European Parliament Says Snowden Should Be Welcomed in Europe
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
Illegal, Insulting for a friendly country and 100% rumour-based, it nevertheless happened and we all know what would have followed if Snowden was actually on that plane.
So, yeah, talk is really cheap.
It's as if states in the US could ignore federal law. The difference is that in US the federal government could actually send federal agents to arrest the governor and bring him for trial for breaking federal law, but in EU nothing would happen. The EU parliament might try to put sanctions on a country for not following a directive, but then again, other countries would need to agree to it. So if the issue is a hot one, not much can be done.
If an directive has been issued, it can't be ignored by the member states. If they do, they can be forced to do follow it by a European court as they act against the European treaties they signed.
The European parliament can't issue sanctions against anybody, because that's not in their power as defined in the EU treaties.
What the EU parliament can do in this case (and what do actually did here) is issue a sternly worded letter. They can also try to bring the EU Commission or the member states to do something.
But you're right in this case the EU can't do anything about Snowden. It's really just a motion calling on EU national governments.
Power in 'the EU' is wielded largely by the CoM and the Commission, the parliament is just a side show. The EU is a fundamentally technocratic, not democratic, institution, This is by design.
edit : fat fingers
Having the EU parliament vote a motion in favour of welcoming Snowden as a political refugee is great. As the article highlight it isn't binding to the EU commission or EU countries. But this could help document Snowden's in front of the ECHR.
The European Court for Human Rights does have supranational power over EU states.
This is a small step in the good direction, no need to be cynical.
I did say 'EU country' didn't I? So why do you think I believe that the EU is one homogeneous federal entity? I'm pretty well versed in EU politics and I'm kind of surprised that you could read that into that line.
> Having the EU parliament vote a motion in favour of welcoming Snowden as a political refugee is great.
Yes, but it amounts to exactly nothing without any particular country taking actual action, the EU parliament has a long history of being ignored on issues like these in spite of well meaning words their ability to exert pressure on the nation states to actually act is in this particular case quite limited. But it's a nice gesture, I'm sure Edward Snowden will appreciate it.
Hence the 'talk is cheap'.
If I've learned anything from being a human: don't trust humans. They'll lie relentlessly; even in the face of evidence.
> Maybe their lies are just more public. They're all humans, after all.
...your evidence is your previous, unproven argument.
Politicians lie, humans lie, and politicians are humans. Unless there's some strong evidence, claiming that politicians lie more than the average human makes no sense.
- Politicians lie much more than an average person.
- Sales and marketing people lie more than politicians.
Now, if you want to talk about what NSA and CIA chiefs say to the U.S. Congress under oath, there are tons of lies there.
Have you run for political office before? Perhaps that is your source of authority for your claims.
Consider a career ("special class") that we (hopefully) agree on where being dishonest is required to succeed. An illusionist, or a spy / secret agent.
Do they think differently about truth than most people?
Well yes, of course they do. I can think of at least two reasons: self-selection and habit+experience.
All three examples do so for different specific reasons, and in different ways.
For the illusionist and the spy, I guess that's what we expect of people doing those jobs. For politicians, not so much.
Even then, if you look closely, there's still quite often a clear and outright lie, just cushioned in "equivocating language" (nice term, btw). It's just that all the cushioning tends to make pointing out the lie within seem like a petty thing to do. And in the case of politician-to-politicians they tend not to do that to each other because they recognize the game being played and rather not risk getting theirs in turn. If it does happen, it gets ugly fast, and both parties are worse off.
BTW I don't disagree that there's also a large amount of "equivocating language" going on, without any outright lies in the middle of it. Maybe that's even more common. Doesn't mean they don't lie, quite a lot more than people whose career doesn't depend on it.
Also (but this is just opinion) if "equivocating language" is used to deliberately give people / the public a wrong idea, that's not far from lying either. Even if it's "technically" true.
And then there's still quite a large number of politicians, on all sides of the spectrum, left/right, popular or not, powerful or not, that I have seen knowingly speaking some pretty damn big lies, and not seeing any consequences for it.
As I understand it, science is in some form seeking truth. As such, a scientist who lies relentlessly in the face of evidence wouldn't very effective.
A quote from John Maynard Keynes: "When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?".
How would you characterise how JMK acts in the face of evidence?
Unless you can be more specific(?), I can't find your generalisation in any way convincing.
What you've done just looks like a lazy rhetorical tool to me. Am I wrong?
We all lie, and all the time. We notice politicians' lies more simply because they're public.
I didn't say "all politicians are liars". That's a straw man.
> A physicist might not lie when talking about physics, but might tell a white lie to make her husband or a friend happy.
I wouldn't call that relentless. Would you?
You say:
> We all lie, and all the time.
And also:
> A physicist might not lie when talking about physics
So, we don't "all lie, and all the time".
I disagree. Politicians do in fact, generally, lie more than most people.
In particular many of the successful ones. It's often a large part of how they got successful. You could almost say it's part of their job (fortunately, there are some politicians that do not believe this).
Sometimes it's for a (relatively) benign reason, a "political white lie" if you like. But just as often (if not more often) it's to protect their own interests, or the interests of certain parties (corporations, usually) that are not quite aligned with the people they are supposed to be representing.
The fact that some of their statements are public just matches the fact that many people in the public may have an idea or opinion about that statement and can judge it. Say your neighbour lies about having borrowed your hedge-trimmer. If that statement were to become public, I still wouldn't be able to judge its truthfulness.
Of course a public statement raises the bar because it has more eyes on it, but even non-public lies involving just a few people generally have the tendency to come out eventually, if it matters and they pay some attention. I believe their statements being public only explains a small part of why politicians are so often caught lying.
Another way to look at it is to consider other public figures that are not politicians. They don't lie nearly as often. In particular, public figures like those "tonight" talkshow hosts, such as Stewart or Oliver. And you know why they often don't "need" to lie, because they can afford to. And when they do lie (because occasionally they do), and I caught them at it, it wasn't too hard to figure out why, and it always involved some other entity such that they couldn't afford not lying[0]. So when they are affected by the same reason why politicians tend to lie more often.
Of course, none of us never lies. I don't think it would be entirely impossible, but it would probably be very very hard. However I do believe that there's a quite wide spectrum from people that lie very little, to people that really lie very often (and therefore don't think much of doing it). And politicians most definitely tend to be found at the far end of that spectrum.
[0] ignoring obvious lies for comedic value. Let's call that "fiction" or something, conflating it with the other types of lies we are discussing here will just confuse matters.
Especially if "should" is said by an entity that has effectively no decision power in the matter.
When I click on the "View text on the Parliament site" link ( http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&re... ), I get to a page with a very wordy sort of proposal about a whole lot of privacy-related matters, but it doesn't mention Snowden anywhere?
This seems to be the right text, though (which does mention Snowden): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...
Ugh, that site is such a maze.
Be a bully, get treated like a bully.
Back when I worked for the .coop registry we found this as some of the European coop considered the internet a Capatiist/CIA plot.
There is also the older and dieing out British Tory's who blame you for the loss of empire.
There are plenty of reasons for this.
> But of course they love Le McDonald's and Le Coke Cola.
I personally don't buy either product because they both taste gross to me, but even if I did, how would that be relevant to US foreign policy or treatment of whistleblowers?
And I could think of EU country that treat whistle blowers badly or behave badly in pursuit of foreign policy