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INCREDIBLE: Hong Kong Protesters Embrace Unexpected Christian Anthem

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A hymn sung by Christian groups participating in the anti-extradition Hong Kong protests has caught on and become an unlikely anthem for the movement of millions in the streets.

For the past week, “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord” has been heard almost non-stop at the main protest site in front of the city’s Legislative Council, and at marches and tense stand-offs with police, Reuters reported.

Although only 10 percent of the population is Christian, church groups quickly rallied after being alarmed by reports of police brutality to make a safe haven for protesters as the government said it had to crack down on “organized riots.” . . .

“As religious assemblies were exempt, it could protect the protesters. It also shows that it is a peaceful protest,” Edwin Chow, 19, acting president of the Hong Kong Federation of Catholic Students, told Reuters. “This was the one people picked up, as it is easy for people to follow, with a simple message and easy melody.”

The simple hymn heard around Hong Kong was composed by Linda Stassen-Benjamin in the United States in 1974 for Easter.

(Read more from “Hong Kong Protesters Embrace Unexpected Christian Anthem” HERE)

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Are Hong Kong’s Days of Freedom Numbered?

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The murder in Taiwan of a 19-year-old Hong Kong woman at the hands of her boyfriend on Valentine’s Day 2018 seemed routine enough. Another tragic story of a love affair going terribly wrong.

But Chinese authorities seized on the year-old incident to try and push through a new extradition law that would allow some crimes committed in Hong Kong to be prosecuted in China. The Beijing government badly miscalculated the reaction by citizens to this blatant attempt to curtail Hong Kong’s “special relationship” with the Chinese government in their semi-autonomous province. This led to massive demonstrations which some estimates placed at over a million demonstrators.

On Saturday, China’s puppet, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, apologized for introducing the law but resisted calls to withdraw it entirely and step down. “The government understands these views have been made out of love and care for Hong Kong,” according to a statement from an unidentified government spokesman.” . . .

It isn’t just that Hong Kong residents identify far more with their city than China. People in the city have a very different concept of “freedom” than the Communists in China. They are hyper-sensitive to any effort by Beijing to impose their political culture on Hong Kong residents, as evidenced by the massive demonstrations against the proposed extradition law.

In short, Beijing simply doesn’t care about the unrest. The murderers who killed thousands in Tiananmen Square in 1989 aren’t squeamish about busting a few protesters’ heads. Hong Kong is about to get a lesson in why Communists were once in control of half the planet. They will keep pressuring residents until the vast majority throw up their hands and give in to the tyranny. From Poland and Eastern Europe to Latin America, Africa, and Asia, the relentless drive for total control by Communists eventually wears people down and they give in. (Read more from “Are Hong Kong’s Days of Freedom Numbered?” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook 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.

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.

Hong Kong: Snowden Has Left for Third Country, US Extradition Request Rejected (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

By Fox News. Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who exposed secrets about the federal government’s surveillance programs, has reportedly has left for a “third country,” the Hong Kong government said Sunday.

A statement from the government did not identify the country, but the South China Morning Post, which has been in contact with Edward Snowden, reported that he was on a plane for Moscow, but that Russia was not his final destination.

Snowden, who has been in hiding in Hong Kong for several weeks since he revealed information on the highly classified spy programs, has talked of seeking asylum in Iceland.

His departure came a day after the United States made a formal request for his extradition and warned Hong Kong against delaying the process of returning him to face trial in the U.S.

Fox News confirmed Saturday that the U.S. was talking with Hong Kong officials about seeking extradition for Snowden. The talks were reported first by CBS News.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Dershowitz to Newsmax: Obama Administration ‘Stupid’ to Charge Snowden with Espionage

By Paul Scicchitano. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tells Newsmax that the Obama administration was “stupid” to charge NSA leaker Edward Snowden with espionage since that may give Hong Kong officials a legitimate out to refuse extradition.

“Forget about whether it’s warranted or not,” said Dershowitz in an exclusive interview on Saturday. “It’s really dumb to charge him with what might be considered to be a political offense when they’re trying to extradite him.”

In addition to being difficult for prosecutors to prove, the extradition treaty with Hong Kong “explicitly excludes political crimes and this gives them an excuse to say ‘we’re not going to turn him over to you because you’ve indicted him for a political crime,’” according to Dershowitz, who is also a Newsmax contributor.

“If they had just indicted him for theft and conversion of property — an ordinary crime — the chances of getting him extradited would have increased dramatically,” he explained. “But at this point they have really shot themselves in the foot. I don’t know why they did it.”

The Obama administration on Saturday sharply warned Hong Kong against slow-walking the extradition of Snowden, reflecting concerns over a prolonged legal battle before the government contractor ever appears in a U.S. courtroom to answer espionage charges for revealing two highly classified surveillance programs.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pro-Democratic Lawmakers in Hong Kong Urge Obama to “Let Snowden Go!”

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Photo Credit: AP

During a press conference earlier today, two Hong Kong lawmakers suggested that the U.S. should “tread very carefully” with the Edward Snowden case and “consider letting go” of the NSA whistleblower.

Claudia Mo Man-ching and Gary Fan Kwok-wai also sent a letter to President Obama, suggesting that prosecution of Snowden might put a “stain … on his political career.”

Man-ching said that extraditing Snowden would be complicated, and wrote in the letter that she and Kwok-wai believe Snowden has “done liberal democracy a service” by leaking the information alleging a vast domestic surveillance program by NSA that may be illegal.

Read more from this story HERE.

Snowden Threatens to Reveal More ‘Explosive’ NSA Secrets

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Photo Credit: AP

Former U.S. spy Edward Snowden on Wednesday vowed to fight any bid to extradite him from Hong Kong and promised “explosive” new revelations about Washington’s surveillance targets, The South China Morning Post reported.

Specifically, Snowden reportedly showed the newspaper “unverified documents” describing an extensive U.S. campaign to obtain information from computers in Hong Kong and mainland China.

“We hack network backbones, like huge Internet routers, basically, that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” he told the newspaper.

Officials have confirmed that Snowden may have more secret material.

Read more from this story HERE.

America’s Economic Freedom Ranking Nosedives to No. 18 in the World Due to Obama’s Policies

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Canada has taken its place among the Top 5 countries with the most economic freedom, according to a new Fraser Institute report — now leaps and bounds ahead of the United States thanks to the gradual shrinking of the Canadian government since the mid-1990s as America’s just got bigger.

The annual Economic Freedom of the World report, released Tuesday, has Canada tied in fifth place with Australia — up one spot from last year. Hong Kong remains at the top, Singapore’s next, then New Zealand.

Meanwhile, the United States, once a “standard bearer” of economic liberty among industrial nations, spiralled 10 spots from the 2011 rankings to 18th place — its lowest position ever, and a huge drop from its second place spot in 2000.

And as the size of Canada’s government continues to slightly shrink due to slowed growth in government spending post-recession and America’s continues to expand, this indicator could eventually make us the industrialized world’s new leader on economic freedom, said Fraser Institute president Niels Veldhuis.

“What we have in front of us is a marked opportunity,” he said. “We can significantly exceed the U.S. in economic freedom over the course of, I would say, the next five to 10 years. The question for Canadians is are we going to seize the opportunity or are we going to let the opportunity go by?’’

Read more from this story HERE.

New Evidence of North Korea’s EMP weapon; now developing nuclear “super-EMP bombs”

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Recent satellite navigation jamming by North Korea’s military near the demilitarized zone and a report in a Chinese journal are raising new fears that Pyongyang is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons.

A communist-owned monthly journal in Hong Kong reported last month that the GPS jamming of aircraft navigation systems that was traced to North Korea is part of asymmetric warfare capabilities of the reclusive communist state.

The Bauhinia journal article, by military commentator Li Daguang said the new capabilities threaten South Korea’s information and electronic warfare capabilities.

“North Korea has always planned to develop small-scale nuclear warheads,” the article said. “On this foundation, they could develop electromagnetic pulse (EMP) bombs in order to paralyze the weapons systems of the South Korean military — most of which involve electronic equipment — when necessary.”

In fact, Chinese analysts believe North Korea is working on small nuclear warheads that could produce “super-EMP bombs,” the report said. “Once North Korea achieves the actual war deployment of EMP weapons, the power of its special forces would doubtlessly be redoubled,” the report said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: John Pavelka