Off Topic – NSA spy leaks: Snowden thanks Russia for asylum
BBC News – NSA spy leaks: Snowden thanks Russia for asylum.
(For once, Russia has behaved ethically while the US has sunk to the level of the former Soviet Union. Totalitarianism has no future, whether Communist or Oligarchic. LET FREEDOM RING!!! – JW )
US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has thanked Russia for granting him temporary asylum, allowing him to leave the Moscow airport where he has been holed up since June.
In a statement, Mr Snowden also accused the US government of showing “no respect” for international law.
The US has charged Mr Snowden with leaking details of its electronic surveillance programmes.
Washington has expressed its “extreme disappointment” at Russia’s decision.
For someone willing to disclose the dirty secrets of others, Edward Snowden is infuriatingly keen on keeping private.
That, at least, is a view of journalists, dozens of whom were patrolling the inside of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport trying to get a glimpse of this famous fugitive.
Each hint of Snowden’s possible appearance brought about a sea of cameras and a forest of microphone holders. Passions ran high, some cameras were trampled upon.
All in vain. Edward Snowden slipped away in a taxi, an unremarkable grey sedan.
That is, if we believe Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who has handled Mr Snowden’s asylum in Russia. According to him, the ex-CIA contractor took the taxi to a location of his own choosing.
Many Russians find it improbable that the vast Russian security machine is content simply to see Mr Snowden go.
Then again, he’s left the airport on Leningradskoe Shosse, a road notorious for its traffic jams.
Should Russian Federal Security Service change its mind, it can probably find Edward Snowden still stuck in traffic not far from the place which was his home for more than a month.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said they were considering whether a meeting between US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in September should go ahead.
The latest developments came amid fresh revelations from the cache of documents leaked by Mr Snowden.
Documents seen by the UK’s Guardian newspaper appear to show the US government paid at least £100m ($150m) to the UK’s GCHQ spy agency to secure access to and influence over Britain’s intelligence gathering programmes.
‘Pursued man’
Mr Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said the former CIA contractor had left Sheremetyevo Airport at about 14:00 local time (10:00 GMT) for an undisclosed destination.
Showing a photocopy of the document issued to his client, he described Mr Snowden as “the most pursued man on the planet”.
Mr Kucherena said Mr Snowden was being looked after by a legal expert from the whistleblowing organisation Wikileaks.
Russia’s Federal Migration Service later officially confirmed that Mr Snowden had been granted temporary asylum for one year, Interfax news agency reported.
In a statement issued on the Wikileaks website, Mr Snowden said: “Over the past eight weeks we have seen the Obama administration show no respect for international or domestic law, but in the end the law is winning.
“I thank the Russian Federation for granting me asylum in accordance with its laws and international obligations.”
President Obama and President Putin had been scheduled to meet on the sidelines of a G20 summit in early September in Saint Petersburg.
However, Mr Carney said: “We’re extremely disappointed that the Russian government would take this step despite our very clear and lawful requests in public and in private to have Mr Snowden expelled to the United States to face the charges against him.
“We’re evaluating the utility of a summit in light of this and other issues.”
Earlier, US Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described Thursday’s development as “a setback to US-Russia relations”.
“Edward Snowden is a fugitive who belongs in a United States courtroom, not a free man deserving of asylum in Russia,” he said.
Republican Senator John McCain also issued a stinging rebuke, saying Russia’s actions were “a disgrace and a deliberate effort to embarrass the United States”.
“It is a slap in the face of all Americans. Now is the time to fundamentally rethink our relationship with Putin’s Russia. We need to deal with the Russia that is, not the Russia we might wish for,” he said.
Mr Putin has said previously that Mr Snowden could receive asylum in Russia on condition he stopped leaking US secrets.
The Russian president’s foreign policy adviser, Yury Ushakov, said the situation was “rather insignificant” and should not influence relations with the US.
Information leaked by Mr Snowden first surfaced in the Guardian newspaper in early June.
It showed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans.
The systems analyst also disclosed that the NSA had tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in a surveillance programme known as Prism.
Prism was allegedly also used by Britain’s electronic eavesdropping agency, GCHQ. The agency was further accused of sharing vast amounts of data with the NSA.
Allegations that the NSA had spied on its EU allies caused indignation in Europe.
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WarSclerotic 
August 1, 2013 at 10:49 PM
Apparently and according with Rotter, ”something” very big rocked the Homs region, might be an earthquake. The event occurred at 23’30 this evening and more details will be provided as we will know them (if any).
August 1, 2013 at 11:03 PM
…or, it may be related to the formidable explosion in Homs earlier today, which was already reported by Reuters. I saw that on tv – aljezeera – and it was like a ”little” atomic bomb there ( very impressive explosion).
August 1, 2013 at 11:15 PM
August 1, 2013 at 11:29 PM
Tactical nuke ?????
August 1, 2013 at 11:32 PM
Its more like a missiles depot which took off sky high as a result of the rebels ”activity”.
August 1, 2013 at 11:51 PM
Your right , no flash !
August 2, 2013 at 12:10 AM
This comes closest to a tactical nuke.
Explosion of 500 tons TNT.
The explosion:
August 2, 2013 at 12:12 AM
The charge:
August 2, 2013 at 12:16 AM
August 2, 2013 at 12:38 AM
Interesting.
In terms of destruction a tactical nuke is comparable to the Oppau explosion in 1921.
The guys yelling “allah u akbar” would get hurt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion
The Oppau explosion occurred on September 21, 1921 when a tower silo storing 4,500 tonnes of a mixture of ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded at a BASF plant in Oppau, now part of Ludwigshafen, Germany, killing 500–600 people and injuring about 2,000 more.
Scale of the explosion
The explosion was estimated to be about 1–2 kilotonnes TNT equivalent, and was heard as a loud bang in Munich, more than 300 km away. The pressure wave ripped roofs off up to 25 km away and destroyed windows even farther away. In Heidelberg (30 km from Oppau), traffic was stopped by the mass of broken glass on the streets.
About 80 percent of all buildings in Oppau were destroyed, leaving 6,500 homeless. At ground zero a 90 m by 125 m crater, 19 m deep, was created. Damages were estimated by the New York Times in 1922 at then 321 million Marks[1] (since Germany suffered heavy hyperinflation in 1919–1924, given amounts and exchange-rates are not very descriptive).
According to some descriptions, only 450 tonnes exploded, out of 4,500 tonnes of fertilizer stored in the warehouse.[1]
August 1, 2013 at 11:31 PM
Rotter is also reporting al unusual activity of jets over Lebanon.
August 1, 2013 at 11:34 PM
Interesting
August 2, 2013 at 8:26 AM
Looks like Obama doesn’t approve of Israel’s actions…
http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/08/01/diplomat-obama-approved-intelligence-leaks-on-israeli-air-strikes-in-syria/
August 2, 2013 at 1:53 PM
…And now, back to the article above. Look, what wasn’t said about Obama? Everything you want and more and even writing all those ”attributes” may be a serious reason for being banned here(with a certain measure of justice, I’ll say). But one thing they didn’t wrote on him : Dabbler, meaning dilettante (in French-seriously).
And what the dabbler word attribute is standing for? Usually, when somebody who was appointed to execute a job and doesn’t have the skills to do that job and is conclusively and repeatedly failing, someone like that is a dabbler.
Look no far than the last international incident and the Obama’s administration treatment of all the issue. Putin and Russia are going out from this like champions of liberty and info while Obama is the bad guy here, against all of these nice internet era new principles.
So, my friends, how can one little and troubled nation, surrounded by bad guys, trust this administration that it will act right when the time will come? I’ll tell you what, we cannot trust him(Obama).
And this not because he is a bad guy; no, he is very friendly, yes.
We cannot trust him because he wont deliver. Its about time to understand this and drawing the operative conclusions. Fast.
August 2, 2013 at 2:38 PM
It took you awfully long to figure that out.
Of course he is not a bad guy.
Even Hitler was nice to his family and his dog.
Whether the guy who kills you smiles at you or not, the end result is the same.
The psycholgy of obavez is easy to understand.
He is a bully. It does not matter to him wether you are America’s ally or friend or an enemy.
As long as you let him push you around he will do it.
Like all bullies he is a coward. That means that if you stand your ground and do not what he wants he will finally crumble.
We have seen this behaviour in his dealings with Russia, Iran, Syria and North Korea.
As soon as he realizes that action is required to enforce what he wants he backs down, seeks compromise and suddenly he can accept that which was previously unacceptable to him.
August 2, 2013 at 3:10 PM
Obama is just destroying the USA as the main world power and
lining up the USA for fitting into the new world order.
There is a heavy background fight in the USA and In Israel !
There is also a fight between the eu and the usa about there positions in this new world order.
August 3, 2013 at 4:24 PM
re “For once, Russia has behaved ethically while the US has sunk to the level of the former Soviet Union. Totalitarianism has no future, whether Communist or Oligarchic. LET FREEDOM RING!!! –”
Really ?
Russia ethics ? You must be kidding !!!
For starters just google fredom of press in Russia.
Russia did this to annoy the US. They don’t care about freedom. They poison people to stop them revealing Russian secrets thats the sort of freedom you get in Russia.
The list of the places where Snowden & Assange have wanted asylum contains many authoritarian countries who all would love to stick it to uncle sam, didn’t see many which actually stand for real freedom.
Whats the problem with NSA recording routing information ? they were not accessing the content.
I bet Russia and China have no qualms with recording the routing information and all content. After seeing how Russia and China treat their own people I would prefer the US got as much info as it could to protect against them. The smaller Russia & China’s influence is the better it will be for the world.
In this day and age we can’t really expect privacy.
Yeah I know Obama is the most inept President they have ever had. GWB made mistakes too but at least he had the balls to (mostly) stand behind his mistakes. Obama with the mess of the arab spring/winter couldn’t be more inept if he tried.