A monitored human being is not a free human being. And every state that systematically contravenes human rights, even in the alleged service of security, is acting criminally.
Jakob Augstein -- Spiegel Online International
--
In an opinion piece posted yesterday by Spiegel Online International columnist, Jakob Augstein, offered an opportunity for Americans to see how Edward Snowden’s revelation of massive NSA spying is impacting German citizens:
What, exactly, is the purpose of the National Security Agency? Security, as its name might suggest? No matter in what system or to what purpose: A monitored human being is not a free human being. And every state that systematically contravenes human rights, even in the alleged service of security, is acting criminally.
While many people on this side of the Atlantic claim the revelations are nothing new, and that the data collection is just the price we must pay to remain secure, our European allies, some who have actually lived under totalitarian rule, take it as proof that we are no longer ‘the good guys.’
Those who believed that drone attacks in Pakistan or the camp at Guantanamo were merely regrettable events at the end of the world should stop to reflect. Those who still believed that the torture at Abu Ghraib or that the waterboarding in CIA prisons had nothing to do with them, are now changing their views. Those who thought that we are on the good side and that it is others who are stomping all over human rights are now opening their eyes. A regime is ruling in the United States today that acts in totalitarian ways when it comes to its claim to total control. Soft totalitarianism is still totalitarianism. (emphasis mine)
In our wildest dreams, I don’t think any American could have ever envisioned our nation being branded as a soft totalitarian state by an ally. But that is the reality we must face because we have strayed so far from our founding principles that many of us – as well as many members of the global community -- no longer see us as a free nation.
America -- under the leaderships of G.W. Bush and Barack Obama -- in some quarters, has become a very dark place to live. Now, we are a nation that allows police forces to kill innocent people with impunity, a country where wealthy criminals have been given a free pass to commit fraud by the Justice Department, a too often militarized regime that tortures enemies, a doddering, greedy economic giant that has sucked the life from almost every human being on this planet and then channeled the spoils to the top 1%, a nation that sacrifices the health and well-being of its children to enrich the owners of too-big-to-govern energy companies…
…and now, we are a nation that no longer tolerates dissent.
Leaders who have used our nation’s tragedies as an excuse to enrich their own pockets and the pockets of their corporate masters have led us astray. And it is time to say ‘no more.’
Those who insist that the NSA’s spying programs have had no negative repercussions are fools. We have become the laughing stock of the world. We are no longer viewed as a beacon of hope; we are now seen as a soft totalitarian state that has its tentacles wrapped around the lives of almost every global citizen.
It is embarrassing: Barack Obama will be arriving in Berlin for only the second time, but his visit is coming just as we are learning that the US president is a snoop on a colossal scale.
It’s time to wake up.
http://www.spiegel.de/...