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Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana

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Re: Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana

#91
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1577180-venezuela-cuenta-otra-vez...

Would you accept an audit conducted behind closed doors, which for unknown reasons did not include the electoral notebooks uniquely identifying each voter, for an election that had more than 3,200 irregularities[1] including instances of individuals attempting to vote multiple times? I wouldn't, and I'm not sure Jimmy Carter would either. [1] http://rt.com/news/venezuela-presidential-election-results-8...

The audit was a public act where participated all the parties, with the curious exception of the one who solicited it. It was open to the public, and filmed. People around the world was invited and witnessed it.

The electoral notebooks were audited twice. The first time before the October 2012 elections and the second one before the 2013 elections. In both case, the opposition parties approved the process. Now they are asking for a new audit of the used notebooks, one not supported by the law. They only asked for a new audit to try to keep alive their "protest".

Those 3,200 "irregularities" are anonymous, unsubstantiated, and in many cases patently false reports made in an opposition website. Some examples included "Ms. Mary, a witness from the government party didn't assisted to the process the day of the election", "An electronic machine didn't work". And you have the "grave" accusation like opposition witness expelled of the voting centers at gun point. The only problem is that there's no support for those accusation. No police report, no video, no witness willing to swear before a court of law. Or you have an accusation, like the one made by Capriles in public tv that a voting center had more votes that voters... if you count all the votes in the building but only the voters of one station poll in the building.

These kind of irresponsible denounces will be laughable and those who spread them condemn to the public ridicule if the media would do its job. Instead, they have been keeping repeating the number of (alleged) denounces without spending one second in their substance. For god's sake! The denounces officially presented to the electoral council were a printing of a powerpoint presentation devoid of any actionable piece of information that could be used to investigate them.

Re: Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can consider whatever you want to be gross negligence. The legal system, on the other hand, would look to things like the exact circumstances, the reasons things were done as they were, and whether and to what degree the relevant actions deviated from relevant rules, regulations, and standard practices in similar situations. And unless you have all of that information, you can't possibly make that judgement.

Like I said, it's just my opinion dude, so don't get all worked up. And if you're not getting worked up, my apologies, but that's how your replies seem to me. For instance, it seems like common sense or widely accepted practice that sensitive materials should be stored on machines that should be air-gapped, and common knowledge informs legal decisions about what is gross negligence or not. For instance: http://legal-…

How are you proposing that tens of thousands of people around the globe working together on multi-billion-dollar projects perform their jobs effectively if all the information is stored on isolated machines?

Re: Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana

#93
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all sick of the US acting like the big boss around the world. +1 to Hong Kong, Russia and the rest giving it the big middle finger.

My step-father told me a great story about the Cuban Missile Crisis. While Washington and Moscow at each other's throats, he was on a US Navy warship turning away freighters carrying missiles bound for Cuba. As his boat got close to the Russian ships, the crews on either side would wave at each other and take pictures. Regular ol' people to be friendly no matter their background and are not representative of how thei…

Of course I do :) I've been living in the US for 4 years now. Some of my best friends are American. Regular people are just regular people, just like me and you and most [1] people reading this.

[1] Thanks to Snowden, I can confidently write most and not maybe

Re: Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana

#94
It's ironic that Snowden's destination, Venezuela, is fairly authoritarian itself: the 2008 Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index rated Venezuela as a "Hybrid Regime", and as the least democratic state in South America. His countries of aid so far (China, Russia, possibly Cuba) have a similarly poor record. I guess Snowden doesn't have a problem getting help from, or possibly living under, an authoritarian régime, if it suits his interests. Not a terribly principled man. Indeed, it would be better for the cause of domestic surveillance were he to subject himself to the mega-press event that would be a criminal trial in the U.S. Obviously the outcome would be much worse for him in that case.

Re: Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana

#95
post #80
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all sick of the US acting like the big boss around the world. +1 to Hong Kong, Russia and the rest giving it the big middle finger.

It will be much preferable, of course, to have Russia acting like the big boss around the world, or China.

There's really no better. They're all worse than each other.

Re: Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana

#97
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was brilliant. Hong Kong didn't immediately jump when the US Government said to jump. It enabled Snowden to get away. So let's take score. US military has over a hundred bases globally. The CIA operates in over a hundred countries. The US intelligence budget is over $80 billion. The NSA can 'see' practically everything. And there goes Snowden, escaping on a common commercial flight out of Hong Kong. If anybody loo…

> If anybody looks stupid, it's clearly the US Government. Not really. What can they really do? Usually, they'd bully countries into submission. Hong Kong proved it does not bow down to the US. They also cannot really kidnap him or anything like that. It's way too public at this point, and as "terrible" the CIA sometimes is, they're not a bunch of murdering assholes like the Mossad.

You are correct the Mossad assassinates people routinely.

However, this is a poorly chosen rhetorical attack in defense of the CIA since the US currently is engaging in a global assassination war using drones and other means which has murdered far far more people than the Mossad ever has, and far more of those people are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Mossad at least picks specific and known enemy leaders and tends to assassinate only them up close and personal. It is true there is collateral damage, but the collateral killings caused by the US assassinations are much greater. The CIA is deeply involved in selecting targets and running the assassination programs, just as it was involved in horrific torture, abuse and war crimes committed against thousands of people in recent years. The CIA is a powerful and dangerous criminal organization which routinely engages in crimes against humanity. There is absolutely no defense possible for the crimes committed by the CIA.

http://www.livingunderdrones.org/

http://humanrightsclinic.law.stanford.edu/project/living-und...

The argument that "at least the CIA doesn't assassinate" like some other country that has nothing to do with Snowden's case makes no sense. It's simply not true that the CIA doesn't assassinate as much as the Mossad. The CIA assassinates far more, and far more indiscriminately. The CIA assassinates by giving american kids videogame-like control over flying robotic drones and having them assassinate anyone who they think looks suspicious while eating candy and drinking soda safe in an air conditioned room thousands of miles from where the robot planes are flying patrols. When they see someone they feel like shooting they shoot them and it is assumed that person is a "militant" because they said so. To them it is a fun videogame about shooting what they call "ragheads", and other derisive terms even worse. They keep track of their kill counts as a competition. At no point do they take responsibility for their actions, consider their targets human beings, seek justice, risk their own lives, or display any intelligence or skill. They are just cowardly thugs playing a video game where they shoot up random people who are a religion and color they don't like, because that's their job.

Re: Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, it's just my opinion dude, so don't get all worked up. And if you're not getting worked up, my apologies, but that's how your replies seem to me. For instance, it seems like common sense or widely accepted practice that sensitive materials should be stored on machines that should be air-gapped, and common knowledge informs legal decisions about what is gross negligence or not. For instance: http://legal-…

How are you proposing that tens of thousands of people around the globe working together on multi-billion-dollar projects perform their jobs effectively if all the information is stored on isolated machines?

Geographic isolation, first, so no more "globe-spanning" workforce on trillion-dollar projects. Then they can only work on a dedicated internal network on machines they leave in the office, which media-isolation limited to heavily controlled workstations so someone can't copy things over USB or burn it to disk or upload it via a VPN tunnel.

That seems fair, considering the magnitude of the expenditures and the nature of the work.

Re: Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana

#99
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all sick of the US acting like the big boss around the world. +1 to Hong Kong, Russia and the rest giving it the big middle finger.

My step-father told me a great story about the Cuban Missile Crisis. While Washington and Moscow at each other's throats, he was on a US Navy warship turning away freighters carrying missiles bound for Cuba. As his boat got close to the Russian ships, the crews on either side would wave at each other and take pictures. Regular ol' people to be friendly no matter their background and are not representative of how thei…

we voted for the policy makers, so despite being friendly, its our fault.

Re: Snowden's destination is Venezuela through Havana

#100
post #94

It's ironic that Snowden's destination, Venezuela, is fairly authoritarian itself: the 2008 Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index rated Venezuela as a "Hybrid Regime", and as the least democratic state in South America. His countries of aid so far (China, Russia, possibly Cuba) have a similarly poor record. I guess Snowden doesn't have a problem getting help from, or possibly living under, an authoritarian régi…

Its a giant red flag that he fears the US more than any of these countries -- which, as Americans, would assume would happily interrogate him for years to get the valuable intelligence he allegedly holds. Watching very closely.
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