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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."
Yeah "I'm not going to scramble fighter jets for this guy", he'll just get other countries to do that for him... Hey but what is one more tiny human rights violation when you've already done so many.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
It'll be fun when we slaughter a political dissenter who was forced to flee to a south American country on July 4. So much freedom!
Maybe we should use an axe to kill him. That won't, in any way, draw parallels to anything else that happened in history.
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?
This is the THIRD story today, where commenting with the following quote appears both appropriate and relevant to topic:
"The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth
and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought"
-- George Orwell, 1984
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I think the movie Cube was about this. You don't know you're part of the problem because you're working on just a tiny piece of it.
There's laws (in theory at least) in the US to protect whistle blowers, even those who release information the way he did.
Citation? Examples?
So why, then, did he choose to go into exile rather than accept the consequences and justify his actions in court?
Because, as someone who only just turned 30 he is not prepared for his life to end either through execution (USC 18, section 2381; http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381) or just life in prison. It is true that no good deed goes unpunished, but I think Snowden would still like his choice of punishments. Like most people he prefers exile over death.
When he released classified documents he did in fact break US law. He publicly admitted to doing it. Short of a sympathetic jury who believes in jury nullification he has zero chance of being found not guilty of leaking classified documents. So, like everyone else, he has no illusions about living free ever again in the country of his birth.
It always annoys me when people claim that by not choosing to spend the rest of his life in prison he is not facing the consequences of his actions. The dramatic events we are all watching unfold are the consequences. Exile is simply the only option he has that is preferable to suicide. I highly doubt you or any of the others claiming he is avoiding the consequences of his actions would act any differently. Remember that he and many other people all over the world do not believe he did anything wrong. On the contrary, many believe he is a hero.
And what did he think he had to gain by going to Julian Assange?
I'm not sure if you are following the news, but at no point has he been to London. He is still in the Moscow airport. So I'm not sure what you mean by "going" to Assange. He accepted help from one of Assange's associates, which is precisely what you would have done in his situation. Any other questions?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I think you were living in a different country than I was. When Bush was president people were taking to the streets over every little perceived offense. Remember all the demonstrations over the war, the Patriot Act, the G8 and UN summits? Remember how vocal MoveOn.org and others were?
Go on to MoveOn.org today and there isn't a peep about Snowden or the NSA's domestic spy program. I thought these guys were supposed to be defenders of democracy. I guess they only care when a Republican is president.
A while back Al Jazeera ran a story about supporters going to absurd lengths to defend Obama even when it violates their supposed principles. It was almost comical to see the people they interviewed criticize something like drone strikes only to do a full 180 and defend the program when they learned that Obama was behind it.
And when you send the brown folks to jail, they don't vote.
Then - by making 1 in 10 of them ineligible at anytime and demoralize the others - you eliminate the threat of a progressive force in the electorate, which appeared on the threshold of revolution, 35 years ago.
The illusion of a representative republic is maintained by such soft suppression.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."