One of the unforeseen (though entirely foreseeable) consequences of the Bradley Manning show trial is that Americans who want to leak government secrets now know that they will need to become refugees, to escape persecution by fanatical government authorities. But it has always been the case that refugees need to trade something of value for a comfortable safe haven.
In this case, Snowden gives the impression of having had the foresight to gather up some useful intel to trade for safe passage with states such as China and Russia. Maybe they would see the "human rights" issues without any incentive, but better to be safe than sorry.
The US government is thus being hoisted on their own petard! To be fair, America is relatively new to totalitarian government, they haven't mastered all the tricks.
And I'll say it again, America's biggest problem is its overwhelming military supremacy, which has allowed it to promote imbeciles to most of the high (and not so high) offices in the land. Who else but imbeciles would have thought that spying on the population of the entire world was a necessary, still less practical, tactic in the "war on terror" (itself an imbecile conception, but when all you have is a gargantuan military, every problem looks like a "war" that need to be fought by that army.)
Ah, the problems of empire.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
On 23/06/2013, at 7:50 PM, "JOANNA A." <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> On his way to Russia, and then perhaps somewhere else...
>
> j.
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