Venezuela's President Maduro Offers Asylum to US Fugitive Snowden

[Peace Patriot]

35. At first I thought you were talking about President Obama and his...

"hystrionic" waylaying of the Bolivian president's official jet and the Bolivian president, by use of lapdogs in European countries. But then I noticed your DU name--"Stupidity"--and I realized that you were calling President Ortega of Nicaragua and President Maduro of Venezuela "authoritarian"--who have kidnapped no one, let alone the elected and revered president of Bolivia, and have drone-bombed no one, and have designated no one as an "enemy combatant" to get around "prisoner of war" laws and socked them away forever in extrajudicial prisons, and have made war on no one, and who, on the contrary, have made a lot of peace, and are furthermore advocates of the poor, of ordinary people and of forgotten and excluded people--presidents like our own FDR who have worked to bring a "New Deal" to their people by popular demand.

"Reds"? "Authoritarians"?



I'm old. I remember Joe McCarthy and have lived through all of the HORRIBLE crimes of my own country in the name of oppressing and killing "Reds." Your comment is ludicrously out-of-date and uninformed.

It is President Obama who is wrong in this case, and who is acting authoritarian. He should be immunizing Snowden and inviting him home to tell all, to Obama and to us. He should indeed be praising his courage and thanking him--instead of hunting him in order to punish and silence him. He should be apologizing to President Morales, who, as head of state in Bolivia, holds the power of asylum, and, IF Snowden had been on his plane, had the RIGHT to offer him protection as an asylum-seeker--a right that, by international law and diplomatic protocol, cannot be taken from a duly elected and recognized head of state. The diversion of his official plane and his detention were wrong, and lawless, from start to finish. Obama should admit it and apologize. But he is not likely to. Why? Because HE represents a country that picks and chooses the laws that it will obey!