It's pretty hilarious situation after France denied fly-zone to the Bolivian Presidential aircraft this summer when they "feared" that Snowden might be inside...
Voltaire said something like:
"God, please protect me from my friends. I take care of my enemies."
Yes, cry me a river. Supposedly "allied" governments have no qualms spying on each other, or engaging in "economic intelligence" for the military-industrial lobby. Would the French DGSE (or other western intelligence agencies) engage in large-scale surveillance of their own citizens, let alone foreigners, if they believed they could get away with it? You bet.
In an interview of Larry Ellison Charlie Rose this past summer, Larry described the French blatantly going through all his electronics when he traveled over there.
Disappointingly and not surprisingly he didn't have a problem with the allegations against the NSA.
Something to consider is that points of interest differ within governments. For example, fugitive Marc Rich was believed to have been aided by the US State Department even as the DOJ continuously attempted to kidnap him. In other countries you even end up with military coups when one group really is unhappy with another. On the other hand, there is a lot of noise making in countries with representative elections, which means little.
Edit: I would not be surprised if we start seeing criminal indictments against executives of US internet companies in some countries.
it's actually serious, one of the guys got published in the Canard Enchaîné and for example revealed some FBI files on US citizens 8 years before the Washington Post did.
It's understandable, and it's something that Reflets.info editors acknoledge: use of memes (lolcats for instance) does not look "pro", and there are opinion and rant posts along with very profound and detailed in-depth investigation articles.
Same hypocrisy in Germany with Merkel preemptively and officially refusing Snowden any potential request for asylum, a few months back.
All this makes it so terribly obvious that Europe literally is not entitled to and can not have or grow a pair of balls anymore. Europe's role is pretty much reduced to hosting the military bases and NSA spying facilities of the US.
Don't count Germany out. Merkel has preserved German strength at the cost of South Europe's pain. The Euro is managed to protect Northern economies, not mitigate the Southern pains. "Bailouts" and rescue plans are heavily biased towards preserving the North's separation from the fallout. All of this strengthens Germany and the northern countries at the expense of the EU as a whole.
As the worldwide balance of power continues to shift over the next decade or two, I believe Merkel's Germany is poised to be extremely relevant, even if it is so at the cost of the cohesion of the EU.
It also reaffirms to me why the UK seems to have very little interest joining the party like their neighbors. Why compete for first fiddle against a self-serving Merkel?
It'll be interesting times but I don't think it's as simple as Europe being relegated to America's extended states.
I counted Germany out the moment the boundless informant information revealed the number of NSA intercepts in Germany was on the order of the number in China (despite the massive population difference and presumable difference in the number of linguists NSA employees for each country).
One of the few plausible explanations for this is that the NSA was doing this surveillance minimally with the cooperation of the German government and likely at the behest of the BND/German government.
With probably no place in Germany that's more than 250km away from an US/UK military base, and the "extraordinary rendition" program in mind, I'd also refuse asylum in Germany to someone who wants to flee the US.
Especially in a high profile case like Snowden's.
I guess a plane ticket to a non-NATO country through back channels might be better help for people seeking protection from the US than granting refugee status.
> With probably no place in Germany that's more than 250km away from an US/UK military base, and the "extraordinary rendition" program in mind
To which several European governments, mostly the UK, but also Italy, happily cooperated. The other ones have been lucky enough not to be caught red-handed but I have little doubt that they knew perfectly what was going on (at best) or were actively providing support.
It also happened on German soil (Ramstein Air Base is said to be involved) and to at least one German citizen (but not with Germany as a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri) - even if the German government wasn't actively involved, at least it wasn't able or willing to prevent that from happening here.
Preventing the issue on formal grounds was probably the easiest way to avoid having to protect someone in Germany from the USA - which is obviously futile.
As far as I remember they said that Germany can't consider asylum request from Snowden if he isn't on German soil, according to the law, and if he gets there and files an asylum request they'll consider it.
I don't remember Merkel, or anyone else, saying that they won't even accept asylum request or that they'll refuse the request if it's made according to the law.
Voltaire said something like: "God, please protect me from my friends. I take care of my enemies."