You Will Anyway: Current Snowden Update

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Current Snowden Update

On 30th June 2013 WikiLeaks’ legal advisor in the Edward Snowden matter, Sarah Harrison, submitted by hand a number of requests for asylum and asylum assistance on behalf of Edward J. Snowden, the NSA whistleblower.

The requests were delivered to an official at the Russian consulate at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow late in the evening.

[...]

The requests were made to a number of countries including the Republic of Austria, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the Federative Republic of Brazil, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Republic of Finland, the French Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of India, the Italian Republic, the Republic of Ireland, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Republic of Nicaragua, the Kingdom of Norway, the Republic of Poland, the Russian Federation, the Kingdom of Spain, the Swiss Confederation and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The requests join or update others previously made including to the Republic of Ecuador and the Republic of Iceland.

Wikileaks

Poland's foreign minister said he would not recommend granting a request.

[...]

Venezuela said it had not yet received Snowden's request but President Nicolas Maduro said the whistleblower deserved the "world's protection".

India has rejected Snowden’s application for political asylum, stating they have “no reason” to accede to the request.

[...]

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo knows nothing of an asylum request from Edward Snowden, but has reiterated statements made by other states that an asylum application is only valid when made on Spanish soil.

[...]

Finnish asylum cannot be requested from abroad, according to Keijo Norvanto, Head of the Unit for Communications at Finland’s Foreign Ministry.

[...]

Snowden’s request for asylum was handed over to the Austrian embassy in Moscow on Monday, but it can only be submitted in Austria directly, APA news agency cites the country’s Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, as saying.

[...]

Edward Snowden gave up on his initial request to stay in Russia, after President Putin said his asylum bid was contingent on his cessation of “anti-American activity”, said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov. The whistleblower continues to remain in the transit zone of the Sheremetyevo airport and has never crossed the Russian border, Peskov continued.

[...]

Speaking to RT Spanish, Bolivian president Evo Morales has said that Edward Snowden has not requested political asylum from his country.

“If there were a request, of course we would be willing to debate and consider the idea,” said Morales.

The president further explained that Bolivia was prepared to “assist” the whistleblower.

[...]

US President Barack Obama said Washington and Moscow had held high level discussions regarding the issue of fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden, adding that he hoped Russia would help resolve the issue on the basis of international standards.

RT

International standards? Like the ones we use to spy on the world?

So that business with Morales and the request for asylum to Bolivia that the Wikileaks statement claims…I am assuming Morales made the comments before receiving the request. However, since the request was delivered to Russian officials, it is unclear whether it has even been delivered to all the countries named.

And then, if granted asylum in any of those countries, he will have to get there.

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.