It is now confirmed that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia and has left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International airport. The United States continues to threaten any country that grants Snowden asylum and has been successful in pressuring U.S. media never to refer to him as a whistleblower. While MSNBC hosts mock Snowden and express disbelief why he doesn’t just trust that Obama will give him a fair trial, there is little reason for Snowden to trust those assurances when a president is claiming the right to kill citizens without trial, send some people to military tribunals, and routinely uses classification laws to force the dismissal of public interest lawsuits. What’s not to trust?
Polls show roughly half of Russian citizens support Snowden and support asylum.
For Snowden, he may not see a good option. They just finishing the Manning trial where they pursued an abusive “aiding the enemy” charge without a foundation of evidence to support such a charge. He is looking at life in prison even after being acquitted on the charge. In the meantime, on America’s Animal Farm, only members of the ruling elite are allowed to steal and destroy classified evidence without going to jail.
Snowden would face classification laws limiting his defense and laws written to require little showing for conviction. The Administration is infamous for count stacking where they pile on dozens and even hundreds of counts to guarantee life in prison.
Snowden has embarrassed powerful leaders in the United States and showed that they have been lying to the public. This includes not only Obama but top Democrats. They want Snowden punished for their sins.
In such an environment, Russia may look pretty darn good to Snowden.
Source: ABC News
Lost a posting in response to AY, can anyone dig it out of the moderation filter?????
“The Purge”
“American Drone”
Son of a gun! Another posting, in response to AY, lost in moderation.
anonymously posted at 1:41 pm: “Russia’s Top Social Network Under Fire
Excerpt:
Russia’s leading social network isn’t just a place where friends connect, make plans, and share experiences. It’s also one of the main platforms the opposition has used to organize its activities across the country’s far-flung regions.
The State Telecom Regulator said VKontakte was placed on the blacklist, which is designed to root out sites that illegally promote child pornography, “by accident” and the that site was soon back online.”
*************
That no longer works in the main in America, we’ve heard the ‘for the children’ justification for so long and watched it abused so often that it engenders nothing so much as a gag reflex whenever it comes up.
We seem to be using copyright claims to do our dirty work now. With the multinational agreements regarding copyright we can put dotcom business owners overseas out of business if we don’t like what they are doing and that is a reciprocal activity. It works for monied interests and governments.
I liked the early interwebs better, it was like a good drug; it could change…your…mind. I see that coming to an end though. It’s going to end up like cable TV. Bah, humbug!
I suspect that whoever was running the show to get Mr. Snowden back into the US had zero experience in dealing with fugitives. Why, because everything the US did was the worst thing they could have done and guaranteed Mr. Snowden would go to the Russians. He is better off there at this stage.
The US Gov’t would have gotten him if they made it worthwhile for him to return but the could not see past their petty anger and revenge.
Blouise 12:30 pm: “ap, Regarding your link … VK … our government has put our internet service companies in real trouble. Europeans are not going to want to use gmail, hotmail, etc due to privacy concerns and these companies are required by U S law to gather the info. ”
————–
That’s true. I don’t think the government cares. Isolating people within countries through might be very desirable depending on what the country you’re in had in mind.
I said in a posting on a different thread that the world was being carved up into domains, the European Union was one, the data sharing English speaking countries were another. It might be to the advantage of the governments controlling those spheres of influence/authority if their citizens didn’t talk or plan or aggregate information across those boundaries.
Elaine,
I can’t imagine that our friends at the CIA would lie to congress??
nick,
didn’t Tom Hanks do a movie about this a few years ago?? 🙂
Bureau investigation finds fresh evidence of CIA drone strikes on rescuers
August 1st, 2013
by Chris Woods
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2013/08/01/bureau-investigation-finds-fresh-evidence-of-cia-drone-strikes-on-rescuers/
Additional reporting by Mushtaq Yusufzai
Excerpt:
A field investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in Pakistan’s tribal areas appears to confirm that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) last year briefly revived the controversial tactic of deliberately targeting rescuers at the scene of a previous drone strike. The tactic has previously been labelled a possible war crime by two UN investigators.
The Bureau’s new study focused mainly on strikes around a single village in North Waziristan – attacks that were aimed at one of al Qaeda’s few remaining senior figures, Yahya al-Libi. He was finally killed by a CIA drone strike on June 4 2012.
Congressional aides have previously been reported as describing to the Los Angeles Times reviewing a CIA video showing Yahya al-Libi alone being killed. But the Bureau’s field research appears to confirm what others reported at the time – that al-Libi’s death was part of a sequence of strikes on the same location that killed up to 16 people.
If correct, that would indicate that Congressional aides were not shown crucial additional video material.
Finally Snowden can shower. You know the man must really be hummin’!
Sorry about the duplication, above. Luke Harding’s experiences with the FSB are interesting, as are his insights on Putin, Snowden…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/edward-snowden-gift-vladimir-putin
“On the face of it Snowden’s situation appears rosy, though as his lawyer admitted on Thursday that Snowden missed his girlfriend. Over time his position may seem less alluring. Russia’s spy agencies will keep a close and unfaltering watch over their new guest, not just now but in the years and decades to come.”
http://youtu.be/3WGSxhIFzgk
(Similar tactics employed in the U.S….)
Jeffrey Toobin is a hack. He came to be known during the OJ trial and just won’t leave, like a party guest still talking away 2am.
From the link that I posted at 2:08:
In theory Snowden has been allowed to stay for one year. In reality he is learning Russian and ploughing his way through Doystoyevsky. Snowden’s stay in Russia could be indefinite.
Among other things, the Snowden story has exposed the impotence of twenty-first century US power. With no US-Russia extradition treaty there is little the White House can do to winkle Snowden out. It can, of course, express displeasure. Obama is likely to cancel a trip in September to Saint Petersburg for Russia’s forthcoming G20 summit.
The irony, as Senator John McCain was quick to point out, is that Moscow’s record on human rights and freedom of speech is far worse than Washington’s. While Snowden was stuck at the airport, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny got five years in jail. (Navalny was promptly bailed following his provincial show trial, apparently amid Kremlin in-fighting.)
Since returning for a third time as president, Putin has moved to crush mass protests against his rule. They began in late 2011-2012. He has introduced a series of repressive new laws against human rights organisations, selectively arrested leading critics, and jailed the feminist punk combo Pussy Riot.
Russia’s treatment of its own whistle-blowers, meanwhile, is grim and awful. (Think Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in Moscow in 2006, or Natalia Estemirova, kidnapped in Chechnya’s capital Grozny in 2009 and murdered.) Last month (July 11) Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who exposed massive interior ministry fraud, was himself convicted of crimes. Magnitsky was an unusual defendant: he was already dead.
Luke has plenty of experience of the intricacies of being allowed, or not being allowed, into Russia. It’s worth reading his full piece, which will be published shortly.
From the link that I posted at 2:08:
In theory Snowden has been allowed to stay for one year. In reality he is learning Russian and ploughing his way through Doystoyevsky. Snowden’s stay in Russia could be indefinite.
Among other things, the Snowden story has exposed the impotence of twenty-first century US power. With no US-Russia extradition treaty there is little the White House can do to winkle Snowden out. It can, of course, express displeasure. Obama is likely to cancel a trip in September to Saint Petersburg for Russia’s forthcoming G20 summit.
The irony, as Senator John McCain was quick to point out, is that Moscow’s record on human rights and freedom of speech is far worse than Washington’s. While Snowden was stuck at the airport, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny got five years in jail. (Navalny was promptly bailed following his provincial show trial, apparently amid Kremlin in-fighting.)
Since returning for a third time as president, Putin has moved to crush mass protests against his rule. They began in late 2011-2012. He has introduced a series of repressive new laws against human rights organisations, selectively arrested leading critics, and jailed the feminist punk combo Pussy Riot.
Russia’s treatment of its own whistle-blowers, meanwhile, is grim and awful. (Think Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in Moscow in 2006, or Natalia Estemirova, kidnapped in Chechnya’s capital Grozny in 2009 and murdered.) Last month (July 11) Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who exposed massive interior ministry fraud, was himself convicted of crimes. Magnitsky was an unusual defendant: he was already dead.
Luke has plenty of experience of the intricacies of being allowed, or not being allowed, into Russia. It’s worth reading his full piece, which will be published shortly.
Harding’s “full piece”:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/edward-snowden-gift-vladimir-putin
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/edward-snowden-leaves-moscow-airport-live
Greenwald And NYT’s James Risen Completely Deflate Jeffrey Toobin’s Tortured Logic On NSA, Snowden
Yes. Show us your papers Obama. No, not your birthin papers, the Sealed Affidavit attached to the one hundred word “Complaint” of spying filed against Snowden in the federal court in Virginia. Why is the media not demanding to know the allegations against Snowden? Just tell us who the enemy is that he revealed things to.
BarkinDog: You might be thinking of the time that President Kennedy was in Berlin and said in Deutsch that he was a donut. When the Wall was up and the Stasi was on both sides of the Wall spying on everyone, we knew we had a threat. Now, your house could fall down, your baby could drown, and not one of them Krackers would care. So ask yourselves Amerika, who is the enemy named in the Sealed Affidavit which is attached to the Complaint against Snowden in the Federal District Court in Virginia? Is it Germany? Snowden told the Germans that we spied on them. Those Germans are gonna need a new Wall around the entire country and might have to shut down their internet.
One of my last comments is apparently lost “in moderation.” If someone could please release it?