He could always invade Russia
Winters is coming - why not give it a try?
President Obama has cancelled a planned pow-wow with Russian president Vladimir Putin at next month's G20 Summit in St Petersburg, saying the granting of asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was "a factor." "Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress …
Surely if there has been little progress then it is more important to have the summit ?
(Putin won't take this slight lightly.)
Progress seems to be defined in almost all the world as doing what the USA wants.
(At least Russia and China actually act in their own best interests first and foremost).
And do exactly the same type of lying that America does.
Well America sure as hell needs Canada more than we need them. Canada can get by just fine selling our resources to Europe and Asia. America's only value is that we can ship them stuff by train instead of having to put in on a boat. Considering the crap we have to put up with from them, that's hardly a worthwhile reason to keep 'em around.
Cut 'em off, I say. The entire world should just cease trading with the US at all. Sure, we'd have some readjustment to be done, but I think that in the end we'd all be better for it. Well except the yanks...but oh well. If that's an egg that needs to be broken in order to make a nicer planetary omelette...
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You know, it used to be that way, Mr ASDF. It really did. But a couple of things have changed in the past few years that mean that any US general or politician eyeing Canada covetously needs be significantly more wary than they would have had to have been in the past.
The first: the Canadian citizenry is rather well armed. There are significantly more guns per capita in Canada than in the US and they are spread out fairly evenly. The second is that "standing army" figures mean absolutely bupkus today. You can have tens of millions of people active in your military and - while that's impressive on paper - it doesn't mean much unless you are prepared to fight a nasty inch-by-iunch ground war. If you think you can win that kind of battle then fucking bring it, America. You can't win a ground war against a bunch of poorly equipped peasants in the desert, I'd love to see you succeed in inch-by-iunch combat with Canadians on in winter on their own soil.
No, what matters is how many robots you have. Everything from cruise missiles to drones. People are unbelievably expensive. You have to feed them, house them, train them, buy them jeeps to move them around, fly them in giant crates of supplies and keep them outfitted with armour, communications and all sorts of other stuff. The average soldier costs a hell of a lot more than the average cruise missile and does less damage.
Could America "take" Canada? Oh, probably. But even today that would be a long, miserable, bloody and costly battle. Will America be able to "take" Canada 10 years from now? I very much doubt it. We're buying (and building) lots and lots of robots. The arctic is melting, you see, and the oil up there is ours. We intend to be able to defend that claim.
I don't see it as all that strange. I've always believed they'll try it within my lifetime. I still do believe it. I don't even hold illusions that we would "win". The only question regarding the eventual American invasion on most Canadians' minds is "are we prepared enough to make them pay dearly for it?"
Robots will help significantly with that, I should think. Fortunately for me, my local MP agrees voiceferously: Canada not only needs lots and lots of robots, we need the capability to build them here in Canada. They will come. When they do I hope to hell they pay tenfold in blood.
"Canada as the good guy" is nothing but good PR. We have a bunch of asshole 1%ers (known as the Conservative party) trying to screw it for everyone. (Though the Liberal party did a good job of cronyism when in power, they didn't fundamentally screw us internally nor screw our foreign relations in the same way that the tories do.) We have some severe problems, however, that we are having a lot of trouble correcting and making good on.
The first and most damning is the continued misbehaviour of our troops abroad. Despite numerous very real efforts to reign in the excesses of our deployed forces, there have been some very unwelcome sexual assault scandals that I find unbecoming of a Canadian.
Second is a little something called "residential schools." Look it up; it is a truly shameful part of Canada's history and we will spend centuries trying to make it right. This is related to how the Native American populations are integrated (or aren't) within Canadian society. Native relations are among the most damning examples of how even Canadians don't get it all quite right.
We have several quite successful clans in Canada. various Squamish-descendant tribes to well on the west coast; a visit to the cities they own and run show they are more than capable of running their own affairs. Many of the Inuit tribes have done well; they've carved out the territory of Nunavut for themselves and another group have created an independent legislative assembly in Nunatsiavut; both examples of native peoples managing to do well economically, politically and intergovernmentally without losing their culture in the process.
Others aren't so lucky. Too many reserves are havens of drugs, alcohol and various forms of shocking abuse. Mental health issues can and do run rampant and unchecked as mental health professionals are not allowed to help victims of abuse or those with various chemical imbalances which lead to depression, bipolar disorders and so forth.
This is a massive quandry for Canada. I think you'll find an overwhleming percentage of Canadians believe it is important for Native clans to be able preserve their own way of life and to self-govern. We see it as their right. Yet some simply can't. We are caught in a national ethical dilemma about how to resolve this issue in the most fair way possible.
Should we intervene and impose our morals and/or governmental organisation upon communities? (This is where the residential schools thing went horribly wrong.) Do we let them sort it out themselves? How long do we wait before we decide that they lack the skills and tools to do so?
Is it right to keep throwing money at the problem? (Canada has various treaties that pay out a large sum to most reserve natives upon their 18th birthday.) Should we cut them off in the hopes that this forces them to get their act together?
There are no clean solutions here; no easy answers.
Then there's the hype about how "dirty" the tar sands are. And they are! the solution is actually simple: build a great big nuke plant to power the damned things and we won't have these sorts of problems, but my fellow Albertans (in their infinite wisdom) decided to scream and whinge and protest. (The majority of the protesting coming from several of the aformentionned native tribes who have treaty rights to veto such development and chose to do so because they weren't getting a large enough sack of cash to allow the nuke plant's development. At least they're honest about it)
Europeans don't like our seal hunt, mostly because seals are cute. They get all huffy when you explain to them that if we didn't cull the blighters they'd wipe out the arctic fishery practically overnight. That's not a part of the story people like to hear.
So Canada has our own problems. We are ashamed of them, we work our asses off to find solutions for them. We are aware of them and we even discuss them amongst ourselves and with our MPs. (I can remember at least 4 separate occasions where I sat around with several MPs, a few students and some native leaders to try to find innovative solutions to some of the issues facing the local tribes.)
Everyone is the bad guy to someone. We've done some bad things on the international stage...but our greatest shame is at home. It's one of the reasons we don't try shaping the world in our own image. What right do we have to do so when there's still so much we have yet to get right at home?
It won't be American leadership - most likely a UN action to consolidate North America into one district - using American forces. The latest Navy commercial calling itself 'A Global Force for Good' is disturbing on several levels. It doesn't matter who you vote for, they are all the same.
All that aside-> I'm not happy with my government, we have enough bullshit to deal with at home than to be dicking around all over the world.
Shit.
Please be quiet, Potty, we don't want everyone thinking all the colonials are nursing massive inferiority complexes.
As for Obambi's latest publicity stunt, I'm baffled as to what he thinks he gains. Sure, no real harm is done - it was little more than a photo opportunity, the real work gets done in the background meetings - but snubbing Putin? What a way to repay Pootie for gagging Snowjob. And what does Obambi stand to gain at home? It's hardly going to help him with the Dummicrat base, they probably want the whole thing swept under the carpet so they can get back to pretending they have moral superiority (not easy when the news is all about how your Prez of choice is driving the World's largest eavesdropping program in history). And it's a bit late for Obambi to be trying to appeal to the Republican hard-core with a bit of manufactured patriotism. Maybe Obambi is returning the favour for Pootie by letting Pootie claim he's independent, not Bambi's bee-yach, etc., which probably does play well with Pootie's nationalistic base.
The tar sands would still be filthy even if all the required power plants were run on organic unicorn dung instead of coal. Nuclear would not fix it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_oil_sands#Development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncrude_Tailings_Dam
http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/tipping-point.html
That's why we call it Mordor.
The biggest issue with the tar sands is the CO2 load per barrel of oil. That far outweighs the other issues. We burn so much coal to get a barrel of heavy crude that it's abominable.
After that, the biggest issues are to do with reclamation of the land. We can do a great deal to reclaim old mine sites, but we choose not to because extracting and refining a lot of the dangerous metals that end up polluting the tailings ponds is unbelievably energy intensive. IF we had a cheap, clean source of electrical power - say, for example, from the proposed Bruce Power nuclear station - then we would be able to do a gigantic crapload more post-processing on the tailings than we do now.
There is nothing about tarsands extraction that is inherantly bad for the local ecosystem. The negative effects are entirely because we choose not to bring our technology to bear on reclaiming the land. That's abominable, but I don't think we're going to realistically be able to do anything about it until we get nuclear energy involved.
The chances that Alberta will voluntairily evaporate over half it's GDP are exactly zero. The chances that China and the USA are going to stop buying our oil are exactly zero. The ecological costs of doing proper reclamation on those sites using coal or natural-gas-fired power plants are honestly probably higher than a few poison tailings ponds amongst the muskeg wastes of the north.
Get cheap power up there, however, and suddenly the government has a viable option. They can put in place strict - even outright punitive - ecological regulation and the oil companies would reasonably be able to implement them whilst still raking in the kinds of profits required to keep them interested in the oilsands in the first place.
Now, I don't know about you, but I've been up there. I've toured Shell and Syncrude plants and flown over the entire region in helicopter. I've seen up close and personal the damage we do...and also what beauty a properly restored area can be.
It's easy to buy in to a bunch of propaganda focused on terrifying images of active work sites or abandoned sites from 30 years ago. It's much harder to take an intellectually honest and objective look at what's going on. There's good. There's bad. There's horribly ugly. What's most damning of all is that there are viable solutions...
...we simply (stupidly) choose not to employ them. For that, I blame NIMBYs and I hope each and every one of them learns the true cost of their actions. Their fear, paranoia and greed will have repercussions for generations.
Of course, it's far easier to simply demand a province - and frankly most of a nation - live in abject poverty simply because of some propaganda and an unwillingness to do some investigation.
"IF we had a cheap, clean source of electrical power - say, for example, from the proposed Bruce Power nuclear station - then we would be able to do a gigantic crapload more post-processing on the tailings than we do now."
Come over to BC for a chat; we've got oodles of surplus hydro power we can sell you. If we stop supplying to California too we'll have even more to share!
The problem with the BC Hydro approach - and it's been considered - is the transmission line length. The most promising BC Hydro projects for this would involve building dams on a couple of rivers right before they dump into the pacific. You want to truck that much power all the way to Ft Mac? Your line loss will be staggering.
Nah, I think sticking a GW of generating capacity in Athabasca is the best idea. Close enough to Edmonton to get reasonably cheap meat to build and operate it, far enough from the muskeg that it won't sink into the ground and close enough to Ft Mac that transmission loss won't be a big deal.
BC Hydro will build Site C on the Peace River, as far as you can get from the Pacific, as close as you can get to Alberta. Helpful. (Really, the Peace region of BC should be given to Alberta, meanwhile the Alaskan panhandle should be part of BC, along with the rest of the Fraser Valley - Bellingham and the ridiculous Point Roberts. Soon the USA will be so weak we can just annex them like they did to so many others, but better to wait until they are so poor that they beg us to simply purchase them ;-) Also Vancouver Island should be its own province. Once that's sorted we can start working on the Cascadian Confederacy and get out from under the yoke of all those idiots thousands of kilometres away in Ottawa and Warshington. But I digress...)
The power used to melt the oil out of the bitumen is a huge problem yes, but like I said even if the power is beamed down from orbiting fusion plants we are still left with digging up thousands of square kilometres of precious boreal forest (you say muskeg??) using heavy - very very very heavy have you seen some of those things! - diesel guzzling machinery, combining that with trillions of litres of precious fresh water, and and turning it all into highly toxic "ponds" that you can see from space. Oh and cash, there's the rub I guess.
"Of course, it's far easier to simply demand a province - and frankly most of a nation - live in abject poverty" - I'm sorry but that is retarded. I agree with a lot of what you have to say, but saying that we will all live malnourished in stick huts if we don't exploit the oil sands as fast as corporately possible is seriously retarded.
BC Hydro's Site C still isn't enough to power the oilsands, and most of it's capacity is spoken for meeting the needs of the northern BC and north western Alberta communities. (Freeing up the more southern Hydro plants to sell more power to California.)
As for you "but they dig up the earth" bullshit, plug it. Yes, they dig up all sorts of muskeg - and damned little boreal forest, thank you - all of which can be restored. You are absolutely 100% right about the toxic ponds which I why I said that the majority of the power requirements are not for turning bitumen into usable oil, they are for refining and extracting the toxic minerals that go into the tailings ponds so we can deal with them in a far more ecologically friendly manner. Read my fucking post before gnawing on yet more of your leg.
Regarding your rampant anti-corporatism, there are a couple of issues with your logic. The first being that Alberta is nowhere near exploiting the tar sands "as fast as corporately possible." In fact, it has been estimated that we are using less than 10% of the possible extraction capacity given the supplies of equipment, manpower and the traffic density of hiway 53. Alberta makes companies looking to exploit tarsands go through an incredible amount of paperwork to get permission; a huge amount of which is "how will you restore the environment."
In addition to this, Alberta - and Canada more generally - is completely dependent on those tar sands. They are such a large part of our economy that if we were to simply stop tomorrow Canada could take something like a 20% hit to our GDP and our nation would collapse into a depression that would take us decades to recover from. It is not merely the cost of the oil, (and the resource taxes it generates,) it is the massive number of people it employs and the very high wages they get paid.
So you are simply flat out wrong and deeply misinformed. I don't believe for a second that we should be plowing ahead with pulling yet more oil out of the ground and burning it, but that is because I understand the science of climate change. I also understand economics and geopolitics and I am perfectly aware that nothing on this earth will stop that oil from being dug up.
So there are two choices before us: rail helplessly against the tar sands in general, waste our time and effort being completely fucking ineffective and worthless...or make sure that the fuckers to as little damage as possible.
If you want to make sure that they do as little damage as possible then you will do everything in your power to make sure that the nuke plant goes forwards. Because with that kind of electrical power we can not only cut the CO2 cost of refining bitumen into oil - a major factor - we can also make sure that we don't need toxic tailings ponds, because we can extract and refine the toxic metals from the waste products and deal with them in a far more ecologically friendly manner.
(I.E. react them with something that locks them up in a stable chemical compound that is non-toxic and then bury them in massive underground vaults designed for purpose. Because hey, with cheap electricity you can make cheap vaults out of non-toxic metals like iron or aluminium.)
But nope, we're right back to ranting-by-eco-pamphlet. Lots of angsty NIMBY talking points designed to get the normals all riled up...no actual understanding of the situation.
" In fact, it has been estimated that we are using less than 10% of the possible extraction capacity given the supplies of equipment, manpower and the traffic density of hiway 53."
You mean highway *63*? Do you know how many nicknames that bit of road has that include the word DEATH? Of course wages are high, conditions are terrible, and do you know how much it costs to rent a leaky garden shed to sleep in up in Fort McMurray, if you're lucky enough to find one available? Do you know that production is planned to double or triple this decade? I guess they could go faster if they started conscripting workers and housing them in tents, if there were enough tents? And you must be a special kind of stupid if you truly believe that the companies will put everything back the way they found it, even if huge amounts of taxpayer subsidized cheap energy was available and we count burying the toxic metals along with the nuclear waste as a job well done. And then what? That economic hit you exaggerate is coming any way you slice it, the stuff isn't endless. The bigger we build it the harder it will be when it runs out.
But I'll leave it at that since I've had about enough immature bullshit like this from a corporate-cock sucking spaz who knows nothing about me: "bullshit, plug it" "Read my fucking post before gnawing on yet more of your leg" "rampant anti-corporatism" "flat out wrong and deeply misinformed" "completely fucking ineffective and worthless" "ranting-by-eco-pamphlet" "no actual understanding" etc
OOoooh. A hiway that has a nickname with the word death in it! So scary!
Of course, you don't actually talk about why. You just fearmonger. Which seems to be your MO. Let's discuss, shall we? Why is hiway 63 so terrifying?
Well, the answer is actually a pretty simple confluence of three factors. The first is that it is very, very long. So long that people have a natural desire to speed on it. Not regular speeding, but blindingly fast even for Alberta. The QE2 has got nothing on the morons tear-assing on that hiway.
The second is that the hiway has not been twinned. So it's just a couple of lanes with no median that if you want to pass the car in front of you you have to poke out into oncoming traffic, which is typically speeding and all too often using cars that don't meet Alberta safety regulations for having "always on" headlights.
The third item is that there are enormous trucks going up that hiway all the time. They are slow. They are difficult to get around. They are impossible to see around.
When you put the three things together you get some dumb shit poking his car into the oncoming traffic lane to pass an entire row of enormous equipment (that's probably 300m long) who then gets rammed head-on by some jackass doing double the speed limit.
The solution to this is simple: twin the hiway. Something that the government is in the middle of doing right now. So ooga booga hiway boogyman is far less the terrifying pamphlet-monster that will kill all the poor souls working in the oilpatch and far more "a problem everyone is aware of and one that the entire province agrees must be dealt with before we allow production to increase at all." Indeed, at least six separate projects are on hold - construction cannot start - until the hiway is twinned.
As for housing, Fort Mac got dispensation to create two new neighborhoods of dense urban housing and construction has already started.
Regarding manpower, I believe Newfoundland has not yet been completely depopulated, so we're still good. If we need more, we can just get the federal government to raise Alberta's immigration limit and there are an unlimited number of individuals from around the world eager to come work there for the $250K-$400K/year they pay.
I agree with you that the economic hit of oil production tapering off is indeed coming, but A) there's 100 years of oil left there at convention technology levels. B) Alberta is slowly diversifying it's economy because of the cash from the oil sands; we will be better positioned to deal with it as these other economic elements grow and replace the requirement for petroleum as a key sector.
I'm no fan or friend of the tar sands at all. I think they are disgusting and wastefull and we need to be moving away from them sooner rather than later. The issue I have with your pointless blitherings is that they have no connection to reality whatsoever.
Your arguments are straight out of Mike Hudema's ridiculous pamphlets and at the core of it boil down to "I do not believe that any amount of regulation can possibly make any form of mining activity - but especially tar sands mining - ecologically friendly for the simple reason that I believe companies will renege on their duties to rehabilitate mine sites and that governments will let them get away with it."
Of course, Hudema gets very angry when you present a list of mining and forestry companies that have done superb jobs of rehabilitating their mine sites and of massive government fines levied against those who don't...where the fines are calculated to be the cost required to rehabilitate the site properly.
Alberta has made mistakes, sure. We've let companies get away with some really bad stuff, damn right. But we're not British Columbia. We don't make a law that says "reforest of be fined" and then fine the company $5000 for not reforesting 1000sq km that they cut down for timber.
You also completely gloss over the political and economic realities facing the province - another Mike Hudema trait - in that for all the ills of the current regime the alternative is far, far worse. Bitch all you want about how evil the tar sands are, but you only alternative to the Tories in this province is the Wild Rose, and they so batshit insane the Tea Party denounced them. If you think for a second that they will do a better job of holding Shell's feet to the fire you're loony.
A nuke plant at Athabasca is the only realistic hope to mitigate the damage of the tar sands. Your fairy-tale Hudema-esque "just stop doing it right now" is not going to happen.
So quit pissing away your efforts on unicorn-chasing and start agitating for real-world solutions that will show tangible benefits for the people alive today and the children of tomorrow. Or, hey, bitch more on the internet. You'll convince all the powers that be to change everything that way, I'm sure.
"Why is hiway 63 so terrifying?... a problem everyone is aware of and one that the entire province agrees must be dealt with" "I agree with you that the economic hit of oil production tapering off is indeed coming" "Alberta has made mistakes, sure. We've let companies get away with some really bad stuff, damn right." "I'm no fan or friend of the tar sands at all. I think they are disgusting and wastefull and we need to be moving away from them sooner rather than later."
OK! Let's be pals then! :-)
"The issue I have with your pointless blitherings is that they have no connection to reality whatsoever."
Wait... what? My only issue was with you saying all problems would be solved if only we could overcome the mighty power of the evil hippies and put in a nuclear power plant. I said it would still be a filthy mess, and you respond basically saying I should be put up against the wall for treason for daring to suggest that it's not all a Shangri-La Garden of Eden full of happy smiling workers with flowers in their hard hats dancing around with the beavers and the caribou who are breathlessly waiting for the huge improvements to their environment once reclamation makes everything better than ever.
I never said it should be stopped, and I don't think it should be. I definitely think it could be slowed down, that it's expanding way faster than the infrastructure needed to make life liveable for the workers, and that it's going ahead leaving problems like tailings to be figured out by future generations. I'm not even against a nuclear power plant, I agree that would be much better than burning coal, I just don't agree that a different source of electricity is the magic bullet. I'm not even really against pipelines, safer and more efficient than rail (Lac Megantic) or road (Lemon Creek). But I don't trust the people in charge any further than I could chuck one of their 400 ton dump trucks, and every time anyone says anything like "there could never be a spill" or "we're doing the best we can for the environment" I feel the need to speak up. Never heard of Mike Hudema, but now that I read the Wikipedia page about him he seems like a principled and committed person. I glossed over the political realities because I don't live there, so I can't vote there, so I couldn't care less who is the nuttiest. I don't expect that my posting here will do anything besides give a non rose tinted alternative viewpoint to anyone reading. And take a conversation about Obama meeting Putin in Russia way way way off topic ;-)
By all means go ahead and adopt the Euro and enjoy taking on Southern Europe's woes as well. Ask Germany how much fun that is. We'll take the advantage. Lord knows we need it with our two shit parties and the enormous debt the Baby Boomers have run up giving themselves entitlements.
I couldn't help making a sly (and perhaps too obtuse) comment on the rapacious American and his attitude the UK and the rest of the world. Your response, detailing which countries were important to the US, how and where you could gain an advantage, and the status of the UK as the 51st state simply enforces the stereotype.
The OP's comment hinted that US unilateralism doesn't work any more, and I agree; geopolitics isn't a zero sum game and countries have more gain by co-operation rather than competition.
Snowden's revelations have tested the patience of the rest of the world. Now might be good time for the US to wave the big stick a bit less, and to talk softly a bit more.
>The OP's comment hinted that US unilateralism doesn't work any more, and I agree;
I guess just like UK empire unilateralism quit working almost a century ago. The difference is our empire will still be somewhat relevant for the next hundred years and not just as a back drop for Sherlock Holmes movies.
"....The fact that you need a dozen carrier strike groups to keep your troops from being slaughtered abroad is what, a minor discrepancy ?" LOL! Don't be silly, the carrier groups are so the US can ensure their troops don't get slaughtered in ANY country the US decides to stick their nose in.
> our empire will still be somewhat relevant for the next hundred years
The British Empire had trade and political rivals throughout all of it's existence. By contrast, the fall of communism presented the US with a unique window of opportunity. As the only Superpower they had a chance to transform geopolitics.
Instead, America squandered it's political capital. The State was unable to relinquish it's cold war mindset, and simply refocused the industrial military apparatus on a convenient new target. While these tactics are increasingly irrelevant, Snowden's revelations show how embedded the mindset is in the US administration.
However, the brief period of US as a lone superpower is ending (partly as a result the greedy decisions of American property speculators). The economies of the world are increasingly intertwined and no longer dominated by one country.
Whatever the changes of the future holds, it is never a good idea to antagonise potential rivals or partners. The relevance of the 'American empire' over the next hundred years is very much dependant on how much the cold war cowboys have managed to damage US credibility.
As the old saying goes: 'Be careful who you step on the way up, because you may have to lean on them on the way down.'
Bit of a dodgy stat though isn't it. A bit like saying Tokyo's GDP is comparable to a third of the United States.
California & UK's debt's are quite comparable though....
Anyways, it's this kind of daft "mine is bigger than yours" nationalism that vindicates all this spying business.
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Yes I know my government sucks. Yes Brits are a jealous bunch and yes the 50 downvotes I will take from this article in the end won't help me get my gold star. Oh well I will still wave the flag because I lived in Europe for several years and quickly realized in the vast majority of countries there if you are not born there you will never be a true citizen. My empire has lots of flaws but it was the one I was born into (and we do integrate immigrants much better despite all the media focusing on tea party types and those Boston bomber idiots) and quite frankly North America is better than Europe in every way in my opinion except politically.
I see you're point, but I see the relationship between those of us in the usa and the rest of the world as a symbiotic relationship. We need you, you need us. One thing I can say with the utmost confidence is that our government is a bunch of douche bags. Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, independence, tea partiers, American Socialists, communists and anarchists. Pretty much anybody who has an appointed position or has been voted into office is a waste of skin.
While I cannot apologize for the love of my country any more than any of you can, I do apologize for the idiots 'we the people' put in office every 4 years.
A) Snowden outs programs at the NSA and other Western SigInt agencies
B) Obama expresses strong disapproval and the Justice Department throws an Espionage Act indictment at Snowden
C) Obama comes out and says "We want to arrest Snowden, but we aren't going to do anything extraordinary like scramble fighter jets to get him"
D) The Obama administration has 3 nations close their airspace to the Presidential party of another sovereign state on the SUSPICION that Snowden is with them and a 4th nation refuse to let said party leave until its been verified that Snowden is not actually present.
E) Obama intervenes personally to defeat an amendment to a military spending bill to prevent the defunding of NSA bulk gathering of American's phone records. First, it's extremely rare for any President to intervene to defeat an amendment to a bill in Congress. Second, this amendment does not affect any other NSA programs OTHER THAN BULK TELECOMMUNICATIONS GATHERING IN THE U.S. It doesn't affect "non-bulk" gathering of telecoms data on Americans who are specifically under investigation. It doesn't affect telecoms intercepts of any of the 6 billion people who live outside the U.S. It doesn't affect any internet traffic or email gathering programs anywhere in the world. The amendment in question just defunds any efforts to gather telecoms data on American residents without probable cause.
F) President Obama cancels a summit with Russia. Not because they are selling arms so that the Syrian government can bomb their own people. Not because Putin is oppressing any political, media and civic organizations that he doesn't control in Russia. Not because Putin has a pretty awful human rights record in Chechnya and the surrounding area. Snowden gets asylum in Russia, and all of a sudden it's time to call off the pow-wow in St. Petersburg.
G) So basically D, E and F make C) look like our "most transparent president ever" is burning a mountain of bullshit to generate a big fat smoke screen around the fact that getting Snowden has now leapt to the top of the U.S. strategic agenda, past Syria, human rights and a host of other issues that are out there.
And I am not a fan of Russia under Putin. I don't see a need to mobilize 100 army divisions to contain them, but I'm pretty certain that Russia under Putin is at best a "frenemy" to every nation in NATO or the EU. But are we going to let the granting of asylum to one guy drive our relationship with Russia?
B) Obama expresses strong disapproval and the Justice Department throws an Espionage Act indictment at Snowden
Snowden was right to out wrongs, but legally it is espionage.
C) Obama comes out and says "We want to arrest Snowden, but we aren't going to do anything extraordinary like scramble fighter jets to get him"
Very considered opinion. It would be a huge waste of time and money to potentially start a war by "scrambling fighter jets" to retrieve one man.
E) Obama intervenes personally to defeat an amendment to a military spending bill to prevent the defunding of NSA bulk gathering of American's phone records. First, it's extremely rare for any President to intervene to defeat an amendment to a bill in Congress. Second, this amendment does not affect any other NSA programs OTHER THAN BULK TELECOMMUNICATIONS GATHERING IN THE U.S. It doesn't affect "non-bulk" gathering of telecoms data on Americans who are specifically under investigation. It doesn't affect telecoms intercepts of any of the 6 billion people who live outside the U.S. It doesn't affect any internet traffic or email gathering programs anywhere in the world. The amendment in question just defunds any efforts to gather telecoms data on American residents without probable cause.
As much as I hate it, intelligence gathering is important to defend against those who wish to harm us. Obama is not to blame. Those who wish to harm us are.
F) President Obama cancels a summit with Russia. Not because they are selling arms so that the Syrian government can bomb their own people.
'Merica ain't the wrolds police force. Your lame argument could apply to the UK and any other country who is sitting back and watching other countries "selling arms so that the Syrian government can bomb their own people."
Your other points are null and void.
And I am not a fan of Russia under Putin. I don't see a need to mobilize 100 army divisions to contain them, but I'm pretty certain that Russia under Putin is at best a "frenemy" to every nation in NATO or the EU. But are we going to let the granting of asylum to one guy drive our relationship with Russia?"
This is just confilicted nonsense.
I guess my point was too subtle for you to grasp. I'm not saying that Snowden didn't violate the law. I am supporting the point that the Register made in the subtitle for this article. Obama derided Snowden as just another hacker, and then he went to all these extraordinary lengths to get Snowden or to stop the impact of Snowden's revelations. When was the last time the U.S. cancelled a summit with Moscow's leadership? In 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan probably? When was the last time you saw 3 countries close their territory to a diplomatic conveyance of the leader of another country? I don't know if I have ever heard of that, and I have a better memory for these kinds of things than most people.
Essentially the U.S. government has made shutting up or shutting away Edward Snowden one of it's top geopolitical imperatives. The level of uncomplaining cooperation that you see from various European governments (for example, the 4 governments who put a crimp in Evo Morales' travel plans or Britain slapping a D notice on the leaks) seems to indicate that this level of concern is at least largely shared in European government circles. Why this huge level of anxiety in official circles?
And nobody is saying that we don't need intelligence services or that there aren't bad guys out there that need to be surveilled. It's the surveillance of law-abiding citizens that is the problem.
On one hand the US govt. is asking Russia to hand over a 'criminal' under law enforcement co-operation treaties, treating Snowdon as if he's a bank robber who's done a runner.
On the other hand we have the President of the United States basing geo-political decisions on whether Russia co-operates in this matter.
So my question is. Is this a strategic mistake on the part of the President ? Has he not elevated Snowden to the 'political refugee' class ? - since he (POTUS) is clearly prepared to alter the trajectory of US diplomacy based on whether Snowdon is returned to the US ?
Obama plans to attend a Group of 20 meeting in early Sept that Putin is hosting in St Petersburg so what's the point of a Moscow meeting immediately after? Putin is showing more interest in playing Obama than negotiating on meaningful issues (Syria and Iran). PRwise, Obama can't win. If he goes to Moscow he's a tool and if he cancels (as he has), he's a drama queen. I just hope there's some good cartoons that come from this.
30 years ago, we welcomed defectors fleeing Soviet tyranny, persecuted for revealing the truth about their despotic regime, and cheered them on as they made their life-or-death dash across the Iron Curtain, desperately seeking freedom from an unjust and totalitarian state ruled by a dictator.
Now, in these margin times, a defector is fleeing American tyranny, persecuted for revealing the truth about his despotic regime, and we cheer him on as he makes his life-or-death dash across the Electronic Curtain, desperately seeking freedom from an unjust and totalitarian state ruled by a dictator!
How things have changed. How they remain the same...
If I could give you +10 for this post I would.
And from the article "One wonders quite how far the US is willing to go to get its hands on Snowden"
I wonder what would have happened if the pilot of the diplomatic plane that was denied access to airspace had continued on its pre-planned flight path. I wonder if the jets would have been scrambled then, and I wonder if the diplomat had had the nuts to put his life on the line, would they have shot them down?
I don't think so.
It is absurd to compare the modern USA with USSR, or to compare Snowden with Russian dissidents. People could not even leave the USSR on holiday, whereas every American citizen is free to travel the world. The supreme soviet was unelected, whereas the US citizens have full suffrage. The USA has to keep people out, not shoot people trying to escape like the USSR. Snowden is being pursued by a democratically elected government that wants to bring criminal charges and give him an open trial. The USSR could not give anyone a free trial because it didn't have an independent judiciary.
The Snowden issue is important, and I am undecided if he has done us a favour or not by revealing PRISM etc. But comparing him to dissidents like Solzhenitsyn is the sort of thing someone only does if they are looking for upvotes from the fruitcake fringe the Reg commentariat.
Just because laws between the USA and USSR may differ, doesn't mean the principles - or abilities - do. For example, you argue:
"People could not even leave the USSR on holiday, whereas every American citizen is free to travel the world."
IF they can afford it. Given the wealth distribution curve in the USA, I'd say, at guess, that at least 60% of the population can't afford to leave their home town, let alone travel to another country. So while the laws may imply freedom, the actual outcome, for the majority, is still the same.
"The supreme soviet was unelected, whereas the US citizens have full suffrage."
But giving people the choice between Democrats and Republicans, given that for the average American life stays pretty much the same regardless of who is in power - that is, subject to random search and seizure, indefinite detention without trial, no due process (don't tell me that the Obama Administration has given Snowden anything remotely approaching due process) - so again, the effect is much the same whether there was only one party or two. Western democracy has become a token gesture at best.
"The USA has to keep people out, not shoot people trying to escape like the USSR."
That one I'll give you - considering that you have an overcrowded, poverty-stricken third-world country ruled by brutal drug lords on your southern border. Anything's better than that. But that's the majority of people you have to "keep out"; I don't see too many other westerners trying to set up in America.
"Snowden is being pursued by a democratically elected government that wants to bring criminal charges and give him an open trial."
Ha! Well, for democratically elected government I refer you to my above answer on that subject. The Obama Administration has openly branded him a traitor. No trial, no due process, no "alleged", they've just come straight out and announced on the international stage that he's guilty. There's no chance he'll ever receive a fair trial now. If you believe for one second that if Snowden were to return to the USA he'd be found anything other than guilty on the spot, I'd be interested in selling you the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
To finish, I'd like to quote some excerpts from a letter sent from Snowden's father's lawyer to the Obama Administration:
"We are also appalled at your administration’s scorn for due process, the rule of law, fairness, and the presumption of innocence as regards Edward... Your decision to force down a civilian airliner carrying Bolivian President Eva Morales in hopes of kidnapping Edward also does not inspire confidence that you are committed to providing him a fair trial... Yet Speaker Boehner has denounced Edward as a "traitor"... Ms. Bachmann has pronounced that, "This was not the act of a patriot; this was an act of a traitor." And Ms. Feinstein has decreed that Edward was guilty of "treason,"..."
Yes, a fair and just trial under a democratic government indeed. You can read the letter in its entirety here.
Putin looks for reasons to poke Obama in the eye. He openly despises Obama. See their June meeting in Ireland. Snowden (folk hero or not) is just the latest opportunity. Obama worked well with Putin's 2008 successor, Dmitry Medvedev, but Putin seems to want the U.S. positioned as an enemy.
As a U.S. citizen I'd much prefer Obama spending his time dealing with the forthcoming threatened shutdown of the US government by the GOP. This summit flap will hopefully have no more gravity than Putin's cancellation of a meeting with Obama at Camp David in 2012.
Obama now is not only hated by the Repuglican Party, he is now also hated by the Demorats party.
It takes real political skill to accomplish that feat. From re-enacting the Patriot Act, condoning spying on US citizens by the NSA, and not legalizing marijuana. This fucktard of a president has succeeded in failing, almost as bad as Bush v2.0 . American voters quite frankly are the idiots of the planet and continue to vote in these corporate owned and sponsored puppets. Will they learn? No. I have no faith in my fellow man here in Amerika. No balls, no brains, no skill. FAILURES. To think I spent 20 years in the military protecting the Constitution of the U.S.A and now it's a worthless pile of shit.