USA must not hunt down whistleblower Edward Snowden

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Europe#By_coun...

Reading down the list, most European nations have around 80% or more majority ethnicity. Even those with lower majorities tend to have closely related minorities, e.g. Belgium with its Flemings and Walloons.

By comparison the largest racial/ethnic group in the U.S., non-Latino whites, is under 65% and shrinking.

All that said, I personally think the high rate of imprisonment in the U.S. reflects a lot of latent to overt racism and can't be defended. I think that was the GP's point but I'm not sure.

Tony one - of - our - most - dazzling - public - intellectuals Judt? Whose special expertise was modern European history?

This is taken from the introduction to POSTWAR, finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize:

""" p. 9

We should not idealize this [pre-1914] Europe. What the Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski called 'the incredible, almost comical melting pot of peoples and nationalities sizzling dangerously in the very heart of Europe' was perilously rent with riots, massacres, and pogroms -- but it was real, and it survived into living memory.

Between 1914 and 1945, however, THAT Europe was smashed into the dust. The tidier Europe that emerged, blinking into the second half of the 20th century had fewer loose ends. Thanks to war, occupation, boundary adjustments, expulsions and genocide, almost everybody now lived in their own country, among their own people. For forty years after WWII Europeans in both halves of Europe lived in hermetic national enclaves where surviving religious or ethnic minorities -- the Jews in France, for example -- represented a tiny fraction of the population at large and were thoroughly integrated into its cultural and political mainstream. Only Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union -- an empire, not a country, and anyway only part-European -- stood aside from this new, serially homogeneous Europe.

But since the 1980s, and above all since the fall of the Soviet Union and the enlargement of the EU, Europe is facing a multicultural future... voluntary and involuntary migrants from failed or repressive states at Europe's expanded margins have turned London, Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan, and a dozen other places into cosmopolitan world cities whether they like it or not.

This presence of Europe's living 'others' -- perhaps fifteen million Muslims in the EU as currently [2005] constituted, for example, with a further eighty million awaiting admission in Bulgaria and Turkey -- has thrown into relief not just Europe's current discomfort at the prospect of ever greater variety, but also the ease with which the dead 'others' of Europe's past were cast far out of mind. Since 1989 it has become clearer than it was before just how much the stability of post-war Europe rested upon the accomplishments of Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Between them, and assisted by wartime collaborators, the dictators blasted flat the demographic heath upon which the foundations of a new and less complicated continent were then laid.

"""

On my trips to Europe I have seen students in Prague (none in Plzen), Arabs in Paris, some British tourists in Ljubljana.

Overall I was not surprised to learn that when Poles gained the right to emigrate by acceding to the EU, the richer member nations were swept by waves of anxiety over the arrival of a slightly different kind of white person.

"...and easy to vote for stiff penalties for criminals who don't look like you."

That's a reference to the Drug War. Which Reagan cranked into high gear in the 1980s, in response to the crack epidemic, by introducing mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession. Penalties for possessing crack were, infamously, 100 times those for an equivalent amount of powder cocaine. Congress revisited the issue in 2011 and reduced the ratio. Now it's just 20:1.

Most crack users are black, and so, as a result, are disproportionately many prison inmates. Only 13% of the population is black. The other 87% continue to vote enthusiastically for politicians who are "tough on crime".

It seems to me that there is a third option: isolating. Some people we cannot cure, but should not be "punished". Even so, they need to be kept away from the general population for the sake of the population.

I personally think that using imprisonment as a sort of "punishment" is barbaric and has no place in a civilized society. It should only be used to rehabilitate or, barring that possibility, isolate. You have someone who just won't stop killing people and your psychologists are at a loss as to how to turn him into a safe productive member of society? By all means, keep him locked up and off the streets, but trying to frame this detainment as a "punishment" is how we start down a very dark road.

So, no, I don't teach my children loyalty to "government", but rather their country, which, up until recently was pretty free from their government.

It also doesn't teach anything close to critical thinking, problem solving, questioning fundamentals, or anything close to an exposure to career domains.

Also, the shots are at a parents discretion, even if peer pressure is applied. The choice to get a drivers license is inevitably on the child (you can't force them to take the test). Public education is compulsory by gunpoint (ie, imprisonment of parents who withhold their children from the public school system or homeschooled exams, though there are so many exceptions it is silly).

Sorry, not enough coffee.

And?

As far as I can see, they are for the most part quite reflective of what American voters want (or is at least consistent with a compromise position of the wants of the various voting demographics).

Yeah, well, majority rule is bullshit too, so what's your point? The "system" we have in place tries to avoid the "tyranny of the majority" but no political system can ever really avoid some element of that. There's no point pretending that the system we have in place doesn't have flaws, and that individuals are not sometimes justified in stepping outside of that system.

Now, I don't always agree with the voter consensus, but, frankly, I'd rather have the laws I disagree with than a system where we ask mindcrime and his friends what transcendent principles should govern the country.

Then I suppose you should hope that I'm never on a jury. :-)

I don't see corruption

You must not be looking very hard. But, being part of "the system", I guess that should be expected. What we all see is influenced by our fundamental worldview, and you clearly have a fundamentally different worldview than I do. So we'll probably always disagree on this.

The approach doesn't boil down to that hyperbole at all. There's a place for opposition, but I don't see it as among those people who choose to work on classified projects for the NSA and CIA. Compartmentalized security relies on trusted individuals not choosing to make unilateral security decisions. If he wants to resign and then generally oppose governmental surveillance, then he is welcome to do that.

I see the pentagon papers as along the same lines as this. The remnants of my teenage agents sympathize with the whistle blower spirit, but I see this as effectively the same as vigilante justice and blatant disregard of the importance of trust in security and while it may have had positive societal benefits, that doesn't mean there should be no consequences.

In previous cases[2] where people are deported whilst seeking asylum the UNHCR has said:

> UNHCR denounced the move as a violation of the "non-refoulement" policy that prohibits the forced return of asylum seekers to areas where they could face danger – a cornerstone of international refugee protection.

> "We cannot accept that these asylum seekers were deported without a chance to explain their case,"

In my opinion, for the rule of law to stand, the asylum process must conclude before he gets deported.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-refoulement [2] http://www.unhcr.org/3fe98ef84.html

Are we fighting a war with China?

From Wikipedia:

Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]." In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aiding or involved by such an endeavor.

The point is, if we can argue about it, then there should be a fair trial to determine whether or not it was treason. The president and other leaders saying it's treason doesn't lend itself to a fair trial in the future. The appropriate response is "He committed crimes, we will have a trial to determine the extent of those crimes and whether or not it is treason".

Of course, if he's guilty of some greater crime, I'd always want to see him punished. For me, it's simple.

But it's really not. It's not as simple as saying you want the government to pursue him or not, especially now when the information is still coming in.

Regardless, this is deviating from my original question, and I think you are missing the point.

I completely agree. And I agree with this as well:

> I think it's very tragic that we are so eager to hand off our opinions to "experts".

But I think it's important to understand that whether you think Snowden is a whistleblower or a traitor, you are making that decision in part based on "experts." You are trusting people who haven't proven themselves to be untrustworthy.

We don't know everything (or maybe we do, it's difficult to say). Sure, we can say "Hey, he told us these things that were true." But I also don't have any reason to trust him outright. So, on one hand, I have valid reasons to distrust the government, but I also have valid reasons to distrust Snowden.

So on one hand, I want to believe he's told the entire story, and is being completely truthful. But on the other hand, on multiple levels he's demonstrated his untrustworthiness.

As recently as 1991 or thereabouts.

I would count 2001 myself to dislodge Al Qaeda but I might understand why you wouldn't.

And before 1991, a U.S. warship escorting merchant traffic was almost destroyed by a mine placed into international waters by a fairly advanced Mideast nation, so it's not as rare as you seem to think.