Venezuela's Maduro Offers Asylum to Snowden

(Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered asylum to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on Friday in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of a secret spy program.

"In the name of America's dignity ... I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to Edward Snowden," Maduro told a military parade marking Venezuela's independence day.

"He is a young man who has told the truth, in the spirit of rebellion, about the U.S. spying on the whole world."

The 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor is believed to be holed up in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport.

Russian officials have kept Snowden at arm's length since he landed from Hong Kong on June 23, saying the transit area where passengers stay between flights is neutral territory and he will be on Russian soil only if he goes through passport control.

It was not immediately clear how Snowden would react to Maduro's offer, nor reach Venezuela if he accepted.

Russia has shown signs of growing impatience over Snowden's stay in Moscow. Its deputy foreign minister said on Thursday that Snowden had not sought asylum in that country and needed to choose a place to go.
Moscow has made clear that the longer he stays, the greater the risk of the diplomatic standoff over his fate causing lasting damage to relations with Washington.

Raising the possibility of at least one other option, Nicaragua said it had received an asylum request from Snowden and could agree to it "if circumstances permit".

The White House declined to comment on Maduro's offer.

WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, said on Friday that Snowden had asked six more nations for asylum, bringing to about 20 the number of countries he has appealed to for protection from U.S. espionage charges.

Maduro said Venezuela was ready to offer him sanctuary, and that the details Snowden had revealed of a U.S. spy program had exposed the nefarious schemes of the U.S. "empire."

"Who is the guilty one? A young man ... who denounces war plans, or the U.S. government which launches bombs and arms the terrorist Syrian opposition against the people and legitimate President Bashar al-Assad?" he asked, to applause and cheers from ranks of military officers at the parade.

"Who is the terrorist? Who is the global delinquent?"

'COLONIES OF THE UNITED STATES'

Since narrowly winning a presidential election in April that followed the death of his mentor, Hugo Chavez, from cancer, Maduro has often lambasted the United States - even accusing the Pentagon and former U.S. officials of plotting to kill him.

But the former bus driver and union leader has at times also struck a much more conciliatory note, saying he is ready for better relations with Washington, based on mutual respect.

Already one of Snowden's most vocal supporters on the world stage, Maduro has sharpened his rhetoric in recent days.

It peaked after Bolivia said France, Portugal, Italy and Spain banned a plane carrying its president, Evo Morales, from using their airspace because of suspicions Snowden was aboard.

Latin America's most vocal leftist leaders denounced that as a disgrace and a serious breach of protocol, and Maduro said the CIA, the U.S. spy agency, was behind it all.

Snowden had revealed that the United States was spying on its European allies, Maduro said on Friday, and yet European leaders still caved under U.S. pressure to ground Morales' jet.

"The European people have seen the cowardice and the weakness of their governments, which now look like colonies of the United States," the Venezuelan president said.

source

Michael Hastings OBVIOUSLY Murdered by Bomb on Gas Tank

"For all 3 of those normal reasons, which account for virtually all car fires in modern cars, the fire would have started in the engine compartment, progressed slowly, and scorched the hell out of the paint before ever reaching the gas tank. That clean paint is the be all tell all, Michael Hastings was murdered, and the rest is detail."

UPDATE: Accident scenes switched. They swapped cars and locations to hide explosive damage, PROOF IS BELOW

UPDATE: It seems to me that Hastings may have been dead, his car parked there, and then blown up with him in it. This is because the flames are way too fresh for the car to have been there long, there is no impact damage where the car "struck the tree" to cause a gas tank explosion, and there are no flames on the road behind the car to indicate it was blown up while it was moving. Keep in mind that the Loudlabs report is fake and not consistent with the original news reports which have been expunged.

This appears to be a classic mafia hit, where you are killed and then burned in a car to hide the evidence. In this case, they obviously used a bomb to blow the gas tank as evidenced by the fact that the rear portion of the car is blown open and shredded with the rest of the car nicely intact, read the initial analysis below. And obviously, there was no high speed crash as reported by the lie factory. I will be working on this throughout the day.

It was perfect to have this happen on a late late Tuesday night, the quietest night of the week, one so quiet that many restaurants will not open. This would have helped ensure a proper setup with few witnesses.
Take a look at the following screen capture of this "crash" and observe a few things:

 1. There is no impact damage to this car. The only damage there is in the back, not smashed in the front and it obviously missed the tree as it rolled to a stop. The front bumper is obscured by the tree, all the way to the tire, OOPS! . 

2. This was a Mercedes, not a Pinto, which means it did not burst into flames on its own. One (seldom quoted) eyewitness said the car "exploded". Interesting stuff.

3. Here is where it starts to get REALLY damning - LOOK AT THE FRONT PASSENGER DOOR. The paint is PERFECT yet the entire car is ablaze. This means that whoever photographed this was on scene right away, with a camera ready to film this in the wee hours of the morning, and nail it before the fire scorched the paint. HMMMMMM . . . . . .

4. Unlike what the so called single "eyewitness" report says about a high speed crash, the car did not impact a tree. The car did not impact ANYTHING. Look at where the car stopped. The car went off the road at a few miles an hour and missed the tree as it rolled to a stop. In contrast with the mangled car photos shown by loudlabs, the passenger door is perfectly straight and the tire is perfectly straight, with a perfectly straight fender above it. Why is it all straight in even the first LoudLabs shots, and all bent up when they want to make the image of carnage? THAT was a serious continuity error.

5. There is no damage to the front of the car, it has no frontal impact damage AT ALL, it is damaged in the back and not crunched in from the front. HOW ON EARTH DID THAT DAMAGED BACK END HAPPEN FROM A FRONT IMPACT WHEN THE DOOR IS STILL ALIGNED PERFECTLY IN THE INITIAL SHOTS? The answer is obvious - they took footage of a different burning wreck, and copied it into this "newscast". It is, after all, Hollywood. 

AND FINALLY, THE MOST DAMNING THING OF ALL -
Here we have a car FULLY, and I mean FULLY in flames, from front to back, with NO SCORCHED PAINT because the flame is too new, which means the flame went from the back of the car to the front of the car instantaneously, at the same time it breached the floor and engulfed the passenger compartment before it had a chance to scorch anything, which means ONE THING - A BOMB ON THE GAS TANK, and a PHOTOGRAPHER READY TO SNAP THE PHOTO VERY EARLY ON. Even rapid car fires take time to progress through the car, and totally scorch the paint as they progress. Only a bomb could have blown gas through the floor to the inside of the passenger compartment and under the car all the way to the front of the engine compartment and lit the whole thing up at once. That's the only explanation for the shiny paint while it sits completely engulfed in flames. That flame did not progress through that car, it was blown through it with force and the photographer was on the scene the moment it happened and bagged a perfect shot. I'd like to know how that happened - early morning walk?

I'd like to also mention something here - Sheriff Larry Dever was most likely killed by an ECM hack, because he was driving something big and needed a serious high speed accident. With me, when they tried, the incident was with a semi because I was driving a Geo Metro. And in the case of Michael Hastings, his car was such a safe one that you could not guarantee a death in an incident with a semi, and also could not guarantee a death in a high speed crash. I'd bet Hastings wore his seat belt all the time, and Dever did not, and the murderers would know these details before doing it. So to have Hastings definitely dead, kill him first, put him in his car, and blow the gas tank. It may have been possible to remote control the car to where it is with the engine computer via an ECU hack with the oh so convenient Federally mandated always on 3g cell connection to the heart of the car's control computer with Hastings dead the entire time, and just blow the bomb when the car was where they wanted it. Mercedes are extremely advanced, and it is possible Hasting's car was full drive by wire.

No matter how you slice this particular pie, a Mercedes is not just going to explode into flames without a little assistance. Car fires in new cars happen for three main reasons - running the engine out of oil, or running the engine out of coolant, or after an absolutely huge car mangling accident, having the hot side of the battery short out against the frame before it reaches the fuse panel. And for all 3 of those normal reasons, which account for virtually all car fires in modern cars, the fire would have started in the engine compartment, progressed slowly, and scorched the hell out of the paint before ever reaching the gas tank. That clean paint is the be all tell all, Michael Hastings was murdered, and the rest is detail.

Update: LOCATIONS CHANGED AND PHONY WRECK USED TO HIDE EXPLOSIVE DAMAGE FOR DAY TIME PHOTO OP

Here is what they want you to believe

But that is not consistent with this: And notice the trees.

All of these photos are from the same news video. One question - Why are the trees not the same as in the original photo above? Where is the damaged section at the rear of the car, which is CLEARLY visible in the original photo above?

The answer is obvious. THEY SWITCHED CARS AND LOCATIONS FOR THE DAY TIME PHOTO OP. Look at both of these pictures, you can clearly see the car is not the same. The location is not the same. On top of that, why is the car still there the NEXT DAY, 10 hours after the crash, when wrecks always get towed away within a couple hours, as soon as the flames are out? Why is the front end not mangled in the original photo, or even the tree for that matter?

For the day time photo op which should not have been possible anyway (it would have been towed long before) they used a different location with different trees, and interspersed the night time fire photos and the daytime shots with those of a different wreck to show pictures of a car that was not destroyed by a bomb. Just look and think, it is OBVIOUS.

This is so far out there that I had to double and triple confirm I did not screw this up, and indeed I did not, ALL of the photos are frame captures from the exact same news video. They TOTALLY blew it with this one.

This is as messed up as Woolwich. 


A note to the setup crew: When you produce your garbage, it is going to be analyzed by a LOT of brilliant people, and if you are not careful your efforts won't cut it. I am ashamed of you, surely the old world Russia or maybe East Berlin would have done this A LOT BETTER.
A note to the world: Take a look at what is here, and remember this the next time you see a bunch of hype about what a great free country America is. They do this to journalists and whistleblowers here.
 
For those of you who do not know, Michael Hastings was the Rolling Stone reporter who interviewed Assange, brought down General McChrystal, and did several other high level exposures of government corruption.

UPDATE: The original newscast videos have been entirely expunged from the web, and entirely replaced with the LoudLabs video.

The Loudlabs video STILL intersperses two car wrecks, but they try to explain it away by repeatedly showing different angles of the crash, to make you think you did not see it right at first. But look at the FIRST SHOT in the Loudlabs video, you can see the entire intact car that is not crunched AT ALL, with the front of the car obviously missing the tree and obscured behind the tree. The Mexican guy the police talk to said the car was on fire before it arrived at the tree, and in the LoudLabs video they do a close up, and you can see bullet holes shot in the car, two in the drivers door and several just behind the drivers door. 

Something is really strange here. Remember, this happened in Hollywood. Who knows what is real? Bullet holes in the drivers door followed by a high speed crash are just as damning as no crash and a gas tank bomb. If Loudlabs faked this, what good did it do?

Farganne keeps asking why I think the crunched car is fake. Here is my answer:

In the first shot, even in the loudlabs video, that car is intact, with no parts thrown from the front of the car anywhere in sight. It's a clean scene, except for debris surrounding the back of the car as would be if a bomb went off back there. It is in normal condition with the door seams matching as if there was no crash, sitting there burning, with the frame straight and the front passenger tire straight.

Then later, loudlabs intersperses another wreck, where you can clearly see the passenger door is badly crumpled, the front passenger side wheel is bent, and the front of the car is totally obliterated with shredded metal high in the air, and the car totally rammed into a tree. 

Those two images DO NOT MATCH AT ALL.

Photo 1. No passenger side impact, no mangled front end, perfectly straight door and fender, and no debris from the front end:

Photo 2. SEVERE PASSENGER SIDE IMPACT and extreme carnage, with lots of debris

That means that ONE of them is special effects. Guess which one? And if there are ANY special effects, LoudLabs is BUNK. 

And what about this tree? Why is the bottom not burnt at all? Why did they scrape off the char at the bottom? To provide an "impact mark"? Furthermore, if this was a 100 mph crash as fronted, that tree would have a lot more than just surface damage that could be scraped off. 

source

CIA Whistleblower to Snowden: ‘Do NOT Cooperate With The FBI’

NSA leaker Edward Snowden is the subject of an open letter of support just published from behind bars by John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent currently serving time for sharing state secrets.

In a letter dated June 13 and published Tuesday by Firedoglake, the imprisoned CIA vet salutes Snowden for his recent disclosures of classified documents detailing some of the vast surveillance programs operated by the United States’ National Security Agency.


“Thank you for your revelations of government wrongdoing over the past week,” Kiriakou writes. “You have done the country a great public service.”

“I know that it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders right now, but as Americans begin to realize that we are devolving into a police state, with the loss of civil liberties that entails, they will see your actions for what they are: heroic.”

Beginning with the June 6 publication of a dragnet court order demanding the phone data of millions of Americans, The Guardian newspaper has released a collection of leaked documents attributed to Snowden for which the US government has charged him with espionage. He is reportedly now hiding in a Moscow airport and has sought asylum from no fewer than 20 countries to avoid prosecution in the US. Should he be sent home and forced to stand trial, however, Snowden will likely find himself in a peculiar position that the former Central Intelligence Agency analyst can most certainly relate to: Kiriakou is currently serving a 36-month sentence at the Loretto, Pennsylvania federal prison for revealing the identity of a covert CIA agent to reporters.

Before Kiriakou pleaded guilty to one count of passing classified information to the media last year, the government charged him under the Espionage Act of 1917. He has equated the prosecution as retaliation for his own past actions, saying the charge wasn’t the result of outing a secret agent but over exposing truths about the George W. Bush administration’s use of waterboarding as an interrogation tool in the post-9/11 war on terror. As in the case of Snowden, Kiriakou’s supporters have hailed him as a whistleblower. As the government sings a very different song, though, the CIA analyst offers advice to Snowden in what is the second of his “Letters from Loretto” published by Firedoglake since Kiriakou’s two-and-a-half-year sentence began earlier this spring.

“First, find the best national security attorneys money can buy,” writes Kiriakou. “I was blessed to be represented by legal titans and, although I was forced to take a plea in the end, the shortness of my sentence is a testament to their expertise.”

“Second, establish a website that your supporters can follow your case, get your side of the story and, most importantly, make donations to support your defense.”

Kiriakou goes on to encourage Snowden toward garnering support within members of Congress and other institutions capable of calling attention to his case, such as the American Civil Liberties Union. Before he concludes, however, he bestows on Snowden what he calls “the most important advice I can offer.” 

“DO NOT, under any circumstances, cooperate with the FBI,” Kiriakou warns. “FBI agents will lie, trick and deceive you. They will twist your words and play on your patriotism to entrap you. They will pretend to be people they are not — supporters, well-wishers and friends — all the while wearing wires to record your out-of-context statements to use against you. The FBI is the enemy; it’s a part of the problem, not the solution.” 

“I wish you the very best of luck,” Kiriakou writes before signing off. “I hope you can get to Iceland quickly and safely. There you will find a people and a government who care about the freedoms that we hold dear and for which our forefathers and veterans fought and died.” 

When Snowden first revealed himself to be the source of the leaked documents last month, murmurings quickly began circulating of Iceland possibly extending his way an offer of asylum. The list of countries asked to consider his request reportedly now exceeds 20, and the likes of Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba and Switzerland have all been floated as options. As Firedoglake’s Kevin Gosztola recalls, though, the Federal Bureau of Investigation likely won’t rule out dirty tricks to try and take down Snowden before he escapes, at least if Kiriakou’s experiences are any indication. 

“According to Kiriakou, the FBI also tried to set him up,” Gosztola writes. He goes on to cite a January 2013 interview in which the CIA whistleblower recounted a previously untold story about the government’s alleged efforts to indict Kiriakou on even more charges. 

“In the summer of 2010, a foreign intelligence officer offered me cash in exchange for classified information,” Kiriakou said. “I turned down the pitch and I immediately reported it to the FBI. So, the FBI asked me to take the guy out to lunch and to ask him what information he wanted and how much information he was willing to give me for it.” 

“After the lunch, I wrote a long memo to the FBI — and I did this four or five times. It turns out – and we only learned this three or four weeks ago – there never was a foreign intelligence officer. It was an FBI agent pretending to be an intelligence officer and they were trying to set me up on an Espionage Act charge but I repeatedly reported the contact so I foiled them in their effort to set me up.”
 
Kiriakou is one of eight Americans charged under that World War One-era legislation by President Barack Obama, who has prosecuted more people under that law that all previous leaders combined. Snowden became the latest US citizen to have their name added to that list and joins the likes of WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake. In a question-and-answer session hosted by The Guardian last month, Snowden celebrated those men as “examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope and skill involved in future disclosures.” 

“Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response,” Snowden said. 

In his first statement since entering Moscow more than a week ago, Snowden published a note through WikiLeaks on Monday dismissing the White House’s hunt for leakers, calling their tactics deceptive, unjust and “bad tools of political aggression.” 

“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,” Snowden wrote. 

source