More on Edward Snowden

Today, Edward Snowden has accepted all three offers of political asylum – from Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. He has applied for asylum in Russia until such time as his safe passage to Latin America can be secured. It is difficult to reach any of the three destinations from Russia without flying through United States or European territories

What a sorry situation this has become. A patriot who has alerted all countries including his own of massive surveillance by the United states government, is stranded until some method can be developed to get him out of Obama’s flight interceptions.

One method springs immediately to my mind. Vladimir Putin may decide to make a state visit to one of those countries, flying in his own Air Force One. Because of what happened recently to the President of Bolivia, Putin might let it be known that Russian advanced fighter planes will protect his flight from interference of any kind.

Then see how quickly President Obama and his international cronies will climb down and allow the flight to proceed.

If Obama keeps his promise, he will pardon Edward Snowden

“In his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama called upon ‘We the People’ to preserve America’s ideals of individual freedom and equality.’ When Edward Snowden disclosed the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programmes, he was rising to this challenge. Like the nation’s ‘founding fathers’, hw was also defying the usurpations of an increasingly intrusive government. Mr. Obama should therefore call off the campaign to apprehend him and offer Mr. Snowden a pardon instead.” Stephen Walt*, ‘Snowden deserves an immediate presidential pardon’, Financial Times, July 9, 2013

“Mr. Snowden’s motives were laudable: he believed fellow citizens should know their government was conducting a secret surveillance programme enormous in scope, poorly supervised and possibly unconstitutional. He was right….Once a secret surveillance system exists, it is only a matter of time before someone abuses it for selfish ends. Richard Nixon kept his own ‘enemies list’ and used the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on american citizens. Former Federal Bureau of Investigation director, J. Edgar Hoover, helped keep himself in office by collecting dirt on officials.” Stephen Walt*,ibid.

“Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush pardoned the officials who conducted the illegal Iran-Contra affair, and Mr. Obama has already pardoned several convicted embezzlers and drug dealers. Surely Mr Snowden is as deserving of mercy as these miscreants. Pardoning him would also show that Mr. Obama’s rhetorical commitment to ‘We the People’, and to open and transparent government, is not just empty words.” Stephen Walt*, ibid.

* Stephen Walt is Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University

The courage of Edward Snowden

First they came for the Tea Party
and I didn’t speak out because I was not a member of the Tea Party

Then they came for the rich
and I didn’t speak out because I was not rich

Then they came for private market entrepreneurs
and I didn’t speak out because I was not an entrepreneur

Then they came for the advocates of freedom
and there were insufficient numbers left in America to speak out for me.

Thank you Edward Snowden for speaking out for me and my fellow patriots!

A new dawn of American impotence

Since January 2009, President Obama has pursued a foreign policy designed to remove the United States from nettlesome foreign entanglements. The world has watched and understood. President Obama now discovers that the United States is running out of foreign influence. Any realpolitik analyst would anticipate such an outcome. For Obama, the unfocused dreamer, reality has come as a complete shock.

Reality has finally dawned because of Obama’s inability to bring back Edward Snowden to so-called American ‘justice’. Foreign powers, great and small, evidence schadenfreude, as they watch the United States president slowly twisting in a biting wind of his own creation.

But much more is awash for Obama’s America than Edward Snowden. Afghanistan’s understated debacle is a spectacular example. Last week, the Taliban opened an office in Doha for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – the name that Mullah Omar gave to his regime before its 2001 downfall at the hands of President George W Bush. In response to this office opening, President Hamid Kharzai shut down negotiations with the United States over post-2014 security cooperation.

So what has really happened? Merely to get the Taliban to the table for a bogus peace process, Obama and Kerry agreed, at the urging of Pakistan, to allow Mullah Omar to access the negotiations on his own terms: no acceptance of the Afghan Constitution, no ceasefire with international forces, not even a pledge never again to allow Afghanistan to become a haven for international terrorism. Worse still, Obama and Kerry are to allow the terrorist Haqqani network – whose exploits include the 2011 siege of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul – a seat at the table.

So, having legitimized Haqqani and given the Taliban everything it wanted, in exchange for nothing, the U.S. now finds itself dumped by its own client government in Kabul. That government can always turn to Iran as a substitute patron. No peace, no peace process, no ally, no leverage and no moral standing, all in a single stroke.

Well done, Barack Obama and John Kerry! You truly have shown British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, how far appeasement can really go when genuine pacifists come to power.

As for the American electorate, well this is what happens when you twice elect a president into office on the principle of affirmative action.

Hat Tip: Bret Stephens, ‘The Age of American Impotence’, The Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2013

Xi and Putin flip Obama and Holder the bird

In 1956, the United Kingdom confronted the reality that its days of Empire were finally over. In collaboration with France and Israel, the United Kingdom had asserted its authority over the Suez Canal overwhelming the Egyptian forces of Colonel Abdul Nasser. Britain took this action, as an imperial power, without consulting Washington.

U.S. president, Dwight D Eisenhower, was highly displeased with this autonomous action, that coincided with the USSR invading Hungary to put down a potential uprising, right in the middle of his re-election campaign. The British government was served with a warning that if the Allies failed to withdraw immediately from the Canal Zone, the United States would apply downward pressure on sterling. Sir Anthony Eden, the conservative Prime Minister, a great statesman who had served as Foreign Secretary to Prime Minister Winston Churchill from 1940 to Victory in Europe, and who had developed a close personal relationship with then General Eisenhower, reluctantly ordered withdrawal, thereby signaling the end of his own illustrious career, and, effectively, withdrawal of Britain’s imperial role, at least, East of Suez.

These past few days, President Obama must be reflecting on a similarsequence of events that have occurred under his weak and corrupt administration. No nation on earth now respects the political authority of the United States. U.S.influence in the Middle East is negligible, with the governments of Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Pakistan openly flexing their independence from the Stars and Stripes. China and the Russian Federation clearly signal that the United States is a paper tiger led by an incompetent President.

And now, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have publicly flipped President Obama and Attorney General Holder the bird, much in the same manner that Eisenhower flipped Eden the bird in 1956. By allowing Edward Snowden safe passage from their countries, as he flees American snoops without a passport and with felony charges hanging over his head, Xi and Putin clearly indicate that the so-called Pax Americana is over. It has collapsed in a web of lies, corruption and deceit, not least of the People who elected it into office.

Unfortunately, the American political system does not provide for the People to force its president prematurely out of elected office. So American will have to wait some 40 months before they can take their revenge on the betrayal from within.

Edward Snowden runs for freedom from Obama’s hounds from Hell

Earlier this week, the Obama administration filed a charge of espionage against Edward Snowden for revealing details of its secret extensive spying on American citizens. The net looked like closing tightly around Snowden’s neck, as Obama’s snoops sought vengeance for the shame that the freedom-lover has heaped upon them.

Fortunately, there are still some islands of freedom left as Obama attempts to blanket the planet with his coercive surveillance. Hong Kong provided a vital two-day window of opportunity by finding clauses in the U.S. indictment that failed to comply with their laws. Given that the indictment had not been properly filed, the Hong Kong government allowed Snowden access to commercial flights out of the still freedom-loving former British colony.

Wikileaks then assumed responsibility for spiriting Snowden to freedom. Using their international network and their legal support staff, Wikileaks arranged for Snowden to board a commercial flight to Russia, where he will be welcomed and assisted by President Putin. From Moscow, Snowden will fly to Havana, where he will be welcomed with open arms by a communist government that openly despises the Obama administration. From Havana he will fly to Caracas, where he will finally settle down, supported by a Venezuelan government that will never extradite him to the hated Yankees.

Well done Wikileaks and the several governments that have conspired with them to prevent a ruthless, coercive government from imprisoning, if not executing, a good man who dared to expose a debauched and corrupt U.S. administration.