Julian Assange: Edward Snowden is ‘marooned in Russia’

[Warlord]

Poor bastard is doomed now.

The USG will sweat him out, Putin will crimp and fold eventually, and it's off to a rape/torture cage, like Bradley Manning.

Bring that up to Boobus while the whole country is prattling on about how "free" we are next week.

Just another martyr.

Outside, it's AmeriKa.

They're just questioning him. The Russians are very thorough. They want to know everything they can know. Putin aint stupid. Once he's finished with him he'll be allowed to go on his merry way.

 

[RickyJ]

I'm angry. Where's fucking anonymous? They made a video saying how they were going after the NSA. Idle threat or are they actually working on something?

Anonymous probably is the NSA or CIA.

 

[mrsat_98]

Passports are an invention of the state and totally unnecessary in a free world.

Free world, now that's funny right there.

 

[RickyJ]

They're just questioning him. The Russians are very thorough. They want to know everything they can know. Putin aint stupid. Once he's finished with him he'll be allowed to go on his merry way.

Putin should offer him asylum in Russia. Not exactly the best nation to end up in for life, but it beats jail in the USA.

 

[Fredom101]

Anonymous ? Part of anonymous is the NSA.

Link?

 

[Fredom101]

Free world, now that's funny right there.

A guy can dream.

 

[Anti Federalist]

They're just questioning him. The Russians are very thorough. They want to know everything they can know. Putin aint stupid. Once he's finished with him he'll be allowed to go on his merry way.

Without "paperzzz", he's going nowhere.

He is stuck, and Putin is not going to just let him live the rest of his life in Moscow's airport.

Lesson Learned:

If you are going to enage with the Empire, and anticipate needing asylum or "Free Pratique", you had damn well better be "in country" before you start.

 

[enhanced_deficit]

There will be some full facility in an underground bunker or he's in a safe house being questioned and sleep deprived by Agents of the State and Putin's men. Who knows what he's going to tell them or if he's going to decrypt any files for them. Probably not. I'm sure he's well though. We'll see.

I'm sure you're speculating. Who knows for sure even if he is in Russia at all.

 

[RickyJ]

I'm sure you're speculating. Who knows for sure even if he is in Russia at all.

If he isn't then Putin is a liar. Not that he wouldn't lie, but I don't see a reason why he would lie for Snowden.

 

[enhanced_deficit]

I wasn't aware of Putin's statement. Guess you are right then, but I am bit surprised why would his handlers like Julian telegrapgh his minute by minute location to media until he has found a place he wants to be at.

 

[Fredom101]

Without "paperzzz", he's going nowhere.

He is stuck, and Putin is not going to just let him live the rest of his life in Moscow's airport.

Lesson Learned:

If you are going to enage with the Empire, and anticipate needing asylum or "Free Pratique", you had damn well better be "in country" before you start.

If he had stayed in Hawaii he'd be sitting in a rape room by now. Easy to second guess at this point. I'd take my chances in the Moscow airport than anywhere in the US.

 

[Warlord]

Stay strong Edward and go to Venezuela ! Warlord has many corrupt friends there who will set you up*

*I want 10% of your movie rights with exclusive distribution for Kabul's IMAX where the premier must also be held. We'll invite Karzai, Gen. Musharraf, Gen. Hamid Gul, Sharif and many other friends and associates.

 

[enhanced_deficit]

Warlord, you forgot to invite Obama and his neocon masters. Can't have a good freedom puppet show without them in the house.

 

[69360]

He needs refugee papers. Most states will issue them and let him travel without a passport.

He should ask Venez.

Might work. His best bet for papers right now is a lefty dictator that hates the US.

How ridiculous this is. A passport is simply a goddamn piece of paper. The purpose is to identify someone coming into a country. EVERYONE knows who Snowden is. This passport excuse is a bullshit technicality. The US gov't canceled his passport because they consider him guilty before proving himself innocent. Completely anti-freedom. He should be able to travel at this point with or without a passport.

Passports are an invention of the state and totally unnecessary in a free world.

Yes but they are still required by international law for travel right now.

Yeah right and some how able to evade 300 journalists and photographers. More like in a KGB/FSB safe house

I think either the FSB have him or he's holed up in a hotel room eating room service. FSB gulag seems more likely, ex-KGB like Putin wouldn't miss this chance.

 

[Carson]

He should be able to trust these guys.

http://www.whistleblowers.gov/

 

[Anti Federalist]

If he had stayed in Hawaii he'd be sitting in a rape room by now. Easy to second guess at this point. I'd take my chances in the Moscow airport than anywhere in the US.

I meant: be in Ecuador or Iceland BEFORE talking to the press and GG.

 

[Anti Federalist]

Stay strong Edward and go to Venezuela ! Warlord has many corrupt friends there who will set you up*

*I want 10% of your movie rights with exclusive distribution for Kabul's IMAX where the premier must also be held. We'll invite Karzai, Gen. Musharraf, Gen. Hamid Gul, Sharif and many other friends and associates.

Will the humble Warlord be attending?

 

[Barrex]

I'm angry. Where's fucking anonymous? They made a video saying how they were going after the NSA. Idle threat or are they actually working on something?

LOL...rofl..lmao

Anonymous is farce. They have no power to go after someone like NSA.
All they can do is get some data that is not protected or take down few websites. WEAK.
Not even close to real hacking.

 

[Aratus]

Again, Assange is not Snowden...

 

[Zippyjuan]

https://theintercept.com/2018/05/25/deconstructed-the-edward-snowden-interview/

ES is Edward Snowden. MH is the interviewer Mehdi Hasan at The Intercept.

MH: Your enemies here in the U.S. have accused you of being ultra-critical of the. U.S. government but soft on the Russian government, on President Vladimir Putin. And yet in March, I saw that you were on Twitter suggesting there had been vote-rigging in the Russian presidential election. You even called on Russians to “demand justice.” More recently you called the Russian government’s attempt to crack down on the messaging app Telegram “totalitarian.”

Now, from where I’m sitting, those were pretty bold, ballsy, principled moves by you, but were they also foolish moves? Aren’t you risking pissing off Putin and him then sending you back into the U.S. in a fit of rage?

ES: You know, yeah there’s definitely risks involved. And it’s not a smart thing to do. Every one of my lawyers tells me it’s a mistake to keep criticizing the Russian government. They say: Look, you’ve done enough. But that’s not what I’m here for, right? If I wanted to be safe, I never would have left Hawaii. I believe that this world can be better. I believe that this world should be better, but it’s not going to get better unless we make it better. And that requires risk, that requires hard work, that ultimately might require sacrifice.

Donald Trump’s going to be coming out to Russia, you know, whenever he can, whenever sort of politics will let him, because it seems clear that there is no one in this world he loves more than the Russian president. Will he try to make some deal? Maybe. Can I do anything about it? No. But would I sell out my principles in order to try to make that less likely? No.

MH: You just mentioned, I couldn’t help but catch when you said, does he love anyone more? I’m sure a lot of our listeners will be chuckling there.

What is your take? I mean you’re someone who’s out there in Russia, you have criticized both Trump and Putin, what is your take on this whole, did he/didn’t he collude with Russia?

ES: I think people are asking for too much when they hope that the Mueller investigation is going to come up with kind of a smoking gun and say, “Yes! Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, in the hotel room with the piss tape!” You know that’s not how the world works; life is not that simple.

And to be honest, everyone who has heard Trump speak for three minutes knows he’s a wrecking ball. This does not sound like the kind of person that you would want to engage in some kind of complicated Manchurian Candidate, when, you know, the guy can’t even remember what he was going to say at the end of a sentence.

MH: That’s a good point. He’s not great at keeping secrets, or shutting his mouth.

ES: Right, right, right. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t want to cooperate, that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t do anything to achieve an advantage. I just think we just need to be realistic about what an investigation can possibly find.

MH: Now you might say that’s Edward Snowden bending over backwards to be ultra-fair to a man, to a president, who hasn’t been very fair towards him – in fact, Trump wants to kill Snowden and says so openly.

DJT: This guy’s a bad guy. And, you know, there is still a thing called execution.

MH: Trump’s new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has said the same thing:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: He should be brought back from Russia and given due process. And I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence.

MH: Do you think if a similar figure to yourself emerged today to leak against this administration, the Trump administration, in the same way you did five years ago, do you think the response would be very different today? Because I suspect liberals would hail a 2018 version of Edward Snowden, simply because Donald Trump is president and we all hate Donald Trump.

ES: Right. There’s no doubt that Obama as president got special treatment by the media. But I don’t think it’s right to focus on drawing sort of these distinctions. We don’t need any more Red Team-Blue Team in the United States, but as a practical matter. I think you’re absolutely right. You know, Donald Trump is the least popular certainly, and arguably, actually I think demonstrably the least intelligent president we’ve had in the White House now possibly since, you know, we started tracking these kind of things.

And if someone came forward with evidence of the kind of crimes and abuses that we saw in the 2013 revelations, I think they will never have a better moment than they have now.

You know, it’s important to understand that when I came forward I was not trying to bring down Barack Obama or the White House, the NSA or anything like that. I was actually trying to empower him. He campaigned on a platform of ending the kind of mass surveillance that he actually ended up extending and expanding and entrenching. He was given, sort of with a gift-wrap and a bow, a mandate to deliver on all of those promises that previously might not have been possible to work through Congress.

If today, given the fact that we have so many arch Republicans saying, “oh, surveillance is so evil because it’s being done against us,” we’re met and joined with Democrats who despite saying, “oh, we are against abuse of power but we’re going to extend warrantless wiretapping programs and powers and give them to Donald Trump,” the political climate might change in an historic way.