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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
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.
Don't matter. Seems that all of them bend over gracefully and at once to the one that they know spy on all of them. Maybe the place that matter is Stockolm, they all have the syndrome.
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.
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?
Afaict Morales was flying in a business jet that didn't have enough fuel to go Russia-Bolivia nonstop, so the original plan was to refuel in Western Europe before continuing on. So that complicates the possibility of just overflying without permission and daring them to shoot him down, because he'd actually have to land and refuel at their airports, not just overfly.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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...
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]
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.
Bugs were invented for the purpose of spying on embassies, which were from time immemorial used as a good place to headquarter your espionage operations in foreign countries.
I remember a story from the '80s where a new US embassy in Moscow was so infested with bugs that it had to be abandoned. The very concrete rebar served as antennae for the bugs.
http://articles.latimes.com/1991-07-29/news/mn-177_1_embassy-building
So it should be no surprise at all that any embassy is buggier than an ant hill.
My favorite story was the the bugged version of the Great Seal Seal given to the US Ambassador, which hung in his residence. Dr Theremin got an order Stalin award for that one.
It's one thing to be bugging private citizens, and another altogether to be bugging embassies.
...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
I don't understand ANY of this. We have known, since the 90s, that Echelon existed and monitored everything everywhere for keywords. The only new information is "now we can do it in real time and we also archive everything". We even knew this went for the NSA and CIA spying (illegally, by obligation of the agencies) on our own people. We have also known that we still spy on other nations. And other nations spy on us. And we all spy on each other. It is actually astonishing to me that the general consensus seems to be that it's horrible that we are spying on other countries, because I thought everyone knew we were doing this the whole time. Spying is just something every nation does and, frankly, it seems to be almost an obligation for their own protection. How does the Central Intelligence Agency gather Intelligence without spies and spying?
And, of course, when it comes to spying on our own citizens, we have known about this for the last couple of decades and we've tried making a big deal about it and nobody has given two shits. It wasn't even until a few years ago that the general media started to even reference Echelon and most people who had any concern about the government spying on its own citizens were dismissed as being paranoid.
Now, it is suddenly trendy, and people who didn't give two shits six months ago or two decades ago are all getting major boners over on Reddit as they all pretend to be revolutionaries fighting for freedom and against surveillance etc etc and now that all these little kids give two fucks, the rest of us are supposed to tag along and act like they're the first to acknowledge this and want to do something about it. Sort of like when you keep posing an idea to your boss and he keeps ignoring you, until he finally brings the idea up and claims it was his.
Fortunately, I think most of us on Slashdot are halfway through our life (or more -- some of you guys are real old bastards), so I think we can pragmatically say "have fun with things, kids - we're going to be dead soon". And so, I can't be assed to give much of a fuck anymore. I exhausted all my giving a fucks over the last two decades. I say, bring on the surveillance state. Bring on the dystopian future. Bring on Mother America and government involvement in everything. Big monolithic buildings being erectic. Futuristic all encompassing surveillance systems. The whole boat load. It'll be fun to watch. And by the time it really crushes the absolute spirit of man, we old timers will be ashes in the dirt.
What is different, is that we have direct information (not statements, not conjecture, not foil hattery) about the surveillance. It is the difference between suspecting (or even having a well grounded belief), and KNOWING. It is the difference between knowing that AT&T set up splitters, and wondering what happens after that, and knowing what happens after that.
More to the point though, if we do nothing after these revelations, the DC pukes will take it as a mandate to do more and worse.
So instead of wasting your time and everyone else's lamenting how long it has taken to get to the point where real pushback can occur, get on board and start pushing the fuck back. Hard.
Demand prosecutions, impeachment proceedings. Start with the obvious, like Clapper's felonious perjury, and then keep plowing the bastards. Don't sit back and whine about people not acting in the past -- that is a useless waste of time and just plays into the enemy's hands. So stand up and fight, or if you won't do that, go back to your cotton row and shut the fuck up.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good