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Non-Binding Resolution: EU States Should Protect Snowden
The New York Times reports that the European Parliament has voted to adopt "a nonbinding but nonetheless forceful resolution" urging the EU's member nations to recognize Edward Snowden as a whistleblower, rather than aid in prosecuting him on behalf of the United States government. From the article:
Whether to grant Mr. Snowden asylum remains a decision for the individual European governments, and thus far, none have done so.
Still, the resolution was the strongest statement of support seen for Mr. Snowden from the European Parliament. At the same time, the close vote — 285 to 281 — suggested the extent to which some European lawmakers are wary of alienating the United States. ...
The resolution calls on European Union members to "drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties."
Also at Wired, USA Today and many others; Snowden himself has tweeted happily about the news.
There's no end to the punishment I would deliver to Ed.
First, I'd sentence him to a ticker tape parade.
Then he'd be made to suffer the receipt of one million ounces of gold.
Finally, I would inflict a lifetime exemption from all taxation - federal, state, county, and local - upon him and his descendants to the tenth generation.
I would be absolutely merciless.
Snowden has narrowed down his information releases to one specific topic - secret government monitoring of civilian communications channels. In both the U.S. and EU, Snowden is probably right and this was illegal on the part of the government. Assange (and Manning) took an indiscriminate approach and just released everything they could get their hands on, legal or illegal, right or wrong. No government with secrets of their own is going to condone or encourage the latter.
IOW, Snowden was blowing the whistle to try to stop the train to save it. Assange and Manning were trying to derail the train.
Not one extradition treaty in an EU member state overrules the European Convention on Human Rights which all EU member states are signatories to and members of.
The lack of the US' ability to guarantee Snowden will be granted a fair trial, means that any extradition treaty will be irrelevant in the face of a European Court of Human Rights challenge using the European Convention on Human Rights and it's implementations.
This is precisely why the convention and court exist - to prevent any member state treating someone unfairly in violation of their fundamental rights by acting as a higher power that can determine if a member government is treating people within it's borders fairly or not. It's a fine example of the importance of it all, it's one entity that can tell governments it doesn't give a shit how much they wish to kowtow to the US, fundamental human rights come first.
Of course a nation state could break protocol and ignore an ECHR ruling, but then it also doesn't get to dictate to places like China, Russia, and so forth about human rights anymore, because it would then be hypocritical and meaningless to do so.
People actually believe the rape accusations which coincidentally happened right after he embarrassed the US military by publishing the truth?
No he's right, it was a political union designed to bind Europe together to make another war unthinkable. NATO was designed to stop Russia (well, the USSR at the time) marching into Europe to undo all of that which is exactly as Russia is trying to do again now with it's invasion into Ukraine and it's funding of far right europhobic political groups like France's FN, the UK's UKIP, and Greece's Golden Dawn whose main policies are to pull their respective countries out of the EU, hence weakening the EU and opening the door further for Russian intrusion.
Both were certainly primarily created to keep Europe from war, although NATO also protects the likes of Canada's northern borders and Alaska too of course.
This guy? Looks like he was found VERY guilty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
The primary goal of the European Parliament is to create a political union that works to prevent a repeat of the march to war that led to world wars 1 and 2. It has worked well for a long time.
Europe was at war with itself from the collapse of the Roman Empire until 1945, with very few years of peace. When the most efficient way of killing people was to hit them with a sword, and the economy was largely agrarian, wars didn't really kill lot of people.
With the rise of the modern state, and industrial revolutions, wars killed progressively more and more people, ( the 30 years war of 1618 to 1648 killed maybe 25% of the population of Germany for instance).
Wars also became steadily more global, with the Napoleonic Wars for example fought everywhere Britain and France had interests. The French and the Germans were very wise setting up the European Union, in my view. It has succeeded in it's original aim of preventing the tanks from rolling.