NSA leaker Edward Snowden's effort to evade prosecution in the U.S. took a turn toward Latin America Friday after the Presidents of Venezuela and Nicaragua announced they were prepared to grant NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden asylum.
Although there were no concrete details from Presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua or Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, it is believed that they are the first offers of asylum that Snowden has received since he requested asylum in several countries, including Nicaragua and Venezuela.
"As head of state, the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young American Edward Snowden so that he can live (without) ... persecution from the empire," President Maduro said, referring to the United States. He made the offer during a speech marking the anniversary of Venezuela's independence. It was not immediately clear if there were any conditions to Venezuela's offer.
In Nicaragua, Ortega said he was willing to make the same offer "if circumstances allow it." Ortega didn't say what the right circumstances would be when he spoke during a speech in Managua.
It does not seem to be a certainty that Snowden will end up in either of these countries but they are the first ones that seem ready to put out the welcome mat for him.
Of course this comes on the heels of new questions about his motives and his past statements, such as this gem:
User: the restrictions were made to appease the conservatives to get another bill passed. fucking cons.
SNOWDEN: See, that’s why I’m goddamned glad for the second amendment. Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished.
Oh yeah, THAT is the kind of mentality we want looking through our emails!
There are also questions about how somebody with such a questionable past made it through the federal government's background check system.
If that were not troubling enough it appears that perhaps everybody's favorite Russian spy might not be entirely serious about wanting to bed and wed him.
This from Business Insider:
Was Chapman serious? It does seem possible that a marriage to a Russian citizen could help Snowden, who recently lost his U.S. citizenship and is stuck in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, gain access to Russia or a third-party country.
According to RFE/RL, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was forced to admit to reporters that he had no idea if the offer was serious or not. When asked via email if she was serious in her proposal by the Wall Street Journal, Chapman replied simply “you are welcome to use your imagination.”
Somehow this seems less like "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" and more like "The Geek Who Got Caught Between a Rock and a Harder Rock."
Well one thing we know for certain is that this foreign intrigue style soap opera is far from over.
He was gung-ho for it when Bush was president. Which brings up an interesting point: his opinion of such programs abruptly changed when Barack Obama took office. In the chat room, which Ars Technica calls “Officially unofficial” – the online equivalent to “the back room occupied by drinkers who feel the front (of the bar) is just too stuffy for them,” Snowden felt free to speak his mind even if everyone in the room would disagree with him. And he could be ugly about it.
ReplyDeleteSnowden revealed that he was a Ron Paul supporter and championed a return to the gold standard along with short selling stocks. Social issues also reveal a Libertarian bent when it came to personal freedoms. He also bought into Obama conspiracy theories such as the one that said Obama was going to devalue U.S. currency, leading to higher unemployment, something he saw as a “correction” and “a necessary part of capitalism.”
His disdain of President Obama and his policies was apparent and he bitched about them with “increasing frequency.” But there are two issues where, I believe, where Snowden’s true colors shine very clearly. This is one:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/07/06/have-we-all-been-fooled-by-edward-snowden/
Snowy's disdain of Obama;
Deletehow do you know of this?
Snowden is a piece of scum and should be brought back to the USA, put on trial and executed. He deserves nothing less and nothing more!
DeleteSnowy piece of scum?
DeleteHow about banksters costing us billions<?
How about the Cheney's costing us more billions?
Those patriots still walk freely among us.
Snowy story is more involved than a simple Palyn story.
In 2010, while working for a National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden learned to be a hacker.
ReplyDeletee took a course that trains security professionals to think like hackers and understand their techniques, all with the intent of turning out “certified ethical hackers” who can better defend their employers’ networks.
But the certification, listed on a résumé that Mr. Snowden later prepared, would also have given him some of the skills he needed to rummage undetected through N.S.A. computer systems and gather the highly classified surveillance documents that he leaked last month, security experts say.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/us/resume-shows-snowden-honed-hacking-skills.html?_r=2&
2010, huh? Interesting.
DeleteI'm telling you -- it's no coincidence that this dude released this stuff now, during what is supposed to be "the summer of scandal." Someone helped him get that job. Someone is behind this!
ReplyDeletemaybe the same people who exposed Mr CIA himself....Petraeus
DeleteMetadata helped reveal Gen. Petraeus' affair with Charlotte woman
www.charlotteobserver.com/.../metadata-helped-reveal-gen-petraeus.htm...
Jun 17, 2013 - The general's mistress thought she was being clever by using anonymous e-mail accounts and sending messages using hotel WiFi networks.
David Petraeus to Teach Seminar for $150000 at 3 Hours a Week
ABC News - by Susanna Kim - 4 days ago
Republican legislator: CUNY must answer questions about Petraeus salary
Daily Caller - by Robby Soave - 2 days ago
David Petraeus' CUNY Class For Which He Gets $150,000 Will Meet ...
abcnews.go.com › Money
by Susanna Kim - in 165 Google+ circles
4 days ago - Former CIA director David Petraeus is receiving $150000 to teach a three-hour class at the City University of New York's Macaulay Honors ...
Jill Kelley sues feds over David Petraeus sex scandal - latimes.com
www.latimes.com/.../la-na-nn-david-petraeus-jill-kelley-20130604,0,364...
Jun 4, 2013 - Jill Kelley, who triggered the investigation that exposed CIA Director David Petraeus¿s extramarital affair and forced his resignation, is suing ...
As long as there are investigating journalists, sadly not anymore here in the US, there is still some hope.
DeleteSnowden's Fate Unclear Despite Asylum Offers
ReplyDeleteEdward Snowden has found supporters in Latin America, including Venezuela and Nicaragua, who have offered him asylum. But many obstacles stand in the way of the fugitive NSA leaker from leaving a Russian airport — chief among them the power and influence of the United States.
Because Snowden's U.S. passport has been revoked, the logistics of him departing are complicated. Despite making the asylum offer Friday, Venezuela and Nicaragua haven't indicated they would help Snowden by issuing a travel document, which he would need to leave Russia.
The former NSA systems analyst, who is charged with violating U.S. espionage laws, is believed to be stuck in the transit area of Moscow's main international airport after arriving June 23 from Hong Kong.
Russia doesn't appear willing to help him leave the airport, with Kremlin spokesman Alexei Pavlov saying Saturday the issue of Snowden's travel documents is "not our business." On Monday, President Vladimir Putin said Snowden would be offered asylum in Russia if he stopped leaking U.S. secrets. Snowden then withdrew his Russian asylum bid, a Russian official said.
While President Barack Obama has publicly displayed a relaxed attitude toward Snowden's movements, saying last month that he wouldn't be "scrambling jets" to capture him, other senior U.S. officials have used unusually harsh language that they want him back.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said China had "unquestionably" damaged its relationship with Washington for not returning Snowden, who recently turned 30, from semi-autonomous Hong Kong while he was still there.
"The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust," Carney said last month. "We think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem."
China may be reluctant to further complicate its relationship with the U.S. by allowing Snowden back in Hong Kong, even if only as a transfer point to Latin America.
Snowden has asked for asylum in more than 20 countries and many have turned him down. WikiLeaks, which has been helping Snowden, said Friday he had submitted asylum applications to six new countries, which the secret-spilling website declined to identify "due to attempted U.S. interference."
The asylum offers from Venezuela and Nicaragua came one day after leftist South American leaders gathered to denounce the rerouting of Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane over Europe amid reports that the fugitive American was aboard.
Spain says it had been warned along with other European countries that Snowden was aboard the Bolivian presidential plane, an acknowledgment the manhunt for the fugitive leaker had something to do with the plane's unexpected diversion to Austria. It is unclear whether Washington warned Madrid about the Bolivian president's plane.
U.S. officials declined to comment on the grounding of the plane. They said they won't give details about their conversations with European countries, except to say that they have stated Washington's general position that it wants Snowden back.
Snowden, who on Saturday afternoon wasn't on an Interpol list of people for whom international arrest warrants have been issued, had booked a seat on a Havana-bound flight on June 24, but never made it.
Direct Havana flights, operated by Aeroflot from Moscow's main airport five times a week, are the easiest option of reaching Latin America from Moscow. But the Moscow-Havana's travel path passes over mainland U.S., raising the chances of it being grounded. There are other routes, but there is no assurance he'd have free passage.
http://www.businessinsider.com/snowdens-fate-unclear-despite-asylum-offers-2013-7
If Anna Chapman gets a chin implant .. then she will be beautiful like Bristol.
ReplyDeleteAnd if she visits Sarah's closet, she will have gigantic boobs also, too, to match the new chin.
DeleteThe corporate press incl, NYT was able to sway the sheeple again.
ReplyDeleteRemember same helped US into Iraq!
BREAKING NEWS!
ReplyDeleteAsiana Airlines Boeing 777 Crashes While Landing at San Francisco Airport, F.A.A. Says
A Boeing 777 operated by the Korean airline Asiana crashed Saturday afternoon while landing at San Francisco International Airport, the Federal Aviation Authority said.
Images and video posted by eyewitnesses to the crash showed the plane, apparently on fire, billowing smoke.
It was not clear, in the immediate aftermath of the crash, how many people were on board and whether anyone had been killed or injured. The F.A.A. said it could not immediately provide further details.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/san-francisco-plane-crash.html?emc=edit_na_20130706&_r=0
Plane crash at #SFO. View from my house. This looks bad!
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew
I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm ok. Surreal...
ReplyDeletehttp://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/plane-crashes-while-landing-at-san-francisco-airport
Isn't Venezuela the place that took in the Nazis after WWII? Seems there is a thriving community of Germans there. Good place for Snowden. What a jerk and traitor!
ReplyDeleteThat would be foremost the US.
DeleteRemember Wernher von Braun?
There were many others.
It's not an accident:
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/110980345342028402481/posts/5ddL9svwcQF
"Edward Snowden should seek asylum in the only place on the planet that is completely beyond reach of U.S. law enforcement. (Via another social network starting with F.)"
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/the-british-are-coming-and-theyve-brought-newspapers/277486/
"Of the three English-language newspaper websites with the highest readerships, two are British.
The number one spot has been occupied since last January by the Mail Online, an industrial-sized feedbag of celebrity titillation and gossip, with a ComScore rating of 50.2 million monthly unique visitors worldwide for May. Currently in at number two is The New York Times, with 46.2 million. Snapping at its heels is The Guardian: it had 40.9 million last month.
That was before Edward Snowden arrived on the scene. Figures given exclusively to The Atlantic show that -- according to internal analytics -- June 10, the day after Snowden revealed his identity on The Guardian's website, was the biggest traffic day in their history, with an astonishing 6.97 million unique browsers. Within a week of publishing the NSA files, The Guardian website has seen a 41 percent increase in U.S. desktop unique visitors (IP addresses loading the desktop site) and a 66 percent rise in mobile traffic. On June 10, for the first time in the paper's history, their U.S. traffic was higher than their UK traffic.....
Greenwald had been working for The Guardian for less than a year, coming from Salon.com in August 2012, but he was already a well-known figure; a trained lawyer, a strident campaigner against the Patriot Act, and an award-winning journalist and author with three books in The New York Times bestseller list. The pedigree, however, does not appear to have impressed The New York Times, which in its coverage of the leak uncharitably referred to The Guardian as a "British news-site" and Greenwald as a "blogger" .
In their own way, these labels are fair enough; The Guardian doesn't put out a U.S. print edition, and Greenwald first made his name on his independent blog Unclaimed Territory.But the subtext there was the struggle of the New York Times to encapsulate the hybrid beast that the Guardian has created - which almost certainly helped it scoop the New York Times and other papers -- including The Washington Post -- on the PRISM leak."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdPpdu8OGDQ
ReplyDeleteIn 2009, PBS aired a show called The Spy Factory (entire show at link above). It told all about NSA spying on Americans. It's hasn't been a secret to those who have been paying attention.
And that would be most people who weren't paying attention, but now that it's in the open, giving up our 4th Amendment rights seems idiotic. Especially when we waste money on this, yet can't stop the Boston plot. But we're going to have to have cuts for the elderly and disabled on Social Security because we can't raise taxes on billionaires.....
DeleteFrom that article above on the Patreaus affair:
"Cellphone data helped Italian authorities identify CIA agents who abducted an Egyptian cleric suspected of terrorist involvement in Milan in 2003. The investigators pulled the records and identified the agents by their aliases, where they had stayed and whom they had called — including each other. Similarly, in 2011, Hezbollah identified a half-dozen CIA informants through analysis of their cellphone records and calling patterns."
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06/17/4111871/metadata-helped-reveal-gen-petraeus.html#storylink=cpy
Apparently the govmt. of Brasil wasn't aware of US spying.
DeleteRead the Guardian article by Glenn Greenwald.
A lot of people claiming ignorance which they weren't. The PBS story even shows Congress having hearings on it.
DeleteThese people who claim ignorance are probably shock to find out now that tobacco can be harmful to your health too.
The NYT helped us to get into Iraq1
ReplyDeleteNuff said.
On September 2001 something astonishing happened. Over 3000 of our people died.
ReplyDeleteA group called al qhaida, the source. spring or quelle, claimed responsibility.
It was quickly revealed, that the leader of this group, Osama bin Laden, has been supported by our very own CIA. That very same CIA did a stellar job in Afghanistan, supporting a local group, the Northern Alliance, pushing the Taliban/Al Quhida out of Northern Afghanistan.
But now the military industrial complex (Donald the Rumsfelder) took over, generating a complete mess.
And now, Billions of bucks later, that same industrial military complex is spying on us.
Most basic summary!
DeleteA complete and basic run down of our sorry history in this regard!
ReplyDeleteYes,your tax dollar at work
ReplyDeleteSo, what can we do? Voting? Seems that both parties are addicted to the military industrial complex.
DeleteGreenwald Lashes Out on Twitter
ReplyDeletehttp://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42233_Greenwald_Lashes_Out_on_Twitter_at_Adam_Serwers_Dad
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