Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

This must mean just one thing: Edward Snowden is not a criminal.

In .de there's support for granting him political asylum, even among politicians, although they're too afraid of the inevitable freakout from across the atlantic. I guess they'd rather have their phones tapped than to grow a spine for once.

I view Mr. Snowden as a hero.

The NSA has been pressuring EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance, according to Snowden. This is done through NSA's Foreign Affairs Division (FAD), he said, adding that lawyers from the NSA and GCHQ work very hard "to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers," he said.

“I work on assumption that 6+ countries tap my phone,” Tom Fletcher, the U.K. ambassador to Lebanon, said on a Twitter Inc. posting today. “Increasingly rare that diplomats say anything sensitive on calls.”

Denis MacShane, who was the U.K.’s Europe minister in former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour government, said he was warned to expect that his mobile phone calls would be listened to while he was in France.

“In Paris, it was generally assumed that they wanted to know everything we were saying and thinking,” MacShane said in a telephone interview. “I sometimes made a point of saying things on the phone that I wanted my opposite number to hear, U.K. government positions and so on.”

“Whether they want to acknowledge that publicly or not -- and every country has different capabilities -- but at the end of the day if you are a U.S. government official traveling abroad, you are aware that anything you have on your cell phone, on your iPad, can be monitored by foreign intelligence agencies including that of your own allies."

Just look what happened yo you down in the South.  when you got tired of being treated as you were and wanted out the club...

NSA created 'European bazaar' to spy on EU citizens, Snowden tells European Parliament

Quote

The NSA has been pressuring EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance, according to Snowden. This is done through NSA's Foreign Affairs Division (FAD), he said, adding that lawyers from the NSA and GCHQ work very hard "to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers," he said.

I have a nagging suspicion that the BND knew about all this all along ...

Quote from: Macallan on 2014-03-12, 08:58:19

I have a nagging suspicion that the BND knew about all this all along ...

Of course they did. What do you think they are for? To count sheep?

And it came to Merkel's knowledge by reading our media
That was one of her funniest statement.

BTW, didn't she ask Obama to join the five ears?
Thankfully he said NEIN.

And what did the South get when forced back into the club? Carpetbaggers of the worst kind.

Had the South won the war, how would it differ today? Some think that the outcome would have yielded as many as five separate countries. How would those countries have responded to Hitler? Japan? Would Japan even have attacked Hawaii?

I seem to recall that a certain someone found such grand American traditions as the Bellamy salute, the oath of allegiance, and segregation hella inspiring. 

I seem to recall that a certain someone found such grand American traditions as the Bellamy salute, the oath of allegiance, and segregation hella inspiring. 

Belgian lawmakers vote on euthanasia for kids
Belgium's second house of parliament is set to decide on legalizing active medically assisted suicide for children. The planned expansion of the euthanasia law for adults has been hotly debated for months.

It does look overly nationalistic. Is it the case that the stars and stripes are in every classroom? If so with respect it does I'm afraid look a bit over the top.

"The bills require public schools to display a United States flag in each classroom or other site in which students say the Pledge of Allegiance. Starting next school year, an opportunity to recite the pledge must be provided to students each school day."

"Students could not be forced to say the pledge against their will."

My guess is that the pressure applied by other students would make that difficult.

I don't remember if flags were present in the schools I attended, but I suspect that they weren't.  WWII might have affected that later.

They weren't in classrooms when I taught, nor are they now. A flag is displayed outside each school.