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jlgreco
This is getting pretty damn embarrassing. How utterly petty.
venomsnake
He is helping half the world make fools of themselves by literally doing nothing.
mtgx
This is ridiculous. And I thought France wanted to give Snowden asylum? Was it a trick then? They seem to be playing on US' side here.
m0th87
A fringe party (Le Pen) demanded asylum for Snowden. Big difference between that and a parliamentary consensus.
tptacek
That fringe party being The National Front, which has approximately the same politics as you'd expect from a similarly named party in the US.
k-mcgrady
When did France offer him asylum? Most of the countries he applied to rejected on the basis that he could not apply from abroad.
boi_v2
I am starting to think that too many governments are pretty scared that if they help Snowden some kind of scandal against them would come out, at the end NSA has tones of data about any one. All these is making pretty clear which governments are really concerned and committed with human rights and democracy and which are just about business and profit.

Spain and Portugal are not a surprise, corruption and persecution of activists is all over the place.

axus
But really, what could be a bigger scandal than suspending the 4th amendment and recording all private communication information? What can they release that compares to that?
VladRussian2
>What can they release that compares to that?

offshore banking accounts, kickback/bribe money transfers, undeclared real estate and other property, visits of relaxation to Berlusconi villas staffed with underage maids, etc ... a bunch of stuff that a typical politician is usually involved in. Imagine how it compares in their mind to suspension of 4th (sounds like one after a 3rd, yes?) amendment in some other country across a big ocean.

malandrew
Never thought of that as a reason for denying asylum, but it's quite obvious that if the NSA has tons of communications on your country and your politicians, you probably wouldn't want to piss them off by granting asylum to Snowden

This is almost exactly the blackmailing situation I described in this lively discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5960695

I imagine that the only way to grant him asylum is to do so very very very secretly.

mark_l_watson
+1 I think you are probably correct. The US government must have tons of blackmail worthy "dirt" on a very large number of positions in other countries.

If we can set morality aside and speak of practical matters: my country has some tough problems. We spend as much on our corporate military industrial complex as all other countries put together (or very close to it). This "investment" has paid off nicely for us in maintaining the $ as the world's reserve currency. Even though I spent a good part of my life working in the defense industry, it seems pretty obvious that this "investment" is doing little else but making special interests very wealthy. I have my own opinions on how we can make our country safer while spending much less money.

josemrb
That's speculation.

The pilot requested assistance and permission to land due to problems with fuel indicator. You can listen to the radio exchange in the link below.

http://audioboo.fm/boos/1482009-bolivia-air-force-fuerza-aer...

original post in the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5981156

United857
Wonder if some maintenance staff did some "routine service" on that indicator while that plane was parked at the Moscow airport.
MisterWebz
The above account is 978 days old and has only two comments, one is the above and the other is an almost exact duplicate.

Can anyone verify the legitimacy of his link?

gatekeepr
what are you trying to suggest?
tptacek
Don't be a creep.
MisterWebz
Don't post useless comments.

From the HN guidelines:

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names."

Someone like you ought to have read the guidelines, or do you think having a high karma score means you no longer have to adhere to these guidelines?

mechanical_fish
Let me spell it out for you:

Sneaking around reading people's online history, then using that information to draw unwarranted conclusions about their character, is rude. Stop it.

Meanwhile, it is obvious that the person you're responding to posted the same link in two different threads because... there's multiple threads on HN which are discussing the same issue. This happens all the time.

nknighthb
Wow is that some serious twilight zone BS. It takes exactly two clicks to find the information MisterWebz found. Information that was put there to be found. You don't even leave HN.

Is it also "sneaking around" if I click on your username and discover your real name, twitter username, blog URL, and email address, all that you voluntarily put there for the public?

If I open a phonebook and find someone's number, was I "sneaking around"?

United857
The pilot should have had balls and carried on.

What could they have done? Shoot down a aircraft known to be carrying a head of state?

mrleinad
Yes. They've murdered presidents before.
tdfx
The international uproar over a shoot down would likely be of little comfort to the dead pilot.
rosser
My inner student of conspiracy theory wonders whether there's an organized campaign of disinformation around Snowden's movements and whereabouts underway, to obscure, in the ambient confusion over where he actually is, and is going, his getting Disappeared.
aet
I really doubt the U.S.want Snowden "disappeared"- there is spying, but also due process.
rch
Maybe it's just happy hour, but this finally has me interested in Snowden's personal story. Seems like fun... At least compared to the typical summer slow-news political scandals.