Edward Snowden
| ...aka the skinny little creep... |
said Friday that he has no regrets over leaking details about U.S. electronic spying networks and is seeking temporary asylum in Russia until he can reach one of the Latin American countries that has offered to take him in.
| I can think of places in Russia where Vlad could stash him. The Kolyma is beautiful in November... |
"That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets," he told a group of human rights activists and other public officials at a meeting at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, where he has taken refuge since June 23.
"I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell U.S. secrets," he said in a statement released through WikiLeaks. "I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice."
| The skinny little creep is the worst attention whore since O.J. ... |
Snowden, whose U.S. passport has been revoked, said he has formally accepted an offer of asylum from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as well as all others which have expressed support "and all others that may be offered in the future."
The meeting included Vyacheslav Nikonov, chairman of the Russian state Duma, Sergei Nikitin, head of Amnesty International Russia, Vladimir Lukin, Russia's presidential human rights ombudsman, attorney Genri Reznik, and Tanya Lokshina, of Human Rights Watch.
| Tanya is in Moscow instead of Damascus or Cairo, notice... |
Snowden said he "does not intend to harm the U.S. in the future," according to Nikonov.
"No actions I take or plan are meant to harm the U.S. ... I want the U.S. to succeed," Snowden was quoted as saying at the meeting.
| Oh, so now the skinny little creep knows what's best of us, does he... |
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Russian news agencies after Snowden's announcement Friday that Russia had not received a new bid for asylum from Snowden and that Putin would continue to insist that Snowden stop leaking information.
Snowden said the U.S. government and intelligence agencies have tried to make an example of him as "a warning to all others who might speak out as I have."
"I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression," he said.
He also invoked the principles declared at the Nuremberg trial of Nazis in 1945 that "individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."
The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, issued a statement Thursday asserting that the former defense contractor "has serious claims for asylum and has a legitimate right to seek asylum irrespective of the human rights record of the country that he ultimately ends up in."
| So the skinny little creep can have asylum in North Korea. That works... |
Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU human rights program, and Chandra Bhatnaqar, senior attorney for the program, also warn that by infringing on Snowden's right to asylum, "U.S. actions also create the risk of providing cover for other countries to crack down on whistle-blowers and deny asylum to individuals who have exposed illegal activity or human rights violations.
"That's a very dangerous precedent to set," the statement says.
| What's dangerous is that Champ has fumbled this badly. What's dangerous is that whistle-blowers feel as though they have to go to Wikileaks instead of WaPo. What's dangerous is that our government spies on our citizens. But the nasty countries and dictators around the world don't need the 'Snowden precedent' to crack down on their own people. They've been doing that just fine the last several millennia... |
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