NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum by Russia, which has generated coverage focusing on the U.S. outrage at Russia’s decision. “Defiant Russia Grants Snowden Year’s Asylum” is the headline at the New York Times (8/2/13), where readers were told of the “risk of a breach in relations with the United States” and that the Russian move “infuriated American officials.”
The Washington Post reported (8/2/13) that Russia’s decision “opened a fresh wound in Moscow’s battered relations with the United States.” And USA Today‘s cover, as shown at the right, read “Welcome, Comrade Snowden”– Russia’s decision was a “snub.”
But journalism that wanted to take a more independent look at issues like who is granted asylum by a given country, or how countries refused to extradite those wanted on serious charges, might consider cases where the United States has protected suspected criminals–people who have caused actual harm in the world.
As Dan Beeton pointed out (CEPR Blog, (7/11/13) one might consider the
U.S. government’s ongoing refusal to extradite Bolivia’s former president Gonzalo (“Goni”) Sánchez de Lozada for serious human rights crimes related to the shooting of protesters in 2003. Goni lives comfortably just outside Washington, D.C. in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and as a member emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue is close to Washington foreign policy circles. The worst allegations that pundits have leveled at Snowden are that his leaks could endanger Americans – allegations for which there is no evidence. The case against Goni, however, is serious: he is believed to be responsible for ordering the military to attack protesters, resulting in the shooting deaths of over 67 and injury to over 400.
Or, Beeton points out,
The U.S. continues to shelter Luis Posada Carriles, a convicted (and admitted) murderer and terrorist believed by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies to be responsible for blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73 people, including the entire Cuban fencing team. Posada surfaced in the U.S. in 2005; he was tried on immigration charges several years later, but was acquitted and has been allowed to stay in the U.S. since.
The New York Times mentioned some of this history at the bottom of a July 12 piece– saying that “Washington’s push for extradition has poked at a sore spot for several countries that have sought the extradition of people wanted by their justice systems.” The Times mentioned Carriles, and also noted that Ecuador has been unable to extradite two bankers who were “at the center of a huge Ecuadorean financial scandal in the 1990s.”
It’s not as if those are the only examples, of course. Haitian death squad leader and CIA informant Emmanuel “Toto” Constant was living in New York City while authorities back home wanted to try him for his role in scores of deaths, rapes and torture.
We’d be having a more interesting–and honest–discussion about Snowden’s asylum if journalists could try to see this issue from the perspective of those outside the United States.
The quintessence of the US’ foreign policy credo
“Don’t do as I do
Do as I say
I do”
And what would be the motivation that the employers of these “journalists… try to see this issue from the perspective of those outside the United States?” I mean, don’t they take the advertising revenues from the same filthy places as the politicians who run this country?
I don’t expect anything less of supposed journalists slaving away as puppets for the corporate, for-profit-at-any-cost RW propaganda machine. There is no impetus for these companies to change their ways. Try TRNN instead (therealnews.com), just for starters.
Three cheers for the STASI.
“What we have here,” in the words of Cool Hand Luke’s wardon, “is a problem of communication.” The mainstream press imagines themselves to be a specially protected class. We have conflated freedom of “the press” in our constitution, in which it simply means public speech using the technology of print, with “the press” as a class of individuals and organizations engaged in journalism. Because the later imagine it is not their problem, they are not going to understand the threat to our free speech until they get it (only figuratively I hope) between the eyes.
[[[ We’d be having a more interesting–and honest–discussion about Snowden’s asylum if journalists could try to see this issue from the perspective of those outside the United States. ]]]
Doesn’t that presuppose these “Journalists” have been outside of Influence of the United States, or at least outside the major influence of the Corporate worlds.
Not unlike the line from ‘Bride and Prejudice’, “you want to Visit India, without the inconvenience of having to deal with Indians”. – Lalita Bakshi They want to call everyman brother, until he actually insists on being treated as such.
Roger Wilson:
Thanks for making great points. Especially in light of recently published FAIR research about the financial ties of Fareed Zakaria, Chris Matthews and other mainstream media figures to big corporate interest groups.
Zakaria, in particular, makes a mint with speaking engagements for big corporations which he then seems to have no qualms about protecting in his media work. (Notice that I don’t use the word “journalism.”)
Matthews, as the FAIR research to which I make reference makes clear, loves to talk big about there being no pro-labor voices in and around Washington, D.C. But Matthews himself is hardly pro-labor and hardly lives a pro-labor lifestyle. One can tell this by the autos in his driveway near D.C. that the FAIR research reports on.
Moreover–and I hate to say this, Mr. Wilson–you have also implicitly underscored major sore spots in the research and writing on media of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Especially Bourdieu’s work on freedom of expression in the arts and concerning feminism.
As for freedom of expression in the arts, in books like Free Exchange, which is a transcription of dialogue between Bourdieu and German-American artist Hans Haacke, Bourdieu takes to task the anti-freedom of speech art politics in the USA at the time he and Haacke wrote the book.
A good bit of ink in that book is spilled on the controversies attendant to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s work on homosexual male nudes.
Bourdieu and Haacke did/do not apparently realize what a lot of us did at the time Free Exchange was written–mid eighties– about Mapplethorpe’s work. It was a success of scandal, as one would say in French, but aesthetically did not contribute much to the art world. Rather, Mapplethorpe’s aesthetics, as I was reminded recently when I looked an an exhibition of his work in Los Angeles at LACMA, was pretty much just mimicry of Rodin’s take on the bourgeois figure that English art critic John Peter Berger denounced quite a while ago.
Berger’s denunciation of Rodin’s work with the sculpted figure–Rodin’s compressed use of space, etc.–is a denunciation–at least for me and for a friend from England who does know a lot about art, Elaine Livesey-Fassel–that applies to Mapplethorpe’s work on the homosexual male figure in photography.
Why did Bourdieu (and Haacke) not pick up on this? Who knows. They threw easy pot shots at conservative politicians in the USA and those who fund art exhibits and did not want Mapplethorpe’s work exhibited without asking tough questions that a knowledge of Berger’s work would permit, questions about whether Mapplethorpe was really just reinventing a French wheel or a spoke on it–that of Rodin–that Bourdieu (and Haacke) should be well familiar with.
The book’s cover, moreover, is of a model for a sculpture by Hans Haacke that is very bad politics and not at all progressive. Haacke sculpted the words “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” in Arabic. As if the idea of “free exchange” meant that the cultural politics of the French national motto applied to France’s Muslim and Arab cultural others. They do not, as the riots when Sarkozy was in office well show. Also, although Bourdieu loves to take pot shots at Jean Paul Sartre, Sartre wrote during Algeria’s war for independence about number counts of dead Algerians whose bodies were turning up in the Seine in and around Paris. Those body counts alone should have given Bourdieu and Haacke enough pause to use another piece of art for their book’s cover.
As for feminism, Bourdieu readily endorses the work of American lawyer Catharine Alice MacKinnon. He loves her work on gender equality, but fails to realize that a lot of her work with Andrea Dworkin and others against pornography harkens to the worst aspects of suffragette politics in the USA–the marriage of feminism and very conservative politicians’ interests.
As for what one might call the Suffragette City Redux aspect of MacKinnon’s work, Bourdieu should have known that suffragettes in the USA cozied up by necessity to those in the temprance movement who wanted to outlaw drinking. (That is just one example, albeit a signal one, of the marriage of conservative politics to USA feminism in that particular wave of feminism in the USA.)
A similar structural remarriage of conservative political interests and feminism surfaced when MacKinnon endorsed in Canada and elsewhere anti-freedom of speech laws concerning pornography. To but it bluntly, MacKinnon has endorsed censorship.
Why am I bringing this up? When a famous sociologist like Bourdieu, a famous artist like Haacke and a famous lawyer/feminist like MacKinnon can’t always be trusted with freedom of speech issues, then why should we at all expect the mainstream press to be trusted with freedom of speech?
Thank God for FAIR. And thank God, as well, for you, Mr. Wilson. You made me put on my thinking cap this evening. And there is nothing more important to think about these days in the USA than freedom of speech in the arts and in the press. And to remember the strange politics that bed fellows like the temprance movement and ant-pornography activists have often made in the USA with feminism. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Americans see this as a US problem, fundamentally and conveniently overlooking the impact on the rest of the world. They whine about their rights being abused by their own government and fail to even consider what it feels like for those in the rest of the world to be spied on by a foreign government. At least Americans had the option to vote for their fate – the rest of us just had it foisted upon us. Deliberations about Snowden are far more valid when considered in the context of what he did for the rest of the world, not just the US. He did us all a great favour and we don’t much give a shit what the US thinks of him.
Snowshoe: I agree. Who cares if the USA does not show up in Moscow for the Olympics? CIA mind control games influence most of the decisions, from what I understand, that USA doctors “treating” USA athletes at the Olympics go through. So this might be one Olympics that the CIA gets to sit out. And with that, good riddance to bad garbage. Is that not worse than performance enhancing drugs? CIA mind tricks with USA athletes and their trainers and physicians?
Wow, Re: the quote from the NYT:
How the Russian move “infuriated American officials…”
oh NYT: if only you would print what is “INFURIATING” the American public. If you did that, you could stop sending mail to a person like me, who has written several complaints about you to you… maybe then ( THE PUBLIC) would respond better to your requests for people like me to subscribe to your paper. : )
Sure…We have accepted Russian defectors hand over fist.That said there is no reason to ask for, or expect the Russians to help in extradition or apprehension of any criminals anywhere in the world.Whether it be through interpol or whomever.Our expectations of any kind of mutual respect has always been a joke.Why make it appear that they are in some way….even to a small measure our allies?The truth is we are enemies.I suppose if some looser put a bullet in Obama that he could run to Russia and claim asylum.We have to realize this.And so in reverse if Putin caught one…. we should give the guy who plugged him his own reality show.All fun and games aside we should move to reinstate our ABM shield.That alone will cost Russia a trillion dollars to counter.And actually we would save money.Breaking it down unilaterally is costly.Obama was also talking about unilateral nuclear disarmament allowing the Russians and Chinese to keep their weapons.That is kaput.We need to make sure they both can count megatonage.They ARE NOT OUR FRIENDS.Get it through those thick heads.
Jacki I never heard you speak of all the other countries.No conspiracy theories for Russia and China?So how do they treat their athletes?Always you find fault here.Predictable
michael e, Snowden is not a criminal – as far as I’m aware, he’s never been convicted of a crime. The fact that he’s perceived as one and that Russia is perceived as an enemy by you and plenty of other Americans points to the root of your problems as a nation. You think that it’s all about you. You believe that we’re all out to get you and that we lay awake at night plotting on how to do so. The truth is that if you’d just stop sticking your nose in other countries business, nobody would have too much to do with you, short of tourism and trade. You bring all this stuff upon yourselves.
That’s infuehrerated morally Zer0bam!
Snow shoe….Although it is true he has not been convicted,he has admitted to a crime.So again the rest is procedural.He has admitted to taking the job,and clearing security for the sole purpose of stealing classified documents.Is he presumed innocent?Technically yes.he should come home if you think he would win the case.As far as America is to blame blah blah blah,it is always the same old song and dance with you folks.
Oh Russia……Putin is old school KGB.He is no friend of this country.
US policy on privacy ca. 2013:
a. Total secrecy for the government and corporations.
b. Total transparency for the citizens!
c. If you disagree, you are a terrorist.
US media policy on issues vital to our democracy ca. 2013:
a. Shoot the messenger.
b. Shoot those who aid the messenger.
c. Flood the airwaves with tangential issues to drown out the real issues.
michael e, he hasn’t admitted to a crime, he’s admitted to preconceived whistleblowing, which is not a crime. Your “technical” presumption of innocence is a tacit way of saying that he’s as guilty as hell. Your rhetoric matches Holden’s promise not to kill Snowden and provided the Russians with plenty of justification for letting him stay on humanitarian grounds. Love your work!
As for Putin, I love the way you equate your two statements “The truth is we are enemies” with “He is no friend of this country”. It’s very Hatfield and McCoy – “yer either fer us or agin us”. There is a middle ground you know – that’s kind of the basis for the art of diplomacy.
Blame? If the shoe fits, lace it snugly over the tongue.
Spot on, FreeSpirit.
snowshow that is hysterical Preconcieved whistle blower? ha ha ha.Well jesus every spy that ever was I suppose is that.So if every Republican in the leadership council ,joint chiefs etc agree to steal Obamas office papers marked Top secret and give them to whomever ….that is a preconceived whistle blower?Maybe I should run for the Senate.Then when I get in ,I can steal boat loads of Top secret files and give them to some anti American service.Are you for real?Are you really saying all this is A Ok because you got to see something in the stolen info that enables you to rationalize the way you feel about this country?Well how about we break into the Dem national headquarters…Obamas personal quarters…..The homes of all of Obamas cabinet and administration members to purloin anything that might hurt them?Anthony Weaner is already vetted.ha ha.Your talking like you dont have the foggiest notion of common privacy laws let alone governments right to stamp things Top secret.
oh Putin…..He is running his own little fiefdom over there.A society gone crooked as a cripples back.I see nothing to trust in this man.Believe me there is no love lost between him and this president.Trust???????As always with the Russians it shall be Trust but verify.
michael e, perhaps you don’t understand the way these things work. Blowing the whistle on illegal activities is not a crime. Read that a couple of times and it may sink in. Setting up an alternative court so you can act in a manner contrary to the Fourth Amendment may satisfy you, but there are plenty who would prefer the legality of the whole approach to be tested. Of course, that would involve knowing what the NSA is collecting and doing with the data, so it’s not going to happen. That still doesn’t make Snowden a criminal – if anything, the government’s reluctance to subject the system to scrutiny supports his status as a whistleblower.
You’re an American who has to have your own system explained to you by a foreigner. Consequently, your assessment of Putin and Russia is unlikely to hold much of interest…
Snow shoe what you dont understand is we already have in place a legal system for whistle blowers.A legal way of doing it.it happens all the time.Every day in fact.That is being attacked by Obama and his ilk more so than with all the presidents combined ,and that includes FDR.That of course I am against.But these people who did it “legally”are not in jail.Snowden admitted to taking the job for the reason of -theft of top secret documents.That is night and day to someone who finds himself in possession of information detrimental to societies well being, and feels compelled to take the legal whistle blowers rout.Just as a foreign spy who steals TS documents does it for altruistic reasons of world military parity(Rosenberg’s)You dont seem to have any concept of the legal line in the sand.For you it only seems to matter the “content” of what is stolen and how that might validate the theft.But of course if you think I am wrong and he is guilt free(as he does),,,by all means come home.We will even pay his airfare.And offer him all legal representation and rights free of charge.in fact I wonder why his first move was to run at all.One would almost believe he knew he had done something wrong al, along.Even before he took the job.Listen I have to go……I just took a job at a hospital that allows me the ability to steal all the drugs i want for poor folk who cant afford it.Im hoping all my fellow Drs will do the same this week.I mean as long as my motives are good it makes everything alright.Right?(Sic)So tell me my fine foreigner .What country is it you hail from?
michael e wrote: “Snowden admitted to taking the job for the reason of -theft of top secret documents”. No he didn’t – he allegedly told the South China Post that “he sought a position as an analyst with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the NSA’s secret surveillance program and make them public”. He took the job so he could whistleblow – there’s no legal issue with that. It’s you who has no concept of the line.
I don’t use the content to validate his actions – I don’t need to. I support his actions because according to the law, it is admirable and indeed heroic to be a whistleblower. I support his actions, even more so because the content is partly mine and that violates international treaties.
Your analogies about drugs and hospitals are all rubbish – I assume you only included them as filler? Don’t worry about where I’m from – as it’s not Canada or Mexico and you being American, you wouldn’t be able to find it on a map anyway. If you’re really interested, ask the NSA where I’m from – they’ve got all of my details and my IP address could be matched through my Facebook account…
So he admits to taking a Job…. to steal information to prove Nasa’s secret surveillance program(before he knew anything about it by the way).Thank you for correctly quoting that snowshoe,and backing up everything I wrote .THAT IS ILLEGAL.And this case is now closed.
Jacki yes I worked for Clinton.Yes I keep in touch with some old friends who are high falooting lawyers.Yes I have discussed this with them.And no I have not as of yet found anyone who understands the law that feels he could be found not guilty of the charges against him.Running away was his only option.I wish I could write this in crayon for you American hating- NON AMERICANS……..But really who am I talking to?Two people who despise this country.As jacki has so often made clear
Not only Posada was allowed to stay in the US to avoid extradition, but so was his co-terrorist in the Cubana airliner bombing, Orlando Bosch. Bosch was one of the worst terrorists this country has ever harbored. He was allegedly in Dallas just before the Kennedy assassination, staying at the same motel where the hit was planned. (He felt Kennedy had betrayed the Cuban people). He helped in the planning of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier’s killing in a car bomb in Washington DC, and was even a member of Operation 40, a secret CIA assassination squad involved in killing political and military leaders in countries the US was preparing to infiltrate. Not surprisingly, George H.W. Bush became quite familiar with him, and not only let him live as a free man in Florida (despite many requests to extradite him), but eventually PARDONED him as well, more to ingratiate the Bush family with the ex-pat Cuban community in Miami than to absolve him from any crimes. This move also smoothed the way for Jeb Bush’s political career for higher office in Florida. This from the family of the same GW Bush that said “any country that harbors terrorists is also a terrorist.” Apparently, RIGHT-WING terrorists are not to be tarred with that label. Under Reagan, certain terrorists were labeled “Freedom Fighters” and generously supported.
michael e wrote “to steal information to prove Nasa’s secret surveillance program”. NASA? Now I’m sure you’re talking out of Uranus. Yes, the case is closed.
You worked for Clinton? As what? My money is on drycleaner. You’re always keen to make the government look good, but you’re not very accomplished at it. If only you’d worked harder on Monica’s dress…
Snowshoe I dont know what advanced degree you hold.Im sure it is not in law.Anytime you want talk your man into coming home.And I will bet you a steak dinner he is convicted.Of course only because the government and our legal system is corrupt right?Nothing to do with what he did.Clinton…How do I feel about him now?Well he had more grey matter than any three presidents combined.That i will give him.Many things about his presidency I was unhappy with.When it came to the final “monica” scandal,my feelings were then, as they are now.He should of been removed from office,not just disbarred.He lied to Congress.He lied to the judge who sat on the case.He lied to the American people.What he lied about is irrelevant.He and his wife are very dishonest people.He was in all probability a serial abuser of woman.His wife protected his reputation, and helped cover up his action to all our detriment for the sake of power.My split came when he forced the banks through Janet Reno into giving sub prime mortgages.Fanny and Freddy and so on.I felt and spoke as hard as I could against this up until, and after-the crash.I felt all along it had the potential of dragging us and the world into a financial nightmare.From day one this was my feeling.It proved to be correct.Financially I positioned myself for that collapse and did quite well.To those who did not listen.Who knew so much more than i did ,and shouting me down when I spoke on this…….How did that work out for you?Speaking of that so go on talking snowshoe.tell me how Im always wrong.By the way my stint in left leaning politics taught me all I ever needed to know about how seamy the left is.Im tea party today.What a breath of fresh air.Common sense American values based on the constitution and the bill of rights.On Capitalism,and free markets.On self realience and individual responsibility.Low taxation,smaller government and honest legislators.
michael e, here are the facts:
1) the NSA’s program was in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the US constitution,
2) Snowden recognised this, so took a job that would provide him with access to data that he could use while whistleblowing,
3) recognising that this program was too important to amend let alone cancel, Snowden realised that he would be charged well before the government ever considered the legitimacy of his claim to be a whistleblower, so he exercised his legal right to leave the jurisdiction.
As a teabagger, I’d have thought that any violation of the constitution would offend you deeply, but it seems that’s not the case. You appear not even to care, despite your claims of desiring smaller government and honest legislators. That makes me think that it’s all rhetoric – it certainly isn’t consistent.
@Snowshoe: A number of us have fed the FAIR troll, and as you see, he learns nothing from having his factual mistakes corrected. Nice try, though.
@Peter Hart: Boxes for readers to approve or disapprove comments and a direct reply choice below each comment might improve the focus here as well as the discourse.
@Roger Bloyce, you’re quite right, he is classic troll, but it’s a bit like playing with a punch toy. Despite it being unproductive, it still provides some element of enjoyment… though in this case, a punch toy might provide a more cogent position.
I agree regarding replying to comments directly – it would be very useful.
Snowshoe of course i care.And of course i am against t.And of course i realize some of this information was ‘helpful” in our getting our arms around a problem.But it is no different than Republican leaders being briefed by Obama in the white house in a top secret meeting on why the president has facilitated the buying up of billions of rounds of ammo…..tape recording it…..and releasing it to the press.It is still against the law.And to say he went in knowing the 4th amendment was being broken is a lie.he knew nothing……nothing nothing nothing before he got in.He took the job to steal info.And out of the volumes he stole,one thing especially has ignited us as Americans.One thing he new nothing of before he stole it.A man breaks into your home.Steals everything you own.Including a tape of you abusing your wife.DOES HE GET OFF?No off course notThanks for that info and away you go to jail.And we will never know what harm has been done by this dump.If you think the Russians have not retrieved it all your a fool.They play hardball with the best intel people in the world.You really think this young kid has beat them at this game?All this intel is now compromised.Unknown to many people ……the white house burglars uncovered dirty tricks and illegalities by the Dems in the watergate break in .They actually hit ay dirt.Now remind me …what was the lefts take on that>Oh yeah I remember now.And as I recall they wanted heads.And not for the lefts dirty tricks.AND THEY WERE RIGHT!These people on this sight are a group of trolls who try to point to anyone who will not be forced into following them as same.They believe any law can be broken as long as it helps the things they believe in,This president fosters it.He forces you to buy something(healthcare)that is in violation of the constitution.So he changes direction and calls it a tax.Can you imagine a conservative forcing you to buy guns?A tax to fulfil the 2nd ammend…?Yet this is where you are all so short sighted.The law must be blind.Not politically motivated.Whatecer slippage occurs on your side will be used later by ours.I want neither.Snowden broke the law.He ran for good reason.You still believe the ends justify the means.Something believed by Lennon.No not John lennon.The other dude who was not real big on freedom