Edward Snowden is Still 'Snowed In' at the Russian Airport But Has Asylum Offers

     Sorry, couldn't resist the pun. Again, it's amazing how much art is imitating life in the Snowden search for asylum, if you think Tom Hank's kThe Terminal  is art that is.

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/07/in-ed-snowdens-search-for-asylum-life.html

     In the latest, Mr. Snowden has some offers, which is just as well as the Russians are ready to say goodbye to Tom Hanks. 

     http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/edward-snowden-asylum-93772.html

     The Russians think Venezuela has made a fine offer that Snowden ought to accept. Snowden claims to be motivated by the highest principle. He doesn't want to live in a world where 'everything is recorded.'

     "Edward Snowden says he disclosed his details of U.S. surveillance programs because he doesn’t “want to live in a world where everything that I say – everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship – is recorded.

     Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/edward-snowden-asylum-venezuela-93886.html#ixzz2YaUrGoX

     A couple of problems with this. One is there's just some irony in going to Venezuela of all countries to escape from 'everything being recorded.' After all, in Venezuela everything is, well, recorded at least if the government sees you as its critic. 

    "But if the self-proclaimed National Security Agency leaker takes Venezuela up on its offer — and somehow manages to get from Moscow to Caracas — he’d find himself in a country where the government routinely records the conversations of people it considers critics."

  

    "It’s an ironic position for Snowden, since it now seems his best shot at getting out of the Moscow airport, while avoiding a U.S. prison, means accepting help from a regime that’s known for the very abuses he’s crusaded against."

    "Take it from Isabel Lara, a dual citizen of the United States and Venezuela who had a phone conversation between herself and her mother played and mocked on Venezuelan television in 2009 — because the government considered her mother a political opponent."

     As Ms. Croft says, the only interest Venezuela likely has in Snowden is to try to make a self serving political argument. 

     "He’s going to a country that has no privacy, if he goes,” Lara told POLITICO. “The irony is that the government would be using him. They’d be using him as an example of all that’s wrong with America. And meanwhile, at home, they’re doing all of this stuff that’s even worse.” 

     This aside, there are still some real concerns for Snowden regarding Venezuela's offer. One major problem is it's still just an verbal offer. Receiving such an offer with the rest of the world listening is hardly optimum. 

      “He’s played this game very poorly,” said Scott Horton, a human rights attorney in New York. Anyone who applies for political asylum, he said, needs to get solid legal assurances from a country before their own government finds out, “because then they can use the levers of power to block you.”

By having to go through the process so publicly, Horton said, Snowden can’t physically get out of Moscow to apply to other countries in person — so he’s having to rely on the verbal offer from Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and the more hedged offers from Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega and Bolivian president Evo Morales.

     Basically, Venezuela is his best hope but as it's only verbal, it has clear limitations.

     "If I were advising him, which I’m not, I would say, “I don’t want Maduro to say, ‘Yes, you can have asylum.’ I’d want the normal legal process to determine that he meets the criteria for asylum,” Horton said.