Subj : Clandestine activity is a holy cow of democracy To : ALEXANDER KORYAGIN From : BOB KLAHN Date : Tue Aug 06 2013 13:05:56 AK> Hi, Lee Lofaso! AK> I read your message from 29.07.2013 23:30 AK> about Clandestine activity is a holy cow of democracy. ak>>> Anyway, Snowden did his best. LL>> Snowden swore a national security oath. Snowden violated that oath ... AK> Freedom has never been archived without treason of the What Snowden did is not treason under US law. AK> oppressive regime. Because, when fighters for freedom AK> overthrow a legitimate, but oppressive power they commit AK> an act of high treason. And naturally, they were often No oppresive power is legitimate. Legal is not legitimate. Democracy is the only legitimate form of government. It is the only form under which the people rule themselves. AK> hanged, shot etc. Lincoln was a traitor for the AK> slaveholding society that brought him up. French AK> revolution had executed the king and queen. No doubt it AK> was an act of treason. AK> In other words if the state authority does ugly things AK> it cannot be stopped without treason. Another matter is AK> - who are those people for whom the treason is done? If AK> the treason is made for the world it is great; if for AK> money, and many people suffered -- it is a dirty trick. ... LL>> oath. Therefore, Snowden is a traitor to his country. ... AK> It depends on the point of view. For some people he is a AK> traitor, but for some he is saving freedom. It can In this country treason is defined in the constitution. It requires the intent to give aid and comfort to an enemy. If Snowden did it to protect the American people from government violations he did not commit treason. I doubt anyone believes he did it to give aid and comfort to an enemy. AK> happen that in future an underground resistance and AK> democracy can be one thing. Such things happened in the AK> past. That's why it is an extremely bad idea to create AK> mechanism for rooting out underground resistance AK> completely. Just in case any democratic society must AK> preserve some "woods" where Robin Hoods could hide and AK> fight. The problem with that is, in the US the underground resistance is made up of the ones who want to be the dictators. Their primary driving force is hate and bigotry. ... AK> Snowden defends Holy cow of democracy - freedom, the AK> possibility not to be traced everywhere and every time. AK> Without such a freedom, freedom can come to an end at AK> some pretty day. People don't understand that a free AK> society must imply possibility of resistance. If In the US we understand that. Unfortunatly those who want to end freedom use that same possibility of resistance. AK> everything is under control no real resistance can exist AK> - we begin see it in Russia now. All to evident. ... LL>> The state has a duty and an obligation to do whatever it takes to LL>> protect itself and its citizens in the name of national security. LL>> That includes developing technical instruments that make LL>> clandestine activity possible. AK> You probably didn't read the place where I said that AK> there is no guarantee that an oppressive regime cannot AK> hijack power. Lee is offering the basic arguement of the oppressive regime. The enemy requires we sacrifice freedom to defend it. AK> Well, abstractly, I retell my story in other words, of a AK> movie script: The US state security organization has AK> made a robot-terminator who has to kill all the AK> underground opposition and criminals. But in some time We don't need robots to do that, we have enough who are willing to do it now. AK> oligarchs and moneybags pay some money to elect their AK> candidates for the presidency, senate etc, to make AK> themselves more powerful and rich. People tries to AK> organize resistance, but after coming to power the AK> moneybags order the terminator to eliminate all AK> democratic opposition, and it will be easy done because AK> the state knows all about all and has a necessary AK> totalitarian mechanism to suppress any underground AK> activity. Such a government will be so corrupt it will not survive against an honest government. However it will do a lot of harm before it falls. ak>>> Because it is a matter of democracy survival. LL>> It is a matter of survival, not just of democracy, but also of the LL>> human race. Just think what would happen if terrorists had the ... AK> Such a spying technology that was disclosed by Snowden AK> doesn't allow to prevent terrors acts! Maximum it can AK> help trace terrorists after a committed terror attack. AK> Or it can provoke a young man to do a terror act and AK> then arrest him and his friends before the attack. Which is not how a democracy functions, but it is how you can destroy a democracy. AK> Terrorism can be killed only the same way how it was AK> born! The US people must understand why Arabs that were AK> so far from terrorism until WWII became so close to AK> terrorism after the war. The reason is simple -- great AK> injustice. So, the remedy against Arab terrorism is AK> justice, not spying on all the people around the world. Pope John Paul II said, "If you want peace, work for justice." That is my motto on that subject. ... AK> I've already said that system is not able to prevent AK> terror attacks. So, calling it an instrument against AK> terror attacks is a foolish idea. That is not true. The US government has prevented a lot of terror attacks. However, they did it within the law. There is no evidence of any terror attacks being prevented by illegal means. AK> If Al Qaeda has a AK> nuclear bomb it will blow it up despite the fact that AK> that Americans are kept under surveillance. The AK> possibility to be tracked after the attack scares them AK> not. You just made a point that needs to be recognized by all those who fear bringing suspects from Guantanamo to trial in the us. They fear inciting Al Qaeda. That's stupid, Al Qaeda will attack when ever they can, regardless of what we do. After all, Al Qaeda is not a name owned by anyone, any terrorist in the world can call his group Al Qaeda. AK> LL>> Allowing terrorists and bad guys to run and hide is not an option. LL>> As George W. Bush said, we have a War on Terror to fight! You heard LL>> that? We must make war on a verb! En garde! AK> Ha-ha. And he waged war against poor Afghanistan, Afghanistan was responsible for giving Bin Laden a base. For that the invasion was justified. The Taliban was a cruel dictatorship, and their overthrow was justified. What was not justified was not finishing the job, and letting the Taliban get a 10 year war going. The US should have been out of there within a year, two at most. The sooner the better. AK> although Bin Laden was in his cozy sweet home in AK> Pakistan. Bin Laden was not in Pakistan until after the invasion. AK> And Bush declared that Talibs are terrorists AK> although they had never done any terror acts at that I don't recall Bush declaring the Taliban as terrorists. They were terrorists to their own people, but the justification for the invasion was bringing down Bin Laden. Overthrowing the Taliban was gravy. Unfortunately Bush, and especially Cheney, screwed that up badly. AK> time. Actually there were hundreds of terrorists, but AK> then became millions. That part is clearly true. BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn .... 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