Whistle-Blower Edward Snowden: A Man with a Few New Friends on The Hill ?

Being a Hero is About the Rarest/Shortest-lived profession on Earth
 


           A comment in response to a related article on RT news, http://rt.com/usa/snowden-nsa-whistleblower-fate-492/

            In this case the UN Convention against ‘Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment’, however, does apply, so as an asylum seeker he can make claims to the government under it. Snowden’s whistle-blowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an ‘executive coup’ against the U.S. Constitution. Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the Bill of Rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago.

 
Refer to this as an instance of a similar violation: 


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/bradley-manning-torture

             “I’m not a lawyer, but based on what I know so far, I don’t think he should be prosecuted,” Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, a self-styled libertarian, told CQ Roll Call on Monday. “If someone reports illegal activity as a whistle-blower, they shouldn’t be prosecuted.

“Whether or not this program was authorized by Congress, it seems to me that this is an unconstitutional activity,” he continued, “which would make it illegal, and he should have some kind of immunity.” *


Ref. https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash/posts/557946720911405


                    

My own heroes are the dreamers, those men and women who tried to make the world a better place than when they found it, whether in small ways or great ones. Some succeeded, some failed, most had mixed results... but it is the effort that's heroic, as I see it. Win or lose, I admire those who fight the good fight.”― George R.R. Martin


                With the maturation of Human rights law and current policies of relocating migration management warrant a legal restatement of the concept of extraterritorial asylum. The various manifestations of pre-border migration management question the extent to which existing discourse on diplomatic asylum can be extrapolated to a more general theory on the legality of extra-territorial asylum. ‘The present-day importance of Human rights, including the acceptance that Human rights obligations may bind a state’; this thus requires a determination of whether there can be circumstances under which the petitioned state is ‘under a Human rights obligation’, for an individual, to grant protection and how such an obligation can be accommodated with possible concurrent and conflicting obligations the petitioned state may have with the territorial state. In extraterritorial situations, the scope of these protection duties is informed not only by the duty of non-refoulement, but also involves the preliminary issue of whether and under what circumstances the asylum-seeker may or may not be granted the right, as in other cases or as in this case, forced to physically bring himself within the territorial jurisdiction of the desired state, for example by allowing him to present himself at the border of that state. He has a universally applicable right to seek asylum, that is to be understood as the right to relieve himself from the authority of one country in order to be able to request territorial asylum with the authorities of another.

Sincerely,


Jai Krishna Ponnappan

                                  “Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.”― Mark Twain


Ref. Original post on social media,
https://www.facebook.com/RTnews/posts/10151633575744411

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/bradley-manning-torture


*Courtesy of U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, Michigan's Third District |
http://amash.house.gov/
http://twitter.com/repjustinamash
https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash/

 
Read More,
Bipartisan Coalition Proposes Fix To AP Phone Hack
http://amash.house.gov/press-release/bipartisan-coalition-proposes-fix-ap-phone-hack


Russia is willing to consider granting political asylum for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who blew the lid on the US PRISM program, Russian media reported. 


“If we receive such a request, we will consider it,” Kommersant daily quoted President Vladimir Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov as saying. 

Ref. http://rt.com/news/russia-consider-asylum-snowden-517/


US leaker Edward Snowden 'defending liberty'

          An ex-CIA employee has said he acted to "protect basic liberties for people around the world" in leaking details of US phone and internet surveillance.
Ref. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22842837


Julian Assange on Edward Snowden,
"Prism Leaker Is A Hero".