrecy hokus-pokus (translating an expression of speech from German. Don't have Carter's exact words.) has gone too far. The ex-President characterized the effort of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as probably useful in the long run, in that he informed the public.

Bereits zuvor hatte sich der ehemalige Präsident kritisch zu den Programmen der US- Geheimdienste geäußert. "Ich glaube, die Invasion der Privatsphäre ist zu weit gegangen", sagte Carter zu CNN. Darum sei die Geheimnistuerei "exzessiv gewesen", so Carter weiter. Die Leistung von NSA- Enthüller Edward Snowden bezeichnete der Ex- Präsident als "langfristig wahrscheinlich nützlich", da der Whistleblower die Öffentlichkeit informiere.

. . . .

http://www.krone.at/Welt/NSA-Affaere_Ex-Praesident_Carter_kritisiert_USA-Keine_Demokratie-Story-369156

About the Atlantik-Bruecke

http://www.atlantik-bruecke.org/eng/

Judging from the photo, he made a comment at the meeting and was not a speaker. That is what I gather from the picture.

[struggle4progress]

25. The article is just a rehash of the Spiegel article, and so jumbles together remarks Carter made

to CNN about NSA together with the alleged quote from the Atlantik-Bruecke meeting, providing no more context than the Spiegel article

[JDPriestly]

26. You don't trust the photo?

Where do you think the photo was borrowed from? Do you think the entire story is made up?

Where is the evidence that Jimmy Carter was not at the meeting? Where is the evidence that there was no meeting? I have produced a photo, articles from different news journals. What are you looking for? Carter was not a scheduled speaker at the meeting judging from the photo.


Name: Gregor Peter Schmitz
Title: Washington Correspondent for Spiegel Online / Der Spiegel

Dr. Gregor Peter Schmitz, born 1975, is a correspondent in the Washington office of DER SPIEGEL. He focuses primarily on the coverage for SPIEGEL ONLINE but also writes regularly for the magazine.

Prior to that, Schmitz was director of the Brussels office of Bertelsmann Foundation and in charge of all US activities of the foundation. He also gained job experience as an associate with Gruner und Jahr, Paris, and as a development aid worker in Latin America.

Schmitz holds a law degree from Munich University and is a graduate of Sciences-Po, Paris. He also earned graduate degrees in history from Cambridge University, Great Britain (M.Phil.), and Harvard University (MPA) where he was a McCloy-Scholar of the German National Merit Foundation. He spent a year as Visiting Fellow at Harvard's History Faculty where he conducted research for his disseration on legislation against Holocaust Denial.

Schmitz has published and written several books on Political Strategy and Political Communication and is a frequent commentator on Deutschlandfunk and WDR.

http://www.germanconference.org/2009/bios/gregor_schmitz.php

[struggle4progress]

27. Schmitz jumbled together a CNN interview from the day before with his alleged Carter quote to create

a certain impression of what Carter's remarks were. His alleged Carter quote is one sentence long: that is, it has no context. I have no impression from the photo, as it is uncaptioned: it may well show Carter at the event or it may be a file photo, but if it shows Carter at the event, it isn't currently captioned as that. So, at minimum, I would like a longer excerpt from Carter's alleged remarks and some context on the purported discussion at the time

[JDPriestly]

31. And what about Schmitz's Twitter statement?

If the statements are falsely attributed to Carter, Carter will let the press and us know.

I think those statements are consistent with Carter's views.

Time will tell.

[struggle4progress]

32. No, Carter isn't going to track every statement in the foreign press in order to make sure

nobody ever misrepresents his views: he got used to that as governor of Georgia and as President. At this stage in his life, he's more interested in promoting particular actions: he's pushing international drives to eradicate guinea worm, river blindness, trachoma, malaria, lymphatic filariasis, and schistosomiasis; he fosters programs on the Americas and on China, on human rights and democracy, on campaign finance reform, etc

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. The reporter, Gregor Peter Schmitz, was at the event

@Casual_Obs His remarks on NSA are from a CNN interview. Yes, I was present at his other remarks. Best, Gregor

https://twitter.com/GPSchmitz/status/357721294097219584

You know very well that this organisation is not 'secretive' - I replied extensively to you on the subject, showing how they publicise what they do. Here it is: http://sync.democraticunderground.com/10023296843#post12

"a secretive German organization, meeting at an unspecified location in Georgia, with the exact agenda and the list of participants undisclosed" - baw-ha-ha! Was one of them stroking a white cat? Were they wearing Prussian helmets? Yeah, they're so secretive, they put out annual reports - the latest runs to 73 pages.

I can see that your life is incomplete if you haven't got someone to demonise, and you want to do that to anyone who doesn't fall in to lock step with your idea of how society should be run. You really want to do it to President Carter, since it's his remarks that are giving you heartburn, but you realise that will make you look bad on DU, so you've decided to attack a minor organisation that has been encouraging American-German links for about 50 years, because they had the temerity to invite President Carter to speak to them.

[struggle4progress]

14. So -- where exactly was this Georgia meeting held, what was the agenda, and who attended?

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. You can wait for the report of the conference

They produced one of last year's. Life doesn't always get live-blogged on the internet.

[struggle4progress]

19. There's no published agenda or list of attendees for the event in last years report

The organization's events are invitation-only, so the Spiegel reporter must have been invited, and his article, together with the headline for it, appears to deliberately garble a CNN interview with an alleged one sentence quote from Mr Carter

I happen to admire Mr Carter quite a lot, though he is rather conservative and traditional from my PoV: a former naval officer, and once governor of a Southern state, he spent time doing evangelical missionary work before become President. He's a talented man, with genuine political skills, and given his conservative Southern religious and military background, as well as his political experience, the chances are vanishingly small that he made a sweeping statement about US democracy being dysfunctional, so soon after the re-election of only the second Democratic President since Carter himself left office more than three decades ago -- though he might have made some remarks about current issues with the Congress

Of course, my suspicions about this sort of reporting may be entirely unfounded, and the Atlantic Bridge scandal in the UK could merely involve a group that attempted to hijack the good name of this German organization -- but, like many others at DU, I try to maintain a certain healthy level of paranoia, which will seem normal when people agree and will seem demented when people disagree

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. The UK org *WAS* entirely separate

We have established that.

[struggle4progress]

21. I don't see how we could establish they're unrelated, especially since the German organization

doesn't seem to disclose its funding

I certainly haven't established that the UK and German groups were related, other than noting the curious similarity of names, which may not mean anything, and that (of course) means that you are quite right to have taken me to task for having confounded the organizations the other day

But since the UK organization rather curiously turned out to have transformed into a front group for the rightwing American Legislative Exchange Council, somewhat after its founding, it may be worthwhile to be on the lookout for other ALEC front groups abroad: ALEC's International Relations Task Force may be up to more than merely trying to persuade the US to negotiate free trade treaties

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. German org: 50 years old, people like Chuck Schumer among its 'young leaders' over the years

along with lots of teachers and American officers stationed in Germany, who got some cultural exchange stuff.

British org: established by Conservative Liam Fox in 1997, investigated by the Charity Commission, shut down for not following its stated charitable purpose. The only thing they have in common is that the name translates as the same thing. But, with 'Atlantic' and 'Bridge' being pretty common words, this is not entirely surprising.

Fox's Atlantic Bridge was always a rightwing group - "the charity said its mission was to promote the "special relationship" that flourished between Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s." It failed to convincingly look 'educational', so it shut down.

[struggle4progress]

16. Thanks for the interesting twitter link: given that the Spiegel headline is

NSA-Affäre: Ex-Präsident Carter verdammt US-Schnüffelei

it's good to know that the Spiegel reporter mixed material from a CNN interview with an alleged sentence from an entirely different context

[Cha]

8. "He's obviously violated the laws of America, for which he's responsible,"

fat chance of super-boy owning up to that.

[msongs]

9. he's is not the one using drones to execute people without charges or trial. fat chance of that

person owing up to any of that either

[Fumesucker]

10. Smirk and Sneer obviously violated the laws of America

Odd that you don't care about holding them responsible for what they did, rather you focus on some poor low level schmuck.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. I can already hear the Morans saying, "Good! This isn't a Democracy, it's a REPUBLIC!"

[Catherina]

17. It's not unclear lol. All they had to do was email the author who was present at the conference

The author, who's the Washington correspondent for Der Speigel, was reporting from the conference in Atlanta and indicated that at the top of the article.

I'm only pointing that out because of the bad faith of certain people who bristle at anything that even dares to suggest that anything happening under the current administration isn't the bestest ever.

Rec'd

[Le Taz Hot]

18. So, when will The Collective

chime in to throw President Carter under the bus complaining that he's a doddering, old, senile man that should just shut up and go shell his peanuts 'cause he never loved Obama anyway?

ETA: I see they've already shown up upthread.

[JDPriestly]

24. Again, a government apologist if not agent, hijacked this thread to talk about this time,

the reporter rather than about the inexcusable extent of the gathering of metadata and eavesdropping being operated by the NSA.

Hijacking does not deal with issues. It distracts. Distraction is a Republican strategy to prevent discussion of important issues.

Let's get this back on track. I posted a photo of Carter speaking from his seat in the audience at the event. Carter has not denied that he made the statements attributed to him.

Now, back to our program. What do we do about the NSA's over-reaching surveillance and collection of metadata. I differentiate the two and include both because another NSA method for changing the topic in the conversation is claiming it only collects metadata. Your metadata is your life. You don't want the government to have it.

The apologists of this program say, well, private companies have it. If they can have it, it must not be private. A private company is not going to study your metadata in order to silence your political or religious or scientific or whatever opinions. That would not be profitable for a private company.

Only the government can take the tax money you pay (whether directly or indirectly when you buy products, etc.) and use that money to fund a huge, boondoggle surveillance program that does nothing other than increase the government's information about you and therefore its power to control, influence and perhaps punish you.

That's why you can trust the phone company with your information. The shareholders would squawk and loudly, and some thriftier person out there would take over the company if they simply collected your metadata and analyzed with a billion-dollars' worth of equipment and manpower.

So, that is why we don't want the government doing this. When you ask why they are collecting all that metadata on everyone, every man, woman and child in America, you see that the purposes cannot be worth the investments being made.

[backscatter712]

28. /me peeks using Chrome's Incognito window - yep, one of the propagandists at work.

Using the usual smearing tactics.

Amazing how much more pleasant these threads are when I have them on ignore...

[JDPriestly]

30. I don't have anyone on ignore, but I am considering putting a couple of people there.

I think I am being ignored by a lot of people.

I don't like the ignore function because we really can't ignore the arguments of people with whom we disagree. We have to deal with them.

[Purveyor]

29. I'm so used to that from initiating articles in the I/P forum that it doesn't even faze me anymore.

[struggle4progress]

33. The photo is Carter, rising at the Carter Center, to talk about unchecked political contributions

http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/AS7ZKRL9vadooU4b.zofzw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTYyODtweW9mZj0wO3E9ODU7dz05NjA-/

It's captioned "Former President Jimmy Carter steps to the podium to discuss US election reform at the Carter Center, Wednesday, July 17, 2013, in Atlanta. Carter gave the keynote remarks Wednesday along with Ambassador Janez Lenarcic of the Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. The organization is presenting its final report for improving the US electoral process. (AP photo / David Goldman)"

Carter: Unchecked contributions 'legal bribery'
RAY HENRY July 17, 2013

ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday that unchecked political contributions are "legal bribery of candidates" and denounced a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made possible unlimited spending by outside groups, including corporations and labor unions ...

He said the U.S. Supreme Court made a "very stupid" decision by removing limits on independent campaign spending by businesses and labor unions, which the court found was a constitutionally protected form of political speech. The Democrat said that he and his Republican opponents used public financing to run their general election campaigns in 1976 and 1980 ...

"I would say that it's almost impossible for a candidate, like I was back in those early days or others even, to be considered seriously as a candidate to represent the Democratic or Republican parties as nominee if you can't raise $100 million or $200 million from contributors, many of whom know that they are making an investment in how they are going to be treated by the winner after the election is over," Carter said.

Carter said that while elections in the United States once set an example for the world, the country's reputation diminished in 2000 when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in a Florida vote recount, effectively deciding the election in favor of Republican George W. Bush. He also criticized GOP-led state legislatures for changing polling hours in ways that Carter said were meant to frustrate likely Democratic voters ...

http://news.yahoo.com/carter-unchecked-contributions-legal-bribery-165226324.html