Snowden applies for asylum in Russia
 

Interesting...

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/01/politi...html?hpt=hp_t2

he crossed the point of no return when he chose to leave the u.s. for hong kong. he sealed his fate right there. he had a chance to get public favor on his side but by leaving the u.s., he chose to forgo that.

The most probable thing is that he will get the asylum, according to the words of Putin: Snowden can stay in Russia if he stops damaging USA. ( http://rt.com/news/putin-snowden-asylum-extradite-489/ )

well played.

of course snowden can stay in the den of our cold war enemy that our government is still paranoid about. snowden is just a pawn now.

pretty sure Russian wants Snowden to go back to the US... think about it.... Snowden is Russia no problem for Obama, Snowden on trial for treason here in the US, problem for Obama every fucking day

LOL ... they will send him back to US once he told them everyhting. On the bright side he will have a lot of fun in Moscow for a couple of years. Moscow beats any American city by 500%.

i have thought about it! :1orglaugh i'm obsessed in fact. :Oh crap :1orglaugh hollywood couldn't dream this story up.

i really think putin has the upper hand here. snowden is an albatross around obama's neck the entire time he is in russia, completely out of our control, out of our hands and in the hands of a country our government and obama is so paranoid of they won't even sign an extradition treaty with them.

besides, the real problem for obama now is all the new legislation already introduced demanding access to the fisa court and all the shit behind the prism curtain whcih he ratified.

derp on a world stage.

Yep, he can stay in Russia but he has to stop leaking info to the media as not to damage our American partners.

But we (the Russians) want access to all that juicy info on your laptops (if they don't have it already). Let's keep that info secret between you, China, Russia and our US partners. If you leak anything else to the media, we will deport your ass back to America.

If I were him, I would just exposed everything and come back to America and let the media circus begin.

He whould be better off in America. Book deals, movie deals, lifetime tv movie, celebrities clamoring for his release as this guy is a "hero" who exposed the goverment for what it is.

There is literally zero chance that Snowden wasn't taken aside by FSB officers and interrogated, all his possessions searched, all his items that contained any intel either confiscated or copied and then pressured to continue talking. All that would come after Chinese did the same. Any currency he has to negotiate was spent all ready.

Snowden fucked himself the second he got on a flight to hong kong. I would still guess he was lured there and promises were made. Most likely that he would deliver certain material in exchange for something. Likely money and asylum. Either he didn't deliver or they just cut him loose for another reason... or any reason at all really - he has no leverage anyway to complain. Once he left the US, he was 100% fucked and at everyone's mercy.. and at the mercy of some notoriously shitty governments where the rule of law and human rights aren't the largest priority.

The FSB didn't really have to do anything. He was delivered to them on a silver platter like a trapped rat that has no where to go. Usually that conversation is a cordial one. "Listen, we deeply sympathize with your position and we believe you've done a noble thing... we'd really like to help you. However, please understand the position this puts our nation in, we can protect you.. but it needs to be worth our while... What can you do or say or tell us that would.... " and so the first of many conversations begin where he starts giving up everything he knows again. Ironically giving up any bargaining power and value he may have had.

Most likely Russia will toy with him for a while, until he is no longer useful. It's a power move "we're not sure what we'll do with him...". Basically telling the world "we don't bend for the USA". It's highly unlikely they will allow him to stay, particularly when he has no value to them and its only causing a rift between Russia and the US in the long term.

Shit. We agree on something?

Well... if they catch him walking through a gated neighborhood and shoot him, we'll talk :)

putin said today snowden can stay as long as he doesn't upset his amercan partners/keeps his trap shut.

i think snowden still has some political capital.

I don't. The hows, why's, explanations etc are 100% irrelevant. The act of allowing him to stay is the statement that matters.

I will bet anything you want that Russia either hands him over, exchanges him over or kicks him out once the media dies down.

Snowden himself has nothing. His value is as a pawn to governments. He himself has nothing to offer anyone except the headache of the responsibility of having him in their country.

And Putin gave himself an out right... "Snowden, breaking the conditions of his stay.... blah blah blah [insert any random reason here since reporters from all over the word will never stop beating down his door]"

the fact that the ecuador opp is entirely off the table now suggests that to me.. the russians figured we'll keep him on ice for a while and embarass the americans some more.

and that embarrasment of having a rogue agent acting out on the world stage and being absolutely powerless to reign him in is the only clout snowden has left. i actually would not be surprised if he signed his own death warrant.

i thought this was pretty revealing

that sure sounds like the russians are not letting him go or get done what needs to get done to go.

His passport is revoked, he can't legally leave the airport terminal unless Russia grants him permission.

The US has already cut the Ecuador option off anyway, so Russia is his only shot atm.

that's exactly what my post covers. the president of ecuador saying the russians are not letting him go is the same as saying the russians are not granting him permission.


us unsuccessfully threatened ecuador's favored trade status to stop an asylum attempt, ecuador replied go ahead.

Some people have been watching Rocky IV too much....

Good one!

Ecuador has always said they can't do anything until he arrives on Ecuadorian property. Yesterday their president said it was really Russia's place to do something about it since he is at their airport.

who are you referring to?

Fucking traitor. :disgust

especially this sentence

in other threads people were saying the russians are going to torture him or whatever

seriously - this is not cold war anymore and Russia is not the evil place that it still gets portrayed as in media

http://mbworld.org/forums/attachment...u_are_here.gif

Was already discussed here: https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1113431&page=9 :2 cents:

Can't disagree on that :pimp

i don't see any reason in torturing the guy, he's an open book. hell, just ask him, he'll tall ya everything.


but as you know, our government is paranoid. it's not ww2 anymore either yet the nsa feels the need to eavesdrop on germany.

Nobody cares about it. Really. The housewives, rednecks and former marines (I'm not talking about the USA only, I mean just any country) want to believe in all those "enemies around us" scary stories. They just need to be told that Snowden (a citizen of independent country(!)) was tortured, robbed and colonoscopied by a bunch of sadists somewhere in a very far, dark and frozen barbarian country.

At least this kind of news make their lives brighter ("look, this guy has a much worse fate than me!") Otherwise they will start..... thinking.

:2 cents:

I spent a significant portion of my life there. I've done a huge amount of business there and under the worst conditions imaginable. I probably know better than anyone here how these matters work. Cold War and Media have nothing to do with anything. Suggesting "torture" is silly. I guess it depends on ones definition of "torture". He's technically being tortured right now. He's in limbo, legally, financially and his future freedom is in serious question. He's being broken down into sniveling pile of nothing emotionally. All by his own design. It's perfect for Russian intelligence and Putin. Their hands are 100% clean. He's trapped, he's got nowhere to go and no friends that can help him. The agent(s) giving him chocopies and water are his best friends right now. He will never again likely be as vulnerable emotionally as he is right now until he's brought back to the US. Getting info from him is not a problem. No force necessary. But there is no scenario where a foreign agent in his position, with intel, snitching on his own government isn't going to be pulled aside and milked dry of information. It would happen in the US as well. Thats how the game is played.

And quite frankly, you have absolutely no idea what kind of place Russia is when it comes to anything beyond tourist traps.


And for the record, I believe the US would be playing the exact same stupid games if it was a Russian guy trapped in a US airport under similar circumstances.

but wait, snowden is stuck in the transit section of moscow airport, moscow is 500% better than usa, he has party time on schedules for 2 years+.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

At least that section of the airport is relatively modern. The rest of it is a bizarre, impossibly ugly Soviet relic.

I was trying to find a pic of how the ceilings are there. I don't know what these are... they always looked to me like large metal cans for canning herring or something - all tied together with bailing wire. Its all very odd and weird.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/d5d50c74c...lr35o1_500.jpg

Woah . . . I think you are the one that is watching too many movies if you think that is what anyone meant . . . I know I sure never thought or insinuated that. Relatively confident that was not on anyone's mind. But I have to ask, was there a scene in Rocky that involved the Russian secret service? I never watched any of the sequels.

He released this statement yesterday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...wikileaks-text


Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow

Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised – and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

Edward Joseph Snowden

Monday 1st July 2013




.

I agree 100%

He's never lived in a place like Russia, where just owning a cell phone required a special license from the KGB and had to be registered with them.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

haven't been here longer than 15 minutes :1orglaugh

That's not true is it?

Do you really believe he is physically in the transit zone right now? You guys are so naive :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Now I know you are just a stupid clown who has never been to Russia. SVO has a modern design and looks much better than all the US airports I've been in.

http://myavia.com.ua/wp-content/uplo...B2%D0%BE-2.jpg

http://i007.radikal.ru/0806/b0/a27db54e7c89.jpg

http://taksi-aeroport-moskva.ru/wp-c...heremetevo.jpg

http://img0.liveinternet.ru/images/f.../f_6996534.jpg

http://myavia.com.ua/wp-content/uplo...-airport-4.jpg

http://www.stezhi.ru/media/gallery/g...0_q85_crop.jpg

http://www.artdev.ru/Gallery/TGI_Fri...ays_Sh2_10.jpg

http://www.artdev.ru/Gallery/TGI_Fri...days_Sh2_5.jpg

http://serg-klymenko.narod.ru/Other_...w/IMG_8293.jpg

http://image2.yell.ru/responses/6/4/...heszl1id42.jpg

http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/6512/...c1aee5_XXL.jpg

http://www.2do2go.ru/uploads/full/60..._w960_h720.jpg

And you take him at his word? Like Wikileaks isn't guiding his entire move.

Okay, maybe he would believe that . . . I usually just scan over his comments.

You too, clown.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?????????? :helpme

I haven't been there in 7 yrs or so. And if you are from Moscow, you know full fucking well that demolishing that eyesore was the subject of much debate since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Clearly, its undergone substantial renovations. You must be very young because it was a total mess.

:2 cents::2 cents::2 cents:

Yes, in the late 90's when the first cell carriers started operating, you had to apply for and have on your person a special permit to own/operate the phone. I dont remember when those laws were changed but i remember it carrying on for quite a few years.

up until the mid 2000s, you couldn't import a complete computer because the legal definition of a computer was something like "a device for the recording, storage and transport of digital information" - again, KGB stuff.

Everything, idiot. We have no KGB anymore. We have FSB instead since April 12, 1995. There is no license to own a mobile phone/internet in Russia. The only license I had to obtain here is driving one (yes, in our tyrannic country you can't drive a car without a driving license which you have to obtain after passing an inhuman test in police).

The guy you have quoted has the same knowledge about Russia like you or any average housewife that has never crossed the border ow her own sweet Oklahoma :2 cents:

Clown :2 cents:

When i lived in Moscow, I lived on Povarskaya - right behind the High Court bldg. Bacl in the day, it was kinda cool because Metellitsa/the casinos, Stary Arbat and so on was right across the street. I lived briefly next to the 3 stations. I had a place in Krylatskaya as well.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

it was a sarcastic retort to you thinking snowden's hitting the clubs and partying in 500% better moscow.

hahahaha.


and you think you know for certain he's not in the transit zone. yup, you know.

You have to be very young. All you have to do is ask anyone who owned a phone in the late 90s and they can tell you. It's not like it was a secret... there was a great deal of open debate and complaining about those laws.