Club of rich, powerful meet in secret near London

By Jill Lawless, AP, Jun 7, 2013:

LONDON (AP)—It’s a busy weekend at the luxury Grove Hotel, favored haunt of British soccer players and their glitz-loving spouses.

More than 100 of the world’s most powerful people are at the former manor house near London for a secretive annual gathering that has attained legendary status in the eyes of anti-capitalist protesters and conspiracy theorists.

The guest list for the Bilderberg meeting includes Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. British Prime Minister David Cameron is due to drop by Friday.

The Bilderberg Group was set up in 1954 to support military and economic co-operation between Europe and North America during the Cold War.

Named for the site of its first meeting—the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland—the forum for prominent politicians, thinkers and business leaders has been held annually at a series of secluded venues in Europe and North America.

What happens at Bilderberg, stays at Bilderberg. There is no media access and the public is kept away by a large security operation. The group says that “there is no detailed agenda, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued.”

But in a move toward slightly more openness, the group now has a website, which lists attendees and key topics for discussion, including the economy, U.S. foreign policy, “cyber warfare and the proliferation of asymmetric threats” and “major trends in medical research.”

Invitees include British Treasury chief George Osborne, Goldman Sachs chairman Peter Sutherland and Thomas Enders, CEO of aerospace company EADS.

Publication of these details has done little to ease the concerns of protesters, who sense a shadowy global elite at work in the secretive meeting.

“When 130 of the leaders from all across the West get together, and many of these are billionaires, they are people who are immensely wealthy and immensely powerful,” said Michael Meacher, a lawmaker from Britain’s Labour Party.

“And when they all get together, it’s not just to have a chat about the latest problem, it is to concert plans for the future of capitalism in the West. That is on a very different scale.”

Others go even further, putting Bilderberg at the heart of a global web of conspiracy. The protesters in Watford include U.S. talk-radio host and Sept. 11 “truther” Alex Jones, and former professional soccer player David Icke, who believes the world is run by a race of reptiles in human form.

Demonstrators plan to hold a “Bilderberg fringe” festival outside the hotel until the conference ends Sunday.

A Bilderberg spokesman—reached by email since no phone number is listed—said there is nothing sinister about the gathering.

“We disclose the date, the location, the participants and the key topics of the conference,” Xander Heijnen said. “Many groups of people meet without announcing it publicly at all, without disclosing who is taking part and without giving any key topics.

“The meetings broaden the participants’ range of viewpoints, help them to gain insights and exchange views,” he said. “It seems illogical to argue that a meeting of individuals designed to give and obtain fresh insights, somehow ‘undermines democracy.’”

That message has not swayed protesters like Judd Charlton, a ventriloquist from London who showed up Thursday to jeer at cars with blacked-out windows entering the hotel compound.

“We are basically here to bring down the parasites who are drug dealers and bank collapsers who seem to want to destroy this world,” he said.

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More Breast-Feeding Could Save Billions and Prevent Thousands of Breast Cancer Cases

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 09:00 AM PDT

By Bonnie Rochman, TIME, June 07, 2013

Thanks to public health messages, everyone pretty much knows that breast-feeding is beneficial for baby. But it’s also really good for mom, and now a new study quantifies just how good.

If new moms adhered to the recommended guidelines that urge them to breast-feed each child they give birth to for at least one year, they could theoretically stave off up to 5,000 cases of breast cancer, about 54,000 cases of hypertension and nearly 14,000 heart attacks annually.

Averting those diseases could also save $860 million, according to research published in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Those figures, while significant and intriguing, are not actual numbers from documented cases. Rather, they’re the result of a sophisticated statistical model used to compare the effect of current breast-feeding rates in the U.S. to ideal rates.

The study, led by Harvard researcher Dr. Melissa Bartick, simulated the experiences of about 2 million U.S. women from the time they were 15 until they turned 70, estimating outcomes and cumulative costs over the decades in between.

The conclusions, says Dr. Kathleen Marinelli, a neonatologist and chair-elect of the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee, represent a “very elegant mathematical and statistical look at the health costs to women and society of not breast-feeding optimally in the U.S.”

“What’s important is that it tells us that the cost of not providing support to women to optimally breast-feed their babies is astronomical because of the known health benefits to women. This points out that breast-feeding is not a lifestyle choice; it’s a public health imperative.”

By Bonnie Rochman, TIME, June 07, 2013

Thanks to public health messages, everyone pretty much knows that breast-feeding is beneficial for baby. But it’s also really good for mom, and now a new study quantifies just how good.

If new moms adhered to the recommended guidelines that urge them to breast-feed each child they give birth to for at least one year, they could theoretically stave off up to 5,000 cases of breast cancer, about 54,000 cases of hypertension and nearly 14,000 heart attacks annually.

Averting those diseases could also save $860 million, according to research published in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Those figures, while significant and intriguing, are not actual numbers from documented cases. Rather, they’re the result of a sophisticated statistical model used to compare the effect of current breast-feeding rates in the U.S. to ideal rates.

The study, led by Harvard researcher Dr. Melissa Bartick, simulated the experiences of about 2 million U.S. women from the time they were 15 until they turned 70, estimating outcomes and cumulative costs over the decades in between.

The conclusions, says Dr. Kathleen Marinelli, a neonatologist and chair-elect of the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee, represent a “very elegant mathematical and statistical look at the health costs to women and society of not breast-feeding optimally in the U.S.”

“What’s important is that it tells us that the cost of not providing support to women to optimally breast-feed their babies is astronomical because of the known health benefits to women. This points out that breast-feeding is not a lifestyle choice; it’s a public health imperative.”

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Preach The Gospel At All Times And When Necessary Use Words

by Adele Richards on Jan 23rd, 2012
http://revivalmag.com/article/preach-gospel-all-times-and-when-necessary-use-words

What power do words really hold? According to statistics 55% of communication is non-verbal, 38% is in the tone and only 7% is communicated by the actual words. Which makes me wonder whether instead of studying theology, most preachers would do better to study mime. “Roll up! Roll up! Come to Bible School and learn how to walk up and down invisible steps, get trapped in an invisible cube and pull on an invisible rope. You’ll love it!”


No-one likes to be on the receiving end of a sales pitch.

The quote “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words” is attributed to Francis of Assisi, a monk who lived at the end of the 12th century. Makes you wonder which famous quotes of our century will stand the test of time. Maybe “I’ll be back!” or “Eat my shorts!”. Or then again…

Clearly there is something about Francis’s comment that resonates through the centuries. Perhaps it is because most people do not like to be preached at. Ironic then that the focus of most church services is ‘the preach’. Most of the sermons you hear are wonderful, I’m sure. It is that didactic ‘preachy’ preach that tells you how you should live and why you are getting it all wrong, that grates. Although I’m not sure if we in the church even notice this any more because we are so used to being ‘preached at’. It is mother’s milk to us.

The more you hang out with those outside the church, the more you see the wariness in their eyes when they sense a ‘preach’ heading their way. You know, that look they get when you say you are a Christian? You can see the defences go up as they prepare themselves for the sales pitch. And they can smell a sales pitch from ten miles away.

Let’s be honest. No-one likes to be on the receiving end of a sales pitch. Whether it’s someone on the phone trying to sell you life insurance, or a second hand car dealer announcing the deal of the century. You can tell when they are only interested in making a sale. You can tell when they don’t care one jot about you. It stinks.

But the Mac Genius at the Mac Bar, who clearly knows his stuff and is happy to lend you his expertise for a few minutes for free. Now that is attractive. Because he loves it, because he wants to help you, and because we are at some level aware of our need for help from an expert. If they aren’t obnoxious, we will listen.

So, I am quite comfortable with Francis’s idea that we can preach the gospel without getting all preachy. But what does Jesus have to say about all this? Jesus quotes Isaiah 61:1, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” The word used for preach in the original Hebrew is ‘piel’ which means:
1) to gladden with good news
2) to bear news
3) to announce (salvation) as good news, preach

That second definition intrigues me. It makes the word ‘preach’, that I often think of as just words, seem like something more tangible. When you bear a child, or you bring a parcel, it’s not just words; there is something to see. And it’s pretty darn exciting.


My plan is to be stupidly in love.

And if you have really good news to share with someone – they can tell before you even open your mouth. It is physically difficult to hold the news in! Your body gives you away. Your eyes are shining! You burst into the room with a whoop! in your step. You bring the good news into the room with you. You can feel good news before it even takes word form. It’s contagious. Who wouldn’t want to know what you’re looking so flipping excited about? Apparently it even makes your feet look nice: “As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" (Romans 10:15).

I have a confession. I’m pretty sure that I don’t often bring this kind of pizzazz into a room. Sometimes pizza, yes, but not good-news-bursting-out pizzazz. But I have a vision for one day, bringing the pizzazz. I have a dream of having more beautiful feet – and it’s not achieved by pedicures. My plan is to be stupidly in love. People who are in love are noticeably radiant. They are full of the joys of Spring, they love everyone and everything because life is good, because they are IN LURVE. Yes, that’s going to be me; shiny-eyed and glossy-coated. I love him, yes. We’re dating at the moment. But one day I’m going to fall for the Bridegroom big time and then, watch out! I shall be a woman in love.


They hung on every word he said.

When Jesus walked into a room he brought the pizzazz. I mean, he BROUGHT it, he DELIVERED it. BOOM. Something amazing was there, in the look in his eye. He only had to invite the disciples to follow him and they left their livelihoods in an instant. Children flocked to him. But Jesus did also use words. He taught and preached and he did tell people, didactically, what to do and not do. But he also told stories. Lots of stories. That most people did not understand. Even the disciples had to ask him what on earth the parable of the sower meant. And yet thousands of people still followed him up mountains, without a picnic lunch. They hung on every word he said, even when it made no sense to their brains at all. Why?

I once heard James Jordan of Fatherheart Ministries explain that when we are listening to an anointed preacher what we are really doing is drinking from their spirit. James is an amazing, anointed preacher himself; his teaching is theologically mind-blowing but that is not the best part. I have listened to him preach all day, day after day. I heard the same words many times over but it was always fresh because he spoke from his spirit; he released his spirit, and that brought the sweetest presence of Father into the room. He delivered.

This is why note-taking during sermons seems a little beside the point. If what the preacher is saying hasn’t gone into your spirit, if you haven’t encountered God as she speaks, and been changed by it, then a notebook full of references is of little lasting use to you.


Your friends who don't know God, know you.

True preaching isn’t about imparting information into someone’s mind. After all “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”. True preaching is about imparting Love Himself. We encounter him, when the preacher knows how to speak from their heart or spirit. As Jesus says in Matthew 12:34, “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks”. This connection between heart and mouth is vital:

For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. (Romans 10:10)

so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 15:6)

If our words don’t tally with what is in our hearts they are empty and devoid of power. It is only when they connect with our hearts that they bring the power to change someone else. When preaching with words to those outside the church if the motive in our hearts is manipulative, the listener can hear that. They can see it in the coolness of our eye and they can smell it from a mile off. It stinks.

Words are powerful, but hearts more so. Your friends who don’t know God, know you. They read you. They read your life. They look to see whether you really love them or whether they are just your evangelism project. So if we want to be amazing preachers our hearts need to keep being filled with Love Himself. He smells amazing. So let’s love him, and love others, and fall even more madly in love because that’s a good sermon right there. Oh, and you can use words too. If necessary.

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Syrian Teenager's Public Death Reveals Growing Anger as Civil War Continues

By Kareem Fahim and Hania Mourtada, NY Times, June 10, 2013

BEIRUT, Lebanon—The teenager’s name was Muhammad al-Qatta, and he was 14 years old when witnesses said radical Islamists in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo pulled him from his coffee kiosk on Sunday and later executed him in a public square.

Muhammad had left his house to close up his kiosk, where his work supported his family, his mother said. When someone approached him looking for a free cup of coffee, the teenager uttered the phrase that cast him among the victims of the war’s growing depravity.

“He was talking to this guy and told him, ‘I don’t want to lend you anything,’ ” the teenager’s father quoted him as saying.

“If Muhammad, peace be upon him, were to come to this earth right now, I would still not lend a cup of coffee to anyone unless they pay for it,” the teenager said.

Three men with long hair, wearing long beards and the robes favored by ultraconservatives, overheard the exchange. They accused the teenager of insulting the prophet, told him to leave the kiosk and then took him away in the car. When they returned an hour later, Muhammad bore the marks of a beating. In a square, they covered his head with his shirt, a makeshift blindfold, as if he were “some big shot,” his mother said.

She watched from her balcony, as hundreds of people gathered around. A resident of the neighborhood, Abu Abdo, heard what the men said. Addressing the “respected people of Aleppo,” they warned that cursing God or the Prophet Muhammad was a sin, saying it would be “punished this way.”

The teenager’s father heard the shots. His wife told him that the men had killed their son.

“His blood ran in front of me,” Muhammad’s mother, said in a grim video posted on the Internet on Monday. In her anguish, she invoked the name of another teenage victim in Syria, Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, whose death at the hands of government forces helped propel the uprising, now a war in its third year. He was pulled aside two years ago by government agents at a protest, brutalized and killed before being sent back to his family.

Just as Hamza’s death crystallized the rage against President Bashar al-Assad, Muhammad’s killing stoked similar feelings against a new power that has emerged during the war. It focused anger on hard-line Islamists, including foreigners, some of whom have seized on the conflict in Syria as an opportunity to impose their mores. For Muhammad’s mother and some her neighbors, the tyrannies were indistinguishable, trapping many Syrians in a vise.

In a home in Muhammad’s neighborhood, Mr. Abu Abdo said what had happened to the two boys was “the same.”

“Who kills a teen, whatever the reason is, is a killer,” he said, adding that Syrians were looking for life without the government’s security thugs “or radical Sunnis who raise black flags, and want to build a state not fit for our minds.”

There is growing anger at the small but assertive cadre of extremists who have joined the rebel ranks, and whose hard-line beliefs have unsettled even pious Syrians. Their influence is being felt in mosques, in schools and in committees and courts intended to enforce a strict version of Islamic law. Disgust with the radicals has peaked in recent months after reports of summary executions, including of government soldiers and men accused of crimes and then punished.

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Israeli policy pivot strengthens grasp on East Jerusalem

By Benjamin Lynfield, CS Monitor, June 10, 2013

Jerusalem—Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat recently advised the city’s Arab residents to forget about ever having a capital in the predominantly Palestinian eastern part of the city.

In an interview last month, Mr. Barkat told the Times of Israel that if the Palestinians really want a capital in East Jerusalem, they can simply rename Ramallah, the de-facto capital of the West Bank about 10 miles to its north, “Jerusalem” or “north Jerusalem.”

“There is no such thing” as a Palestinian sovereign role in Jerusalem, he added.

The mayor’s rhetoric starkly highlights recent Israeli government actions that observers say are aimed at weakening the Palestinian presence in East Jerusalem and making the possibility of establishing a Palestinian capital there more remote.

Last week the government threw its weight behind a controversial property law that could enable the state to seize up to 40 percent of the Palestinian private property in Jerusalem. And in recent weeks, authorities have revived a policy of demolishing Palestinian homes built without permits, ending an unofficial moratorium on home demolitions in response to US criticism. Palestinians argue that restrictive planning policies make it virtually impossible to get the required permits.

Israeli organization Ir Amim (City of Nations), which calls for equality in the city, says that 12 buildings housing a total of 105 Palestinians have been destroyed since April 15.

“It’s all connected. It’s part of an overall policy of losing restraints and using more power to enforce themselves in East Jerusalem, to give the message ‘we are here and will make our presence felt with full impact,’” says Yehudit Oppenheimer, director of Ir Amim. “The idea is to consolidate Israeli control without any consideration of the Palestinians who live there.”

Abdullah Abdullah, a Ramallah-based member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, terms the moves “very dangerous.” About the property law, which was initially used by Israel to seize property left behind by Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war, Mr. Abdullah says, “The least we can say is that this is theft, but it also changes the identity of Jerusalem.”

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor dismissed Abdullah’s remark as “Palestinian propaganda.”

These developments do not bode well for US Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to prod the sides to a revival of peace talks on a two-state solution. His public remarks have not broached the city’s future status.

The government’s shift on Palestinian property in Jerusalem became apparent last week, after Israeli Supreme Court justices hearing appeals against property seizures demanded that Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein give his opinion.

“The legal position is indeed that properties in East Jerusalem whose owners are residents of Judea and Samaria are absentee properties,” Mr. Weinstein wrote the court, using Israel’s names for the West Bank.

This means that West Bank Palestinian residents can lose their property in East Jerusalem because they are designated “absentees”—even though they never sold their property and it was Israel that had expanded its borders to include their land in the 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem rejected as illegal by the international community.

Weinstein’s statement reverses a 2005 position by then attorney general Menachem Mazuz, who ruled that the absentee property law should not be applied in East Jerusalem because this was not its original intent and it could harm Israel’s international standing.

But Danny Seidemann, a lawyer who is head of Terrestrial Jerusalem, a research institute that promotes conflict resolution for the city, says shifting away from Mazuz’s stance could make up to 40 percent of the private Palestinian property in East Jerusalem subject to seizure by the Israeli government.

“The primary victims of this are all Palestinians in East Jerusalem,” he says.

Seidemann, who is widely considered to be the top independent Israeli specialist on East Jerusalem, noted that the state is simultaneously backing the eviction of Palestinians from East Jerusalem properties owned by Jews prior to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

“The state’s position is that any land in Jerusalem that belonged to Jews prior to 1948 and was lost as a result of war will revert to previous Jewish owners while any property that can be purported to be abandoned by Palestinians will also revert to Israelis,” Seidemann said. “That is not a level playing field and the comfort zone between these policies and apartheid is narrowing dangerously.”

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Edward Snowden: saving us from the United Stasi of America

Daniel Ellsberg, The Guardian, 10 June 2013

In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material—and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the US constitution.

Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.

The government claims it has a court warrant under Fisa—but that unconstitutionally sweeping warrant is from a secret court, shielded from effective oversight, almost totally deferential to executive requests. As Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, put it: “It is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp.”

For the president then to say that there is judicial oversight is nonsense—as is the alleged oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. Not for the first time—as with issues of torture, kidnapping, detention, assassination by drones and death squads—they have shown themselves to be thoroughly co-opted by the agencies they supposedly monitor. They are also black holes for information that the public needs to know.

The fact that congressional leaders were “briefed” on this and went along with it, without any open debate, hearings, staff analysis, or any real chance for effective dissent, only shows how broken the system of checks and balances is in this country.

Obviously, the United States is not now a police state. But given the extent of this invasion of people’s privacy, we do have the full electronic and legislative infrastructure of such a state. If, for instance, there was now a war that led to a large-scale anti-war movement—like the one we had against the war in Vietnam—or, more likely, if we suffered one more attack on the scale of 9/11, I fear for our democracy. These powers are extremely dangerous.

There are legitimate reasons for secrecy, and specifically for secrecy about communications intelligence. That’s why Bradley Mannning and I—both of whom had access to such intelligence with clearances higher than top-secret—chose not to disclose any information with that classification. And it is why Edward Snowden has committed himself to withhold publication of most of what he might have revealed.

But what is not legitimate is to use a secrecy system to hide programs that are blatantly unconstitutional in their breadth and potential abuse. Neither the president nor Congress as a whole may by themselves revoke the fourth amendment—and that’s why what Snowden has revealed so far was secret from the American people.

In 1975, Senator Frank Church spoke of the National Security Agency in these terms:

“I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

The dangerous prospect of which he warned was that America’s intelligence gathering capability—which is today beyond any comparison with what existed in his pre-digital era—“at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left.”

That has now happened. That is what Snowden has exposed, with official, secret documents. The NSA, FBI and CIA have, with the new digital technology, surveillance powers over our own citizens that the Stasi—the secret police in the former “democratic republic” of East Germany—could scarcely have dreamed of. Snowden reveals that the so-called intelligence community has become the United Stasi of America.

So we have fallen into Senator Church’s abyss. The questions now are whether he was right or wrong that there is no return from it, and whether that means that effective democracy will become impossible.

Snowden did what he did because he recognised the NSA’s surveillance programs for what they are: dangerous, unconstitutional activity. This wholesale invasion of Americans’ and foreign citizens’ privacy does not contribute to our security; it puts in danger the very liberties we’re trying to protect.

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US leaker faces hard choices while in hiding

By Peter Enav and Kelvin K. Chan, AP, Jun 11, 2013

HONG KONG (AP)—Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about U.S. surveillance programs, has few options to stay one step ahead of the authorities while in apparent hiding.

One possibility is to seek asylum in a place that does not have an extradition pact with the United States—there are few in Asia alone, a short flight away from Hong Kong where he was last spotted, but none where he is guaranteed refuge.

On Tuesday the 29-year-old Snowden’s whereabouts were unknown, a day after he checked out of a trendy hotel in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong. But large photos of his face were splashed on most Hong Kong newspapers with headlines such as “Deep Throat Hides in HK,” and “World’s Most Wanted Man Breaks Cover in Hong Kong.”

The coverage is likely to increase the chances of him being recognized although he could still blend with the city’s tens of thousands of expatriates from the United States, Britain, Australia and Europe.

If and when the Justice Department charges him—and it’s not certain when that will be—its next step will likely be to ask the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, for a provisional request to arrest him pending extradition to the United States.

Assuming that Snowden is still in Hong Kong, the judicial proceedings for an extradition request could take a year, and once completed it would be up to Hong Kong’s leader, known as the chief executive, to decide on handing over Snowden, said Michael Blanchflower, a Hong Kong lawyer with three decades of experience in extradition cases.

But even if the chief executive allows the extradition, the fugitive can request a judicial review and those decisions could be appealed up through three court levels, Blanchflower said.

Although a semi-autonomous part of China, the former British colony has an independent justice system based on the British legal structure.

One option for Snowden would be to claim he is the object of political persecution, and fight the issue in the courts to avoid extradition. He could argue that he would be subject to cruel and humiliating treatment in the United States. Hong Kong changed its regulations six months ago to require that a court consider cruel and humiliating treatment and not simply torture when considering extradition requests.

It’s up to “the Chief Executive to determine whether the offence is one that’s of a political character, in which case the extradition is blocked,” said Hong Kong-based lawyer, Tim Parker.

However, the strategy carries considerable risk because the U.S. could simply provide diplomatic assurances that he would not be subject to cruel or humiliating treatment.

“At that point it would be difficult for Hong Kong to resist deporting him,” said Patricia Ho, a Hong Kong lawyer who specializes in asylum and refugee claims.

But as things stand now, there is nothing to prevent Snowden from traveling to a destination of his choice—to one of the handful of nearby jurisdictions or countries that do not have extradition treaties with the United States.

One of the Asian countries without an American treaty is China, though there is no guarantee Beijing would want to risk a confrontation with the United States by taking Snowden in, even if gained a windfall of sensitive American intelligence information in the process. Snowden himself has given no indication that he prepared to cooperate with any foreign intelligence service, including China’s.

Another Asian flight possibility for Snowden is the self-governing island of Taiwan, which split from China in 1949 after a protracted civil war, and since 1979, has not had formal diplomatic relations with the U.S.

In lieu of a formal extradition treaty, American extraction requests to Taiwan are examined on a case by case basis.

An official at the de facto U.S. Embassy in Taipei—the American Institute in Taiwan—said Taiwan has generally been cooperative on the extradition issue.

“Taipei has so far been pretty good on responding to our requests,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Beyond Taiwan and China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and North Korea are also theoretical destinations for Snowden, because they lack extradition treaties with the U.S. But the communist or authoritarian systems they share make them unlikely destinations for a man who has gone to considerable lengths to portray his decision to reveal National Security Agency surveillance programs as an act of conscience.

Outside of Asia, Snowden might also consider seeking asylum in countries like Iceland and Russia. According to the Kommersant Daily, Moscow has said it might provide asylum. But Russia is also an authoritarian nation, so there is no guarantee that Snowden would accept any offer that Moscow rendered.

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Astounding Evidence for a Young Earth- Bruce Malone

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The Alien Intrusion- by Gary Bates

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