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Bolivian President's Plane 'Rerouted Over Snowden Suspicions'
niftydude writes with the latest news on the Edward Snowden saga. It appears that the Bolivian President's plane was denied access to French and Spanish airspace due to suspicions that Snowden was on board. Quoting a few pieces from the Guardian: "In an extraordinary move, France and Portugal revoked flight clearances for the Bolivian President's plane on Tuesday after representations were reportedly made by the U.S. State Department. Mr Morales was flying home from an energy conference in Moscow and his aircraft was hastily rerouted to Vienna, Austria. Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca angrily denied that Mr Snowden was on the President's aircraft, a fact later confirmed by Austrian authorities, and said France and Portugal would have to explain why they abruptly canceled authorization for the flight. AP reports that Venezuela's foreign minister Elias Jaua has condemned the decision by France and Portugal to block the plane from its airspace. He claimed that changing a flight's route without checking on how much fuel was left in the plane, put Morales' life at risk."
Spain claims they only agreed to allow the plane to refuel there if it were subject to search, and France did end up authorizing use of their air space today. In related news, Julian Assange and the general secretary of Reporters Without Borders Christophe Deloire published an Op-Ed today why Europe must protect Snowden. And: dryriver sends news that Ecuador discovered that their embassy in London was bugged, describing the incident as "another instance of a loss of ethics at the international level in relations between governments."
My country's dick is so fucking big that we can have entire continents close off their airspace! Jesus, I want to snort a mountain of coke and fuck my wife's sister!!!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
A harsh, but reasonable punishment would be to re-route Airforce One to Austria every time Obama wants to visit some country in Europe.
No matter what you think of Snowden, at this point he's just a whistleblower or spy.
If the US wants to search plane, they can fucking do it themselves - they still have an Air Force, after all.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Was it Spain and France? Or Spain, Portugal and France? Or Portugal on behalf of Spain? Seems like the summary should say it was the three. What a mess of a confusing summary.
had a criminal past we in Canada would let me stay and give him refugee status.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
and I'll bet France and Portugal have business interests associated with Bolivia's lithium deposits. Morales could spank both of them by levying an access fee amounting to a few hundred million Euros. Gotta make it more expensive to be a USA poodle if we want this bad behavior to stop.
If this was done to Air Force One, there would be outrage and calls for war.
It's not supposed to be legal to interfere with the travel of diplomats or search them.
If this was done at the request of the Americans, they've well overestimated their own importance. If this was done by someone trying to keep the Americans happy, they crossed well over the line.
But America seems to believe the rest of the world should be subservient to their wishes -- and the rest of the world is waking up to a big "Fuck You".
Keep braying about how you're the defenders of Truth and Freedom, while lying your faces off and becoming an authoritarian state. What Snowden has done is demonstrate that the US only gives a shit about themselves, and will break any law that stands in their way.
Snowden didn't make you look bad by revealing your little games both at home and abroad. You made us look bad by pulling this shit in the first place.
Cut it out and give Snowden the hero's welcome home he deserves.
A president of a large enough nuclear equipped country probably could fly him out. If they shot him down, they would effectively be at war.
If Ecuador really want Assange all they have to do is pull the embassy out of London. There are international agreements that require that they let embassy staff leave the country unharmed. If the British stop them from leaving, arrest everyone at the British embassy in Ecuador in retaliation until they return their people. I'm guessing the Ecuadorian prisons are harsher than the British ones.
The UE needs a new par of pants after this, maybe a par with some stars and bars on it
What concerns me the most is just how aggressively the entire world seems to be against him, when all he's basically revealed is the existence of a high-level domestic spy program. Yeah, that's horrible and shit, but that alone wouldn't have the US government moving political mounts pressuring other countries not to harbor him.
What did he potentially have access to that's so damning to the government that it's strong-arming the entire world over the possibility that he could release it?
On the heels of revelations about US spying on its European Allies, why are you people putting up with this crap?
Have gnu, will travel.
... isn't that supposed to be a given in todays spy vs. spy MAD comic?
From the BBC article...
Meanwhile, France has urged EU-US trade talks be delayed amid the fallout from secrets leaked by Mr Snowden.
The talks are due to begin on Monday but claims that the US bugged EU diplomatic offices in the US, and spied on internal computer networks, have upset transatlantic relations.
French government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Berkacem said the talks should be suspended for 15 days to enable mutual trust to be restored.
Yet at the same time it is claimed that the French potentially violated the diplomatic priviledges of the President of an interntionally-recognised, non "axis-of-evil", democratic nation-state in order to please the USA?
Looks like genuine 'realpolitik' at its cynical best; we're pissed that you're spying on us, but we'll still help you collect your "bad guy" in case we need you to return the favour in the future. Just like what happened when NZ gave back the Rainbow Warrior killers so fast...
Bottom line: Why is this spying stuff so persistent and pervasive? Because everybody in power wants it...
Do what we say or we'll declare bankruptcy and trash the world economy?
I love all this Snowden stuff... it's like a real life John LeCarre novel! Let me go get the popcorn...
let's have a conversation! let me know what you think.
By now US is at war against the world, by their own definition, the ones that act as allies in things like this are targets too, even if they keep covering they ears and eyes to not see the evidence. Even if international law and rights used to have some meaning, is not anymore.
Ok, maybe they have to act like this even if they don't want to. The biggest benefit of massive, worldwide snooping on everything digital is not stopping terrorist, is just have a really big database for blackmailing, to force anyone to do what they want, from the top governors to the last shoeshiner.
Dear opposition parties of all involved countries (France, Spain, Austria, ...), please drag the responsible ministers to parliament and have them explain every detail of the closure of the airspace as soon as possible. I don't know how it is organized exactly in those countries, but in the political system I know (Netherlands), all ministers are forced to respond to any question posed by members of parliament. The sillier questions can be answered by mail within a few weeks deadline, but I guess that for more important issues like this one, they can have any minister get his ass in parliament with a few days notice. Willfully giving wrong answers is political suicide via a 'motion of no confidence'. In the more likely case that the relevant ministers are supported by the leading majority, they can still be forced to make some embarrassing statements (yes, Obama did call us to close the airspace ...), which could lead to ridicule in the press and losses in the polls.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
as usual.
The USA cares ONLY about the USA. Everyone else can go to hell. The US is very isolationist until someone attacked them.
Then the US stomps over everyone else caring absolutely Zilch about who they stomp on.
Not a bad idea, but a hundred million euro wouldn't come close to the amount of financial pressure the USA could dish out.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Enough is enough! I have had it with this motherfucking Snowden on this motherfucking plane!"
No good deed goes unpunished.
Yes, this. Hell France, Portugal, Spain and Germany slap sanctions on any country that even looks at them wrong, huff and puff about international law, human rights etc. Now it is they who are violating every principle they proclaim to stand for... Time someone have them some of their own.
One of my former co-workers managed to make it 6 months back in the mid-1990s ... he said they'd give you a function to write, tell you what the inputs and outputs were, and what language it was to be written in ... and that was it ... no clue if it could be written better because you weren't allowed to know what interacted with it. He quit.
Another person I knew went to work for one of the three letter agencies, and said that after 2001 he realized they were just out to get all brown people, and being a brown person himself, he didn't feel comfortable working there anymore.
Unfortunately, for most of the code monkeys doing this sort of stuff, you can't just reprogram the guidance system to make the world's largest jiffy-pop.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Well, that's nice. So the Bolivian Pres. was supposed to circle French airspace for a whole day? I know, it was probably a different flight entirely, but still...
So why, then, did he choose to go into exile rather than accept the consequences and justify his actions in court?
Have you seen what due process has been for Bradley Manning? During his nine-month stay in Fort Quantico, he was reportedly held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, forced to sleep naked without pillows and sheets on his bed, and restricted from physical recreation or access to television. A military judge ruled that his treatment was excessive and credited him with some time served against any future punishment.
The government has demonstrated that it will crush whistleblowers who try to defy it. Who in their right mind would allow this to happen to them? Extreme measures for Snowden to protect himself just mirror the extreme measures our government has taken to punish those who oppose it.
Even money that on Thursday, July 4th there will be a large, showy domestic incident that will be nothing but a False Flag operation to again distract the American sheeple with fear and unthinking Jingoism.
Complete with the honorary waterboarding and month long solitary confinement.
Shame on you France.
Shame on you Spain.
Shame on you Portugal.
Shame on you Italy.
Now bend over and have Uncle Ben have it's way with you some more.
Privacy is terrorism.
OFFLINE since 2002
we still exist we dont share to your govt..
...to live in Austria, where Mrs. Miki-Leitner, the Minister of Interior Affairs, said ( after the dust had settled somewhat, this afternoon ):
"This was a missed chance for Mr. Snowden. Austria has shown not to let itself be intimidated by the US. If Mr. Snowden had come here, he would have gotten a serious examination of his request for political asylum, as well as an investigation into recognizing him as a political refugee."
I would say: Edward, life in Vienna is more than bearable. Plenty of high-tech firms in case you ever need a job again ( which I doubt ), and the border to Switzerland is only a few train hours away, in case you need to run. Come over here, man !!!
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
It seems US govt propaganda department aparatchiks never stop. They'll repeat their shit over and over again, conveniently hiding behind AC. I'm sick seeing taxpayer money thrown into this. Fuck you.
All well and good, but how are you going to get exports out of the country in the first place when the U.S. Navy decides to blockade your ports?
Make the access fee monthly or per unit then. Or ban them access all together.
war - check
fear - check
torture - check
surveillance society - check
newspeech - check
Seems Obamas term will last till 1984
Remember that the NSA wants your kids: http://www.nsa.gov/kids
oh great.
That makes Anonymous Coward the new Goodwin.
Everybody who can do it, does it. Back in the 80s the US had to abandon an embassy we were building in the USSR because it was full of bugs even before it was built, so many and so deep in the infrastructure that there was no way to clean it.
Every country has spies to spy on every other country it considers worth spying on. The intelligence world even has a term for spies attached to a country's official diplomatic mission.
Threaten to make piracy more difficult in the USA, and watch as the biggest websites in the world make a big deal of it.
The Government of most western countries piss over our liberty, while the global super power spies on all of us and chases a whistle-blower all around the globe with the intent of destroying his life, and the best we can manage is a few angry geeks muttering online.
Seriously?
Capricious application of the law is a prime sign of corruption.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Carrot: a billion dollar bounty
Stick: threat of military force
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
France also had Morales' visit earlier this year, he planed to buy helicopters and Airbus planes... Good job president Hollande !
France and Spain both claim that they gave permission for the plane carrying Evo Morales to cross their air space. At this point I have not seen any evidence corroborating the Bolivian claims. The government of Evo Morales has made somewhat dubious claims in the past so that I am not willing to condemn other governments purely on their say-so. However, I am also not willing to reject their claims outright. I merely believe that we should withhold judgment on this case until more information is forthcoming.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Maybe the Wiki folks and anonymous should start phoning in anonymous tips that Eric Snowden is on every flight leaving Moscow from now until European air space is again free.
Who did what now?
The "biggest websites in the world" are already complicit in the activities that the US is in trouble for, so don't expect any impetus from them this time around.
...is in a handbasket.
Don't you guys got guns precisely for this kinda shit?
Where are the gun nuts when you need them?
Oh wait, the gun nuts are all in favor of this kinda thing? The whole "owning guns to protect freedom" was just a ruse and it was all about compensating for tiny penises after all. Just as I expected.
Spain, France and Portugal have all said that no such no-fly order existed, with no official response from Italy. (http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_23590259/snowden-france-denies-blocking-bolivian-plane), covered, then ignored here http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/03/edward-snowden-asylum-live#block-51d38d7be4b0300b24e64d84 etc.
Moreover, when they landed in Austria, they stated they were having mechanical problems with their fuel gauge: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1482009-bolivia-air-force-fuerza-aerea-boliviana-fab001-flight-precaution-landing-vienna-austria
Finally, the entire story doesn't even make sense, they left Moscow heading towards Bolivia, which is west-ward for those who don't know. Then they landed somewhere in the Canaries to refuel, despite Spain supposedly saying they couldn't and their airspace was off-limits, then they flew to Austria and said they had the plane searched wherein this supposedly allowed them to fly over Spain.. despite having already done so.
The amusing part is I bet most of you run around calling everyone else sheep.
I'm sooooo thrilled that we're using Stalin as our standard of comparison. How about Churchill? I'd like us to be equal or better than Great Britain under him. Now there's a decent standard.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Two things about this story still are incomprehensible to me:
Why did Snowden carry 4 laptops with him? It doesn't make sense to carry more than one laptop just because you have so much information to transport. He could have used at most one laptop with a light-weight external hard drive. Or probably he also has some encrypted safe storage online somewhere, so it's not necessary to use physical devices anyway. And I don't know at what point in time Wikileaks got the data (if they have it completely at all).
Then, once WIkileaks has all the data, why didn't Snowden accept (or at least not yet reject) the offer of asylum from Russia? He could've said he won't release anymore that he has, and what Wikileaks does (=release more, little by little, of his leaks) is beyond his control. Then he wouldn't have done anything anti-American (or political) at all after his entering Russian soil and everyone would be happy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Nobel_Peace_Prize
Obama said he was "surprised" and "deeply humbled" by the award.
Was he really "Surprised"?
Morales would find the idea of the US Navy blockading Bolivian ports absolutely hilarious if he wasn't so worked out about the outcome of the War of the Pacific.
There's no way Snowden is getting out of Russia to any of those countries that he applied for asylum, except maybe to China. US and its allies are doing everything to capture him. So, Mr. Snowden, send that asylum application back to Russia as this will probably be your only best option outside of living in an airport or what awaits you in the US. Just leak everything right now or work carefully through someone else. That way you won't break Putin's terms.
Apologies in advance for replying to myself. But this is getting a strange aftertaste: I had not meant my OP, in any possible way, to be funny, sarcastic or ironic. Yet it got modded up to "+4 / +5, funny" in less than no time. How strange.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Those lithium deposits are essentially lying unused, as there isn't enough infrastructure yet to allow full-scale exploitation of them to occur. However, the rest of Latin America might just strike back, at least subtly. UNASUR has already called an emergency meeting, and even OAS has issued a statement strongly criticizing the US (for those that don't know, OAS has traditionally been dominated by the US and lackeys -- that's why UNASUR was created in the first place). Latin America now has a total population of almost 400 million, is a massive food exporter, as well as of various metals, and even has some countries with highly-educated populations (Chile, Argentina, and parts of Brazil) so the region is going to be a key global player in the future, as it's experiencing massive growth.
All well and good, but how are you going to get exports out of the country in the first place when the U.S. Navy decides to blockade your ports?
Since Bolivia is a landlocked country, that shouldn't be an issue ;)
Not meaning to digress, but I felt that Noam Chomsky's "The Future of American Power" link below is highly relevant to this thread and Snowden topic. The video is from earlier last month. It's an update on current political culture. After watching the full hour of his talk- I will admit to not completely understanding the complexities of our country (US) and why things continue to function the way they presently do, his monologue was extremely helpful to at least try and understand things better - i.e., what the hell is happening and why. Getting some background for specific well-known events from the '40s, '50s, '60s, '80s explains better how they relate - today. Chomsky puts US behavior in an interesting perspective, most of it not positive.
Watch the video and then re-read this thread. A lot is just knowing our own history (US), how and why the US is doing what it is doing and how we continue to do the same things and follow the same doctrine. This relates completely to the current topic. Chomsky, in his usual manner of complexity and well thought out/researched knowledge, explains why things are the way they are these days. While there will always be those who disagree, at least his perspective is out there. I wish Snowden the best, he's in a super tough spot; I hope he prevails one way or another; he's got balls of steel. The video is long, but good. http://youtu.be/x-BuiH4btOw
Parent AC here. Bolivia has no ports.
From "the philosophy of Andy Warhol":
"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."
Spanish? Really?
It says Portugal right there in the paragraph you quoted.
Otherwise all you're doing is asserting that Stalin was worse, you have no idea whether this is factual, it is only your opinion that it is so.
Obama officials have publicly berated the progressives who supported him for complaining about Obama's failures and warn that doing so will cause the Republicans to win, so they must shut up and only talk about the successes made, never the failures.
Seriously, watch some progressives being shat on by the officials in the Democratic party. You're watching the mainstream (non progressive) media. Watch The Young Turks instead. See what happens to the supporters of Obama who do not support his failures and complain about them.
Then realise that your complaint is predicated on you being the only one who is complaining about the horrors of both presidents and that this assumption is completely wrong and self-serving.
Flying over the country and not stopping still requires clearance to pass into sovereign airspace.
This event suggests that Snowden will not make it out of Russia without taking evasive action. By that I mean he would need to be on an aircraft using falsified flight data, and with transponders switched off. All of which is illegal and likely to get you accidently shot down.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
That is not quite true. We the People definitely still have some control over our government: the Jeffersonian form of control. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time...."
Not gonna happen.
The National Security and Patriot Acts have suspended all individual freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States of America. No more due process, no Habeas Corpus, no right to legal council. You have no protections under the Patriot Act. Let's face it ... you live in a police state. The NSA is spying on you right now. It is an agency of the Department of Defense ... the Pentagon. When United States Military is policing private citizens the Constitution has become absolutely meaningless. Congressional oversight committees have allowed these unconstitutional acts to continue unchecked.
Our (Portugal's) foreign minister is too busy pretending to demit to pay any attention to what its ministry is doing. But hell: our prime minister (now european comission president Barroso) was the boy servant of Bush and Blair during the reunion in Lages Air Force Base before the war, so yes we always expect our coward politicians to do whatever the USA or EU told them to, unless, of course, it can hurt re-election (most of my fellow citizens are too ignorant to even know who Snowden is, since he does not play soccer).
A whistle blower is a freedom fighter who isn't on govt (!= nation) side.
Casteism
"The only other country I know of that had a similar experiment in freedom is France, but their experiment died a lot faster."
Actually there are lots of country that had a similar experiment in nation building, many of them in the same New World hemisphere. Haiti was a republic founded by former African slaves, so that might count as the black African analog, on a smaller scale, of the white European USA.
Practically all of South America is made up of countries that tried their hand at republican democracy after cutting their ties to the motherland, Spain (Portugal in the case of Brazil). It's probably not coincidental the New World is where you'll find the most number of countries that have adopted the presidential form of government with its famous separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers. The rest of the nominally democratic world are run by parliaments where the de facto leader and head of government is a prime minister with the power to both make and implement laws, along with the official mascot, a queen, emperor or ceremonial president.
As you try to close this barn door, think about this......
The horse ran away forty years ago !
We should all feel some shame.