Iranian Official Signals No Scaling Back in Nuclear Activity

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Iran will press ahead with its uranium enrichment program, its nuclear energy chief said on Friday, signaling no change of course despite the victory of a relative moderate in the June 14 presidential election.

Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, head of the Islamic Republic’s Atomic Energy Organization, said production of nuclear fuel would “continue in line with our declared goals. The enrichment linked to fuel production will also not change.”

Speaking through an interpreter to reporters at a nuclear energy conference in St Petersburg, Russia, he said work at Iran’s underground Fordow plant – which the West wants Iran to close – would also continue. Iran refines uranium at Fordow that is a relatively close technical step away from weapons-grade.

Iran says it is enriching uranium to fuel a planned network of nuclear energy power plants, and also for medical purposes.

But enriched uranium can also provide the fissile material for nuclear bombs if processed further, which the West fears may be Tehran’s ultimate goal.

Read more from this story HERE.

Was NSA Whistleblower Snowden Really in Hong Kong? (+video)

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Photo Credit: Kin Cheung

Photo Credit: Kin Cheung

By Aaron Klein. While NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden continues to baffle world governments and the news media with his exact whereabouts and travel plans, one question apparently not being asked is whether he was ever in Hong Kong in the first place.

Or, if Snowden was in Hong Kong, did he leave the region the weekend, when he was reported to have departed for Moscow?

Snowden is currently a high-profile figure in the news. Yet not a single picture or video that places him in Hong Kong has emerged, including during his purported arrival at the airport with a small entourage of lawyers and a WikiLeaks representative.

The South China Morning Post claimed Snowden took off from the Hong Kong airport at 10:55 a.m. local time on Sunday on flight SU213 and was due to arrive at Moscow’s Shermetyevo International Airport at 5:15 p.m.

Upon the flight’s arrival, Russian and international camera crews caught no glimpses of Snowden. Read more from this story HERE.

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U.S. loses secrets, prestige as China, Russia defy Obama over Snowden

By Dave Boyer. It doesn’t look good when the most powerful man in the world can’t get his hands on one of the most wanted men in the world.

Edward Snowden, the confessed National Security Agency leaker, has eluded U.S. authorities since early June, even as President Obama’s administration pleaded with officials in China and Russia to send the fugitive back to America.

The traditional rivals of the U.S. have even seemed to enjoy the Obama administration’s distress. Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Mr. Snowden “a free man” Tuesday, confirming that Mr. Snowden had been at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport since Sunday. He explicitly refused to comply with the U.S. request to turn over Mr. Snowden, noting that the two countries don’t have an extradition treaty.

The episode is making the U.S. look weak in the eyes of Russia and China, said Leon Aron, a foreign policy analyst at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

“From the point of view of the Russians and the Chinese, definitely,” Mr. Aron said. “In their systems, legitimacy comes from being treated with fear and respect. And clearly, they’re choosing not to treat the United States that way.” Read more from this story HERE.

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The Age of American Impotence: As the Edward Snowden saga illustrates, the Obama administration is running out of foreign influence.

By Bret Stephens. At this writing, Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive National Security Agency contractor indicted on espionage charges, is in Moscow, where Vladimir Putin’s spokesman insists his government is powerless to detain him. “We have nothing to do with this story,” says Dmitri Peskov. “I don’t approve or disapprove plane tickets.”

Funny how Mr. Putin always seems to discover his inner civil libertarian when it’s an opportunity to humiliate the United States. When the Russian government wants someone off Russian soil, it either removes him from it or puts him under it. Just ask investor Bill Browder, who was declared persona non grata when he tried to land in Moscow in November 2005. Or think of Mr. Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, murdered by Russian prison officials four years later.

Mr. Snowden arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong, where local officials refused a U.S. arrest request, supposedly on grounds it “did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law.” That’s funny, too, since Mr. Snowden had been staying in a Chinese government safe house before Beijing gave the order to ignore the U.S. request and let him go.

“The Hong Kong government didn’t have much of a role,” Albert Ho, a Hong Kong legislator, told Reuters. “Its role was to receive instructions to not stop him at the airport.”

Now Mr. Snowden may be on his way to Havana, or Caracas, or Quito. It’s been said often enough that this so-called transparency crusader remains free thanks to the cheek and indulgence of dictatorships and strongmen. It’s also been said that his case illustrates how little has been achieved by President Obama’s “reset” with Moscow, or with his California schmoozing of China’s Xi Jinping earlier this month. Read more from this story HERE.

Taliban Guns Send a Message About Obama’s Peace Process

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

While much of the world is focused on the indignities being heaped on the United States by Russia, China and Ecuador in the fugitive Edward Snowden affair, the Taliban on Monday demonstrated their own contempt for the Obama administration.

Last week, U.S. officials celebrated what they regarded as a diplomatic breakthrough. They had persuaded the Taliban to open a political office in Doha, Qatar—and now America hopes it has the peace-negotiating partners the Obama administration covets as the U.S. plans its escape from Afghanistan. On Monday, the Taliban attacked the presidential compound in Kabul. The daylight gunbattle left at least eight Taliban and three guards dead.

The Afghan government—and the majority of Afghans—were not happy about the Doha news. The Taliban had immediately begun flying its flag and posting signs declaring the office as an outpost of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. President Karzai announced that he would not join peace negotiations with killers who had been so legitimized by the U.S., and he suspended talks with the U.S. about a long-term security arrangement.

The Taliban didn’t take long to prove his point. Or to expose Washington as a receding and tired presence in Afghanistan, desperate to leave.

But despair and confusion cannot bring enduring peace, or even an honorable exit. Now, with the U.S. endorsement of the Taliban office in Doha, the credibility and authority of the Afghan state has been undermined. The Doha debacle also represents the dismantling of an unwritten compact that Afghans thought they had with America: In return for Washington’s support for Afghanistan’s independence, sovereignty and constitutional order, the U.S. would enjoy all privileges of a strategic partnership in a dangerous part of the world, including cooperation on counterterrorism.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Talks Tough on Snowden While His Efforts to Find Haven Appear to Have Stalled

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Evan Perez and Adam Entous. The U.S. hunt for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden came to a boil Monday as the White House ripped into Hong Kong and China and issued warnings to Russia and Ecuador, where Mr. Snowden has sought asylum, sharply dialing up global pressure for his return to face espionage charges.

The case of Mr. Snowden, under federal indictment for stealing and leaking classified documents, has become a test of Washington’s ability to influence unsympathetic governments. Having failed after weeks of work through international legal channels, the U.S. turned to an aggressive diplomatic strategy.

President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and officials at the White House and Justice Department took turns asking for Mr. Snowden’s return to the U.S. amid warnings that relations would be strained.

China was singled out for particular criticism after Mr. Snowden unexpectedly left Hong Kong on Sunday for Moscow in defiance of a U.S. demand for his extradition.

U.S. officials implied that Beijing scuttled what had been a steadily advancing process of establishing a case that would lead to extradition proceedings. Read more from this story HERE.

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NSA leaker’s global flight appears to have stalled, at least for now, as US steps up pressure

By Associated Press. Edward Snowden’s stop-and-start flight across the globe appeared to stall in Moscow as the United States ratcheted up pressure to hand over the National Security Agency leaker who had seemed on his way to Ecuador to seek asylum.

In Ecuador’s most extensive statement about the case, the foreign minister hailed Snowden on Monday as “a man attempting to bring light and transparency to facts that affect everyone’s fundamental liberties.”

The decision whether to grant Snowden the asylum he has requested is a choice between “betraying the citizens of the world or betraying certain powerful elites in a specific country,” Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told reporters while visiting Vietnam.

But what had been expected to be a straightforward journey to this South America nation dissolved into uncertainty by day’s end. Snowden didn’t use a reservation for a Havana-bound Russian airline flight that could have served as the first leg of a trip to safety in Ecuador, and his allies would not say where he was or what changed. Patino said Tuesday that he didn’t know Snowden’s exact whereabouts.

In Washington, the White House demanded that Ecuador and other countries deny Snowden asylum. It also sharply criticized China for letting him leave Hong Kong, and urged Russia to “do the right thing” and send him to the U.S. to face espionage charges. Read more from this story HERE.

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U.S. Officials Don’t Know How Much Secret Material Snowden Took

By Thomson/Reuters. U.S. intelligence agencies are worried they do not yet know how much highly sensitive material is in the possession of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, whose whereabouts are unclear, several U.S. officials said.
The agencies fear that Snowden may have taken many more documents than officials initially estimated and that his alliance with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange increases the likelihood that they will be made public without considering the security implications, they said.

Investigators believe Snowden, who was working in Hawaii for an NSA contractor, was partly successful at covering his tracks as he accessed a broad array of information about operations conducted by NSA and its British equivalent, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), according to the sources, who declined to be identified.

In a weekend television appearance, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, said she had been informed by U.S. officials that Snowden possessed around 200 secret documents.

But one non-government source familiar with Snowden’s materials said that Feinstein grossly understated the size of Snowden’s document haul and that he left for Hong Kong with thousands of documents copied from the NSA files. Read more from this story HERE.

Ecuador Considering Asylum for Snowden; China Approved Snowden Flight to Moscow; US Strong-Arming Russia to Give Him Up

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Photo Credit: Newsmax

Photo Credit: Newsmax

Ecuador Confirms Snowden Asylum Request; Ambassador to Meet US Fugitive

By Newsmax. Fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden is seeking asylum in Ecuador, the Quito government said on Sunday, after Hong Kong let him leave for Russia despite Washington’s efforts to extradite him on espionage charges.

In a major embarrassment for the Obama administration, an aircraft thought to have been carrying Snowden landed in Moscow, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said he was “bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum.”

Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, visiting Vietnam, tweeted: “The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden.”

The United States warned countries in the Western Hemisphere that Snowden might travel through or take refuge in not to let the former spy agency contractor go anywhere but home, a State Department official said on Sunday.

“The U.S. is advising these governments that Snowden is wanted on felony charges, and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States,” the official said in a written statement. Read more from this story HERE.

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China Said to Have Made Call to Let Leaker Depart

By Jane Perlez and Keith Bradsher. The Chinese government made the final decision to allow Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, to leave Hong Kong on Sunday, a move that Beijing believed resolved a tough diplomatic problem even as it reaped a publicity windfall from Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, according to people familiar with the situation.

Hong Kong authorities have insisted that their judicial process remained independent of China, but these observers — who like many in this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely about confidential discussions — said that matters of foreign policy are the domain of the Chinese government, and Beijing exercised that authority in allowing Mr. Snowden to go.

From China’s point of view, analysts said, the departure of Mr. Snowden solved two concerns: how to prevent Beijing’s relationship with the United States from being ensnared in a long legal wrangle in Hong Kong over Mr. Snowden, and how to deal with a Chinese public that widely regards the American computer expert as a hero.

“Behind the door there was definitely some coordination between Hong Kong and Beijing,” said Jin Canrong, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.

Beijing’s chief concern was the stability of the relationship with the United States, which the Chinese believed had been placed on a surer footing during the meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Obama at the Sunnylands estate in California this month, said Mr. Jin and a person knowledgeable about the Hong Kong government’s handling of Mr. Snowden. Read more from this story HERE.

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Subtitle: US Strong-Arming Russia to Give Up Snowden

By Jethro Mullen. The United States is caught up in an intercontinental game of cat-and-mouse with Edward Snowden, the computer contractor who exposed details of secret U.S. surveillance programs.

As Snowden tries to hop from country to country, with help from the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, the United States has resorted to issuing stern words calling for his return.

Hong Kong, where Snowden had been holed up for weeks, allowed him to leave for Moscow on Sunday, despite a U.S. extradition request.

Next, he plans to travel to Ecuador to seek asylum, according to WikiLeaks, which is helping him attempt to stay out of Washington’s reach.

At the same time, the U.S. government is attempting to block his path, calling on the countries involved to hand him over. But its clout appears limited, with Snowden expected to travel through a series of nations that have little reason to heed its request. Read more from this story HERE.

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MAN ON THE RUN: US Lawmakers Warn Potential Snowden Havens

By Fox News. Washington lawmakers rebuked American fugitive Edward Snowden for fleeing Hong Kong to avoid U.S. extradition efforts after exposing U.S. surveillance secrets, with Sen. Chuck Schumer warning about Russia providing safe haven.

Schumer, D-N.Y., said Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t want to cooperate and appears “eager to stick a finger in the eye of the United States” on several pressing, international concerns, including the Syrian civil war.

“That’s not how allies are supposed to treat each other, and it will have consequences,” he said.

Snowden was a National Security Agency contractor whose information was the basis of the blockbuster stories that broke early this month on the federal government’s widespread data collection on phone calls, emails and other Internet activities.

The international incident took another dramatic turn early Sunday morning when Snowden boarded a commercial flight to Russia from Hong Kong, where he has been hiding. Russian news agencies reported Snowden was booked on a flight to Cuba Monday, and he is seeking asylum in Ecuador. Read more from this story HERE.

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On Snowden’s trip, no good options for Obama

By Reid J. Epstein. Edward Snowden’s globe-trotting is the latest international headache for President Barack Obama, with no relief in sight.

The former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified documents about top secret electronic surveillance programs is in Russia and headed to Latin America — where options for bringing him back to the United States to face charges range from highly unlikely to virtually nonexistent.

The spotlight-grabbing international travel — just as Obama seeks to focus attention on his Tuesday climate change speech and a week-long trip to Africa that begins Wednesday — is sure to keep Snowden’s own story atop the headlines, highlighting the White House’s relative powerlessness to bring him back to face charges.

There’s no telling when the stream of stories drawn from his leaks will end, or what his host countries might decide to do with the information he carries, should he share it with them.

And there’s no spinning away the story of Snowden’s continued freedom: Obama and his administration couldn’t talk Hong Kong and China into extraditing Snowden before he left the Chinese protectorate, and have minimal sway with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Read more from this story HERE.

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Pelosi Booed Over Snowden Comments

By Todd Beamon. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was booed on Saturday when she said NSA leaker Edward Snowden broke the law by disclosing confidential information on the agency’s surveillance programs.

“He did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents,” the California Democrat said, drawing boos from the crowd at the NetRoots Nation conference in San Jose. “I understand, I understand, but he did violate the law.

“And the fact is that, again, we have to have the balance between security and privacy – and we don’t know what sources and methods may have been revealed, which is a tough thing,” Pelosi said, The Hill reports.

“I feel sad that this had to come down to this because I know some of you attribute heroic status to that action, but again, you don’t have the responsibility for the security of the U.S.,” she added. “Those of us who do have to strike a different balance.”

Snowden, a former NSA contractor who is in hiding in Hong Kong, was charged on Friday by U.S. officials with espionage and theft of government property. Read more from this story HERE.

Aljazeera Reports that Egypt is Threatening War With Ethiopia Over Water

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Egypt’s president has warned Ethiopia that “all options are open” in dealing with its construction of a Nile dam that threatens to leave Egypt with a dangerous water shortage.

Speaking in a live televised speech before hundreds of supporters on Monday, Mohammed Morsi said Egypt was not calling for war, but it is willing to confront any threats to its water security.

“If it loses one drop, our blood is the alternative,” he said to a raucous crowd of largely Islamist supporters that erupted into a standing ovation.

Ethiopia’s $4.2 billion hydroelectric dam, which would be Africa’s largest, challenges a colonial-era agreement that had given Egypt and Sudan the lion’s share of rights to Nile water.

Experts estimate that Egypt could lose as much as 20 percent of its Nile water in the three to five years needed for Ethiopia to fill a massive reservoir.

Read more from this story HERE.

American Factory Boss Says He’s Being Held Hostage by Scores of Workers in Beijing

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

An American executive said Monday he has been held hostage for four days at his medical supply plant in Beijing by scores of workers demanding severance packages like those given to 30 co-workers in a phased-out department.

Chip Starnes, 42, a co-owner of Coral Springs, Florida-based Specialty Medical Supplies, said local officials had visited the 10-year-old plant on the capital’s outskirts and coerced him into signing agreements Saturday to meet the workers’ demands even though he sought to make clear that the remaining 100 workers weren’t being laid off.

The workers were expecting wire transfers by Tuesday, he said, adding that about 80 of them had been blocking every exit around the clock and depriving him of sleep by shining bright lights and banging on windows of his office. He declined to clarify the amount, saying he wanted to keep it confidential.

“I feel like a trapped animal,” Starnes told The Associated Press on Monday from his first-floor office window, while holding onto the window’s bars. “I think it’s inhumane what is going on right now. I have been in this area for 10 years and created a lot of jobs and I would never have thought in my wildest imagination something like this would happen.”

Workers inside the compound, a pair of two-story buildings behind gates and hedges in the Huairou district of the northeastern Beijing suburbs, repeatedly declined requests for comment, saying they did not want to talk to foreign media.

Read more from this story HERE.

Official Corruption in Mexico, Once Rarely Exposed, Is Starting to Come to Light

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Andrés Granier has a sumptuous wardrobe and lifestyle. He has bragged about owning 400 pairs of shoes, 300 suits and 1,000 shirts, collected from luxury stores in New York and Los Angeles. His purchases barely fit in his several properties, scattered throughout Mexico and abroad.

A tape recording of Mr. Granier’s boasts, making him sound like a highflying corporate executive, was leaked to a local radio station last month. But his job title, until December, was governor of a midsize southeastern Mexican state, a position that currently pays about $92,000 a year after taxes.

“We go to Fifth Avenue and buy a pair of shoes; $600,” Mr. Granier is heard saying about one of his trips abroad. “I took clothes to Miami, I took clothes to Cancún, I took clothes to my house, and I have leftovers,” he added, saying, “I’m going to auction them off.” (The day after the recording was made public, he said that he had been inebriated while making those statements in October.)

But just as eye-opening as the extravagances of a public official — now under investigation after Mr. Granier’s successor discovered that about $190 million in state funds was unaccounted for, the state government said this month — is that they came to light at all in a country where state and local corruption, a serious drag on Mexico’s development, run deep and are rarely exposed.

Read more from this story HERE.

Now it’s Muslim Lawyers Demanding Obama’s Arrest

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

President Obama has appointed Muslims to high U.S. government positions, once declared America no longer Christian, is working on direct talks with the Taliban and has plans to hand over weapons to Muslims in Syria.

He has also advocated for the “Arab Spring” movement that has put hard-line Islamic leaders in power in the Middle East.

None of that, however, is good enough for a Muslim Lawyers Association based in South Africa.

Members there are taking that nation’s National Prosecuting Authority to court for refusing to make plans to arrest Obama when he visits South Africa in a few weeks. The Africa trip is expected to cost U.S. taxpayers $60 million to $100 million…

MLA officials believe Obama’s drone program, through which he has ordered the deaths of numerous suspects overseas, is reason enough for him to be “investigated, charged, arrested, and tried in a South African court for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Gunmen Kill 9 Foreign Tourists in Northern Pakistan

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gunmenGunmen stormed a hotel in a remote part of northern Pakistan on Sunday and killed nine foreign tourists and a Pakistani guide, police and security officials said.

Five Ukrainians, three Chinese a Russian and their guide were killed in the attack in a remote resort area near the base camp for the snow-covered Nanga Parbat mountain, a popular destination for adventurous trekkers, officials said.

“Unknown people entered a hotel where foreign tourists were staying last night and opened fire,” Ali Sher, a senior police officer in Gilgit-Baltistan province, said.

Read more from this story HERE.