NSA Controversy: Jimmy Carter Says U.S. "Has No
Functioning Democracy"
By Alberto Riva
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter is so concerned about the
NSA spying scandal that he thinks it has essentially resulted in a suspension
of American democracy.
“America does not at the moment have a functioning
democracy,” he said at an event in Atlanta on Tuesday sponsored by the Atlantik
Bruecke, a private nonprofit association working to further the German-U.S.
relationship. The association's name is German for “Atlantic bridge.”
Carter’s remarks didn't appear in the American mainstream
press but were reported from Atlanta by the German newsmagazine Der
Spiegel, whose Washington correspondent Gregor Peter Schmitz said
on Twitter he was present at the event. The story doesn't appear in the
English-language section of the Spiegel website and is only available in
German.
The 39th U.S. president also said he was pessimistic about
the current state of global affairs, wrote Der Spiegel, because there was “no
reason for him to be optimistic at this time.” Among the developments that make
him uneasy, Carter cited the “falling of Egypt under a military dictatorship.”
As president, Carter managed to get then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and
Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to sign the Camp David peace agreements
in 1979.
Carter said a bright spot was “the triumph of modern
technology,” which enabled the democratic uprisings of the Arab Spring;
however, the NSA spying scandal, Carter said, according to Der Spiegel,
endangers precisely those developments, “as major U.S. Internet platforms such
as Google or Facebook lose credibility worldwide.”
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