Venezuela says Snowden has not formally responded to asylum offer

[Cali_Democrat]

Well this is interesting:

Venezuela says Snowden has not formally responded to asylum offer

(Reuters) - Venezuela has still not received a formal response to its offer of asylum to former U.S. spy contractor Edward Snowden, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua told Reuters on Thursday.

"We communicated last week, we made an offer and so far we haven't received a reply," Jaua said on the sidelines of a regional foreign ministers' meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/11/uk-usa-security-snowden-venezuela-idUKBRE96A0SH20130711

Snowden still hasn't responded?

Remember the supposed deadline?

Venezuela: Snowden has until Monday to respond to asylum offer

Venezuelan officials say they have not heard from Edward Snowden since the country offered the professed NSA leaker asylum, but would wait until Monday to hear if he would take up the offer.

“There has not been any type of communication,'' Foreign Minster Elias Jaua said on state television late on Saturday. “We are waiting until Monday to know whether he confirms his wish to take asylum in Venezuela.”

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/07/19333719-venezuela-snowden-has-until-monday-to-respond-to-asylum-offer?lite

Greenwald seems to think Snowden's best shot at asylum is Venezuela. But is Venezuela a paragon of freedom, transparency, and openness? This might be Snowden's new home after all.

More on Venezuela:

<...>

In any case, before Mr. Snowden flees to the land of “21st-century socialism,” where toilet paper is among the many goods in short supply, we’d suggest that he take a lesson from one of the country’s best-known journalists, Nelson Bocaranda. A newspaper columnist and radio host with nearly 1.5 million Twitter followers, Mr. Bocaranda shocked his country when he reported in June 2011 that President Hugo Chávez was suffering from cancer — news the government had improperly withheld from the public. Days later, Mr. Chávez was obliged to acknowledge that a “baseball-sized” tumor had been removed from his abdomen.

Eight months later Mr. Bocaranda reported that Mr. Chávez’s cancer had returned — another vital piece of information the government had suppressed. Senior officials first denounced the journalist as a “scoundrel” and a “sick soul” before belatedly admitting that he was right. Until the president’s death this March, Mr. Bocaranda repeatedly reported the truth of his declining health even as Mr. Chávez and his government lied about it.

The regime and its intelligence services are determined to punish the journalist for his reporting. In April, a government-orchestrated propaganda campaign claimed that Mr. Bocaranda incited opposition supporters to violence following a disputed election to choose Mr. Chávez’s successor. Now he has been summoned for questioning by a state prosecutor, who says her “presumption” is that he is “the intellectual author” of alleged violent attacks on state offices.

<...>

Mr. Bocaranda’s courage is remarkable. His persecution highlights the incongruity of Venezuela holding itself out as a haven for tellers of truth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/venezuela-shows-that-it-cant-handle-the-truth/2013/07/10/084f5328-e987-11e2-aa9f-c03a72e2d342_story.html

If Mr. Snowden does end up in Venezuela, I hope he will enjoy his new home. It seems like a model for transparency and openness.

[flamingdem]

1. A rumor from a Spanish website last night said Lon Snowden is negotiating his son's

release. That makes sense since life in Caracas might mean he is kidnapped or killed. Plus, Maduro can't really want him when so much trade depends on the USA.

Thus, the Venezuela offer was a smoke screen for negotiations. Those take time.

The dad wants Snowden to be free of a gag order among other things.

This solution would allow Putin to be blameless when Snowden returns to the motherland.

His daddy did it!

[flamingdem]

2. I thought that he had sent papers to their Moscow embassy?

Something is awry. Where is Sarah Harrison?

No word in what, two weeks?

[railsback]

3. Looks like a hotbed of freedom and social justice

[img][/img]

Can't really blame Maduro for this, but the revolution happened quite a while ago, and the market has kept the barrel way over valued for about the same amount of time. What the hell was Chavez doing? Explains how a yutz like Capriles almost won the presidency. Maduro emphasized that it was imperative that Venezuela massively expand trade (see: picture), so welcoming Snowden doesn't make any sense. I credit all the brouhaha to a public display of machismo. IMO, all the Latin countries just want Snowden to go away.