NSA leaker & former CIA employee Edward Snowden has asked for political asylum in Russia, saying he could not fly to Latin America, according to Human Rights Watch representative who met the whistleblower. - According to Tatyana Lokshina of Human Rights Watch, Snowden seeks to stay in Russia as he “can’t fly to Latin America yet.” When asked if the NSA leaker has any more revelations, Lokshina responded: “He says that his job is done.” Snowden asked the human rights activists to petition the US and European states not to interfere with his asylum process, she said. The former NSA contractor also asked to intervene with President Putin on his behalf, Lokshina added. Snowden said he is ready to ask Russia for political asylum and that he “does not intend to harm the US in the future,” according to the chairman of the Russian State Duma MP Vyacheslav Nikonov. “No actions I take or plan are meant to harm the US... I want the US to succeed,” Snowden said. Thirteen Russian and international human rights advocates and lawyers have gathered at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport for a meeting with Snowden. The whistleblower said the living conditions were fine at the airport and he felt safe there, but he knows he can't stay there forever, according to Lokshina.

The Guardian: Edward Snowden appears at Moscow airport and renews asylum claim – LIVE

The Guardian: Edward Snowden says he is requesting asylum in Russia as next step - The US whistleblower Edward Snowden has said he is requesting political asylum in Russia in a meeting with human rights activists at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport. Snowden said he would stay in Russia until he could win safe passage to Latin America. Snowden has been trapped in a Moscow airport since arriving from Hong Kong on 23 June. He has made nearly two dozen requests for political asylum, most of which have been refused. Venezuela has agreed to welcome the NSA whistleblower, who leaked secret documents outlining American surveillance programmes, but he remains without travel documents after the US annulled his passport in the wake of the leaks.

On Wednesday, the defense rested its case in the court-martial of Bradley Manning, the US Army private who has pleaded guilty to releasing 700,000 documents exposing the crimes of US imperialism to the WikiLeaks website in April 2010. The trial, which began June 3, has laid bare the fiercely anti-democratic character of the Obama administration, which came to power promising transparency and openness, yet has indicted more individuals for espionage (i.e., exposing government and military misdeeds) than all previous US administrations combined. The political and military establishment is now seeking to make an example of Manning to intimidate any who would follow in his courageous footsteps. Manning is being tried for political acts in a court-martial before a military judge with almost unlimited powers. Moreover, military judge Colonel Denise Lind ruled that Manning’s political motives were irrelevant to the case and could not be considered, making the proceeding a travesty of fairness and justice. In a 35-page pre-trial statement, Manning made clear the political nature of his actions. He noted, “In attempting to conduct counter-terrorism … and counter-insurgency (COIN) operations, we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists … and ignoring the second- and third-order effects of accomplishing short-term goals and missions.

The NSA surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden has said US officials are waging a campaign to prevent him from taking up asylum offers as he called a meeting in Moscow airport with human rights groups. In a letter sent to groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the former intelligence agency contractor claimed there was "an unlawful campaign by officials in the US government to deny my right to seek and enjoy … asylum under article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and invited them to meet him at 5pm local time.

"The scale of threatening behaviour is without precedent: never before in history have states conspired to force to the ground a sovereign president's plane to effect a search for a political refugee. This dangerous escalation represents a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America or my own personal security, but to the basic right shared by every living person to live free from persecution."

PressTV: US threats against Latin American asylum to Snowden intensify

Microsoft worked hand-in-hand with the United States government in order to allow federal investigators to bypass encryption mechanisms meant to protect the privacy of millions of users, Edward Snowden told The Guardian.

According to an article published on Thursday by the British newspaper, internal National Security Agency memos show that Microsoft actually helped the federal government find a way to decrypt messages sent over select platforms, including Outlook.com Web chat, Hotmail email service, and Skype. The Guardian wrote that Snowden, the 30-year-old former systems administrator for NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, provided the paper with files detailing a sophisticated relationship between America’s intelligence sector and Silicon Valley. The documents, which are reportedly marked top-secret, come in the wake of other high-profile disclosures attributed to Snowden since he first started collaborating with the paper for articles published beginning June 6. The United States government has since indicted Snowden under the Espionage Act, and he has requested asylum from no fewer than 20 foreign nations.

The Guardian: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages - Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian. The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.

SCAF member General Hassan al-Roweiny is in hot water with Egyptian intellectuals after criticizing Palestinian poet Tamim al-Barghouthi.

Tamim Al-Barghouti

■ Roweiny said on a TV talk show last week that foreigners like Barghouthi should not talk about Egyptian politics and matters of national security, in reference to Barghouti's comments on another talk show about a document on national unity. Roweiny expressed surprise to find a young man with “a weird accent and non-Egyptian features” discussing issues of national security, adding that he contacted the TV station telling them that it would have been better to interview one of the revolutionary youth in Tahrir Square. "With its population of 86 million, Egypt isn't waiting for a Palestinian to develop state policies,” said Roweiny. “It’s Egypt that has been working on the reconciliation between Palestinian factions." Roweiny’s statement triggered a wave of criticism among the young poet’s fans and Egyptian intellectuals. Writers Bahaa Taher and Sonallah Ibrahim and colloquial poets Ahmed Fouad Negm and Abdel Rahman al-Abnoudy were among a group that issued a statement condemning the general on Tuesday. The statement said Roweiny's comments were discriminatory, “whereas all Arabs and humans are equal." A number of Facebook groups have also sprung up in response to the controversial comments. ■ Tamim is one of the notable revolutionary voices and his poems were repeatedly read and chanted in Tahrir Square during the revolution. Born in Cairo in 1977 to Egyptian novelist Radwa Ashour and acclaimed Palestinian poet Murid al-Barghouti, he published his first poem at the age of 18. He studied politics at Cairo University and the American University in Cairo, before completing his PhD from Boston University in 2004, and he is currently a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer at Georgetown University. Over the years, he continuously wrote poetry. In 1999, he visited Palestine for the first time and wrote his first poetry collection, "Mijana", in the Palestinian spoken dialect of Arabic. His fame as a poet came with “Aluli-Bethebbe-Masr” (They Ask: Do You Love Egypt), written in the Egyptian spoken dialect, and “Maqam Iraq” (the Iraqi Ode) in classical Arabic. Those poems came in response to the US invasion of Iraq and Egypt’s declared position toward the war. Barghouti has also been dubbed “The Poet of Jerusalem.”

Arabic Literature (in English): In Praise of…the Poet with the Weird Accent
Another World Is Possible: In Al-Quds “In Jerusalem” -تميم البرغوثي ... في القدس - VIDEO

As Syria’s civil war shows no signs of abating, a source within the Free Syrian Army says that Al-Qaeda-linked militants have killed one of the FSA’s senior figures. - Supreme Military Council member Kamal Hamami, also known as Abu Bassel al-Ladkani, was meeting with members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the Syrian port city of Latakia when he was killed, FSA spokesman Qassem Saadeddine told Reuters. "The Islamic State phoned me saying that they killed Abu Bassel and that they will kill all of the Supreme Military Council," Saadeddine said. "He met them to discuss battle plans." Though Syria’s opposition forces have incorporated groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda, news of the killing of a senior FSA member could signal a serious conflict emerging between radical Islamists and more moderate members of the opposition. The Islamic State of Iraq is considered an umbrella organization for a long list of insurgency groups, including members linked to Al-Qaeda, the former Mujahideen Shura Council, and various other groups that wish to establish a caliphate - or a unified Islamic theocracy - within the majority Sunni regions of Iraq.

Foreign forces destroyed advanced Russian anti-ship missiles in Syria last week, rebels said on Tuesday - a disclosure that appeared to point to an Israeli raid. - Qassem Saadeddine, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army's Supreme Military Council, said a pre-dawn strike on Friday hit a Syrian navy barracks at Safira, near the port of Latakia. He said that the rebel forces' intelligence network had identified newly supplied Yakhont missiles being stored there. "It was not the FSA that targeted this," Saadeddine told Reuters. "It is not an attack that was carried out by rebels. "This attack was either by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats in the Mediterranean," he said. Rebels described huge blasts - the ferocity of which, they said, was beyond the firepower available to them but consistent with that of a modern military like Israel's.

The United States will go through with the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt in the coming weeks, U.S. officials told Reuters on Wednesday as Washington deliberated whether to call the ouster of Egypt's elected leader a military coup. - A decision to call last week's overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy a coup would, by law, require the Obama administration to halt aid to the Egyptian army. Egypt is the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid behind Israel, receiving $1.5 billion a year. The jets were part of that aid package, a U.S. defense official confirmed. One defense official said the delivery of the four F-16s was likely to take place in August. "There is no current change in the plan to deliver F-16s to the Egyptian military," a second U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Berlin police are investigating whether an artist who projected “United Stasi of America" onto the US embassy in the German capital earlier this week could be charged with a criminal offence. - German artist Oliver Bienkowski projected the message, along with a picture of internet tycoon and online activist Kim Dotcom onto the US embassy in Berlin on Sunday night. He was likening reported sweeping internet surveillance by Washington and London to spying by the former East German secret police. And while the image was projected onto the building for 30 seconds on Sunday night, the action has caused quite a stir. An investigation has been launched into whether the action constituted “slander against the organizations and representatives of a foreign state,” the Berlin-based Der Tagesspiegel newspaper reported on Thursday. Bienkowski's lawyer Fabian Eickstädt pointed out that the projection was onto the US embassy, which is technically US territory. "For me it is not even clear whether German law would apply," he said. And Der Tagesspiegel said that a criminal case of slander could only be launched if the victim were to make a formal complaint. The US embassy told the paper it had no interest in a prosecution. While Dotcom had no problem claiming the projection. "I defaced the U.S. embassy in Berlin with a truth-projection last night. 0Wned!" he tweeted. The video on YouTube has garnered nearly 80,000 hits. [...] Germany has reacted "with particular alarm" to the revelations about the US and British spy programmes, given its history of state surveillance under the Nazis and the communist East German regime.

Peter Schwarz:
NSA, European intelligence agencies work closely together
The infrastructure of a police state emerges in Europe
Russia Today: Merkel justifies NSA eavesdropping surveillance
"Merkel Rejects NSA Comparison With Communist East German Stasi" She would know. "Frau Bankster"