We know all this because this is a message from those countries. It's big middle finger to the USA. They are saying: we know exactly where he is and what he is doing but we are not going to stop him - because fuck you. If you read the HK press release, this is so well stated actually "Snowden is going to russia and we are not going to do anything about it. BTW, what about you spying our embassy again?".
My step-father told me a great story about the Cuban Missile Crisis. While Washington and Moscow at each other's throats, he was on a US Navy warship turning away freighters carrying missiles bound for Cuba. As his boat got close to the Russian ships, the crews on either side would wave at each other and take pictures. Regular ol' people to be friendly no matter their background and are not representative of how their governments operate! Please remember the difference between us Americans and the policy makers who represent us :)
Of course I do :) I've been living in the US for 4 years now. Some of my best friends are American. Regular people are just regular people, just like me and you and most [1] people reading this.
[1] Thanks to Snowden, I can confidently write most and not maybe
Seymour Hersh is still writing for the New Yorker, Woodward writes extensively on US politics, Michael Moore is still making movies, and Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg can still discuss US foreign policy over a kitchen table.
Do you honestly think they're all the same? We're discussing a scandal about the NSA being exposed as doing something I for one have always assumed they were doing as a matter of course (indeed, I assumed they did worse and believe they probably do). Mostly I hoped the NSA was more competent.
Maybe not China, but the thought that the US is somehow "free-er" than the rest of the world (yes, including Russia) is false. People in Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, UK, Japan are probably as free as people in the US, if not more.
Free-er is not the only metric I care about, but in fact in terms of individual liberties the US is hard to beat. Can you buy assault rifles in any of those countries? Do you elect judges and vote on how national parks control predator populations? It's "free" and democratic in ways that seem pathological. (The fact that the exercise of some of these liberties is a disaster for the majority who would happily surrender them is another story entirely.)
Can you buy non-pastorised cheese in the USA? What about imported Salame from Italy? Can you kiss a girl of your age if you are 16? Can you drink at 20?
No, No, No, No. If your measure of "freedom" is being able to buy assault rifles, your measure of individual liberty is very biased (and silly).
There are plenty of weird laws in the US, mainly at state level, but overall the US is free and democratic in ways most other countries (with any real central government) are not. Most of your examples (cheese, kissing girls) are bogus. The ban on cured Italian meats is typical non-tariff agricultural trade BS and Europe is more guilty of that than the US (Australia and New Zealand can point fingers though, and also have liberal drug policies, etc.)
But the US wins big on freedom of speech. Almost no other country protects free speech as well as the US does (flawed as it is) and that's not a stupid measure.
His examples are not bogus. These are real restrictions that limit "freedoms". What about the absurd drinking age? I can count tens if not hundreds of laws that show you how "un-free" people are. What's worse is that adults have actually spent time making them "illegal". It's funny, you think your free but you're always free within the limits. In the US, you are always free to choose between X and Y. Never Z!
I don't necessarily agree with you that an American more freedom of speech than say, a British person. But assuming it is, well, US: 1 (freedom of speech), Europe: 10 (for all the other nonsense illegalities in the US).
P.S: It is quite ironic you are saying the US wins big on freedom of speech in a thread on this article. Not saying that a European state wouldn't do the same to a whistleblower (many wouldn't though; especially Scandinavian countries), but even if they would, the governments didn't put themselves in that situation in the first place.
I would categorically disagree with that. Look at freedom of speech as one example. Talk to the authors in Canada who have been stifled because their speech didn't conform to the gov't multicultural agenda.
Is the US the most free country in the world by every measure? Of course not. Overall is it one of the most free or the most free? I would say yes.
