Edward Snowden is a former NSA contractor who leaked highly classified information from the agency in 2013. His leak revealed numerous global surveillance programs run by the United States and the United Kingdom. Snowden initially reported the perceived ethical breaches of the surveillance internally, but no one seemed interested in addressing the issues raised.

In May 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong, where he presented journalists with drives containing thousands of NSA documents. He came to international attention after the leaks appeared inThe Washington Post, The Guardian,and other publications. People initially viewed Snowdens views as treasonable, but recent polls show that many have come to appreciate his leak due to the legal reforms it inspired.

In October 2020,Reutersconfirmed that Russia had granted Edward permanent residence.His (Russian) residency permit was expiring and we asked to extend it,Anatoly Kucherena, his Russian lawyer, toldReuters.

We submitted the documents in April and we got permanent residence rights,he added. A potential return to the United States seemed possible as, in August 2020, President Trump flirted with the idea of pardoning Snowden. Then-Attorney General Bill Barr vehemently opposed a potential pardon.

He was a traitor and the information he provided our adversaries greatly hurt the safety of the American people,Bill said.He was peddling it around like a commercial merchant. We cant tolerate that.

In late December 2020, Snowden announced the birth of his first child, who will have Russian citizenship.The greatest gift is the love we share,Edward wrote on Twitter alongside a photo of himself, his wife, and his newborn child. The couple hid the babys face with a blushing emoji.

Snowdens wife, Lindsay Mills, joined Snowden in Moscow in 2014. Edward toldThe Guardianthat Mills was pissed when he left their Hawaii home in a rush. Snowden didnt tell her of his plans to be a whistleblower as it would have made her an accessory. Mills suspected that Edward was having an affair.

Extracts of Lindsays diary were published in Snowdens memoir, Permanent Record. Mills wrote that the FBI suspected that shed killed Snowden.He was looking at me like I killed Ed,Lindsay described one officer.He was looking around the house for his body.

Edward expected Mills to be mad at him, but she stated that she loved him and supported his decision to expose the NSA. Snowden and Mills wed in 2017 in a Russian courthouse.

After leaving Hong Kong, Snowden planned to travel to Ecuador, where he would seek asylum. He, however, had to pass through Moscows Sheremetyevo International Airport. At the airport, he learned that the United States government had canceled his passport. Russian intelligence services offered to assist Snowden in return for any secrets he harbored.

I didnt corporate with the Russian intelligence services I havent and I wont,Snowden toldNPR. I destroyed my access to the archive. I had no material with me before I left Hong Kong, because I knew I was going to have to go through this complex multi-jurisdictional route.

Twenty-seven nations denied Snowden asylum before he settled in Russia. Paranoia governed his early life in Russia, as he feared that US agents would target him seeking retribution.I was very much a person the most powerful government in the world wanted to go away,Edward toldThe Guardian.

They did not care whether I went away to prison. They did not care whether I went away into the ground. They just wanted me gone.As time went by, however, he abandoned his disguises and started moving freely around the city.

Snowden earns by speaking to civil rights activists, students, both locally and abroad via video link-ups. Edward loves traveling, and though he is restricted to Russias borders, he has plenty to see in the vast nation. Snowden toldThe Guardianthat his perception of Russia has changed in the years that hes lived there. He said:

One of the things that is lost on all the problematic politics of the Russian government is the fact this is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. The people are friendly. The people are warm. And when I came here I did not understand any of this. I was terrified of this place, because, of course, they were the great fortress of the enemy, which is the way a CIA agent looks at Russia.

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Where is Edward Snowden now in 2021? He resides in Russia ...

Edward Snowden might not yet be a historical figure, but he certainly is a hero. He is the whistleblower of all whistleblowers, the American who blew the lid off of Washington's spying on private citizens. But Snowdens leak revealed that its not just the U.S. government that is spying on virtually every American -- big American telecommunications companies are also helping them to spy as well.

Snowdens upbringing is largely uneventful. His maternal grandfather was a Coast Guard rear admiral and his father was also an officer in the Coast Guard. His mother was a U.S. District Court clerk. His parents divorced around the time that he would have graduated high school in 2001, but Snowden is a high school dropout. After a nine-month absence due to mononucleosis, he simply took the GED exam and then began taking community college classes. Despite a lack of a bachelors degree, he worked at a masters online from the University of Liverpool.

Snowden had a keen interest in Japanese popular culture, and even worked for an anime company early on in his career.

How Snowden Became a Government Employee

While often thought of as little more than a computer geek, Snowden is in fact a former Army Reserve member and even signed up for special forces training. However, he broke both of his legs in a training accident and was discharged soon afterward. His motivation for joining the military was not to avenge the 9/11 attacks, but specifically the invasion of Iraq and a desire to liberate oppressed peoples in the country. He enlisted in April 2004, and was discharged in September of that year.

In 2005, he then worked at the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Study of Language as a security guard. While a training ground for the National Security Agency (NSA), this is not a classified facility. However, Snowden did have to obtain a security clearance to work here. In 2006, he accepted a job with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after speaking to them at a job fair. Known as a "computer wizard," he lived in a hotel room while he completed his training.

His first CIA assignment took place under diplomatic cover in Geneva, in March 2007. He claims that while there, he saw agents get a Swiss banker drunk, then had him arrested when he drove home. The CIA then, according to Snowden, offered to help him out in exchange for him becoming an informant. These claims are obviously disputed by the CIA.

He then worked for Dell starting in 2009, as an NSA subcontractor, where he was known as a "genius among geniuses." His time there mainly involved training employees on how to protect data from Chinese hackers.

From NSA Subcontractor to Whistleblower

It was during his time at Dell that Snowden began to become disillusioned with his work. He claims that his breaking point was seeing James Clapper, then Director of National Intelligence, lie to Congress under oath on March 15, 2013 (ironically, the Ides of March). He took his now-famous position at Booz Allen Hamilton in mid-2014, with the explicit intention of finding out just how deep the spying rabbit hole went. He even acted as a bit of an espionage agent while there, obtaining login credentials from over 20 employees by claiming that he needed them to do his job. Snowden, for his part, disputes that he ever did this. However, it has been corroborated by coworkers.

Snowden claims that he repeatedly reported what he considered to be inappropriate use of data collection to no fewer than 10 officials with proper clearance before going public. In an interview with NBC News, Snowden claims he was told to keep quiet about possibly illegal programs. Following the NBC News interview, the CIA downplayed Snowdens work, describing him as a "low-level analyst." He also claims that he initially planned to leak the information earlier, but held back to see if President Barack Obama would make any reforms or changes to the program. He made the final decision to leak when he saw that no such reforms were forthcoming.

Snowden entrusted independent journalist Glenn Greenwald to facilitate the leak while reporting for The Guardian. Greenwald championed Snowdens efforts to expose the NSA, eventually becoming editor of The Intercept, which began as a platform to report on Snowdens released documents. Together, they worked closely with director Laura Poitras, whose documentary about Snowden, Citizenfour, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Oscars. Snowden was attracted to both of them due to a Salon article Greenwald wrote about Poitras, who had become a target of the government due to her controversial films.

Since Snowden began leaking information while still under the employ of the NSA, he demanded maddeningly secure channels to leak the information. He claims that he combs through every document that he releases to ensure that it is relevant to his mission of exposing government spying, to protect agents in the field as well as their assets, and to not reveal impertinent information, even when it might be significant news. (Despite his efforts, an intelligence operation within al-Qaeda was exposed due to an improperly redacted document given to the New York Times. It has also been reported by the Sunday Times that due to Russian and Chinese decryption of the Snowden files, operations were forced to change in the field.)

No one knows precisely how much Snowden leaked, but we know that its a lot -- and its believed that only one percent of all documents have been leaked. Australian officials put the number at as many as 20,000 Australian documents. British officials estimate 58,000. The original NSA estimate was between 50,000 and 200,000, but it is now believed that Snowden leaked much, much more -- the current Department of Defense estimate is 1.7 million. This includes over 160,000 intercepted emails and text messages, some of which are hundreds of pages long, as well as nearly 8,000 documents taken from 11,000 different online accounts.

It is suspected that further leaks are on the way. The Australian government believes that the worst is yet to come.

What Snowdens NSA Leak Revealed

Again, no one knows for sure whats in all of the leaked documents, particularly given that a very small amount of what he took from the NSA has actually been leaked to the public. But some of what we do know -- which the intelligence community believes is not the most damning information that Snowden has -- is chilling.

The PRISM program was the first thing revealed. Basically, with a court order, but without any notification to the person being spied on, the government can read your emails and other electronic communications. There were also leaked details about an NSA call database, as well as a massive British government surveillance program called Boundless Informant. XKeyscore is a wiretapping program that allows any target to be surveilled with only a personal email needed to conduct the surveillance, which would allow access to virtually everything done on the Internet. Snowden likewise revealed that the government was surveilling millions of American citizens, including everything from their instant messages to where they are based on the location of their mobile phone.

The leak also discovered that the NSA:

The CIA, the NSA and the GCHQ used such unlikely platforms as XBox Live, Second Life and World of Warcraft to both surveil Americans and also to find informants. The NSA collected information about the sexual proclivities of people it considered radicalizing forces in the world with an eye toward using it to discredit them in the future. Among the targets of the massive intelligence-gathering effort was the largest Brazillian oil company -- hardly a threat to national security. Other targets included UNICEF, Medicins des Monde, European Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Angela Merkel, among 35 other heads of state allied with the United States.

Totally unrelated to any kind of security of anti-terrorism efforts, the NSA used programs to spy on their own love interests, a practice so common that they named it: LOVEINT.

Snowden has said that his death or capture would not halt the release of further information, implying that there is some kind of "kill switch" in place that will keep the information flowing even if he is not able to personally release it.

Finding Asylum in Russia & An Uncertain Future

Snowden left Hawaii, where he was stationed, under the pretext of receiving treatment for epilepsy on the mainland. Instead, he went to Hong Kong and from there to Russia. His final destination was originally meant to be Ecuador by way of Havana, however, he was not able to board his flight to Cuba. He claims that the United States government wanted to keep him in Russia in an attempt to smear him as a Russian spy.

Snowden remains in Russia, but has not formally been granted permanent asylum, only temporary asylum which continues to be extended. He has sought asylum in 21 different countries, all of which were denied. He alleges American interference in his quest for asylum. In Moscow, Snowden makes most of his living off of speaking fees, and lives largely at the pleasure of Vladimir Putins government. One need only look to Julian Assange to see how precarious his position is.

While Snowden remains a controversial figure, we believe him to be a hero. All signs point to him having gone through as many official channels for redress before turning to the only one that he had left -- direct communication with the American public through sympathetic journalists. His appeals to the American public have largely gone unheeded.

NSA Director General Keith B. Alexander and CIA Director General James Clapper both lied under oath to Congress about the extent of domestic surveillance. Not only were they not prosecuted, but they have also been handsomely rewarded for their efforts with speaking fees far in excess of what Snowden earns for teaching the public about privacy, cryptography and government snooping.

This story first appeared at Ammo.com and is republished with permission

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Edward Snowden: The untold story of how one patriotic ...

Edward Snowden is a patriot. He is not a traitor. He is a legitimate whistleblower and, in a surprising decision last September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit:

Said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional.

This comes seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans telephone records. Snowden exposed the details of a massive NSA program that used the fear of terrorism to trample on the Constitutional rights of American citizens. The U.S. Government is following the same twisted plan in prosecuting American citizens who entered the Capitol on January 6.

Snowden was somewhat shocked by the outcome. He posted the following on Twitter:

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I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSAs activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them. . . . The Supreme Court once said, It is difficult for the People to accept what they are prohibited from observing. Thats why I blew the whistle in the first place: the public has a right to know decisions that redefine the territory of their rights.

The courts got this one right. The flame of liberty and the fire of freedom have not yet been extinguished in America. It is the ultimate irony that Snowden enjoys more freedom and protection of his civil rights in Russia than in America.

The Gateway Pundit is always committed to ensuring your voice can and will be heard. To reinforce that commitment, we are switching our commenting platform to Insticator. Dont worry! All you have to do is create a commenting account with Insticator, and then you will be able to link past comments into your new Insticator account. For more information, weve written an article that you can read HERE. If you have any feedback or questions about your Insticator commenting account, please email them at: [emailprotected].

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U.S. Court Vindicates Patriot Edward Snowden

For many people, Edward Snowden is a hero and they believe that he did more for the freedom of free citizens than anyone else in recent history. For some, he is the biggest traitor that America has seen in the modern era. Few people have raised such opposing and violently clashing emotions and opinions as Edward Snowden has ever since he became the worlds biggest whistle-blower in 2013. Again whether he is a whistle-blower or not is a matter of individual opinion. Since 2013 the American government, their national security agencies particularly the NSA and the CIA, agitated members of the press, and a whole lot of American citizens have been working hard to punish Snowden and bring him to justice. The big problem is that they simply cant get their hands on Edward Snowden. He is not in America so they cant arrest him and put him on trial. Edward Snowden has been escaping from his American pursuers since 2013 when this cat-and-mouse game began. Its 2021 now and many people are asking Where is Edward Snowden now? They want to know Where is Edward Snowden today?

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Edward Snowden is a former computer intelligence consultant who was an employee and subcontractor for the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] in the early 2010s. Several members of Snowdens family have worked in senior government positions in America and he was a bit different from other kids from a young age. Though Snowden did not attend college he studied online and obtained a masters degree from the University of Liverpool, England, in 2011. He got interested in Japanese culture, studied the Japanese language, got interested in martial arts, studied Buddhism, and later worked in an anime company at its branch in the USA. In 2006 he applied for and got a job at the global communications division of the CIA at its headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He later got disillusioned with the CIA and quit his job. He then began working as a subcontractor for the CIA and he had access to thousands of documents that detailed the covert activities of the NSA and the CIA.

Read Also: Why did Corey James Leave Again? Does Corey James Die in All American?

What did Edward Snowden do? On May 20, 2013, Snowden got on a flight to Hong Kong after leaving his job at the NSA facility in Hawaii without informing anybody including his then-girlfriend Lindsay Mills. Then in June 2013 he revealed thousands of secret and classified NSA documents to journalists from major publications including The Washington Post and The Guardian. All hell broke loose. People were outraged at the sensational disclosures in these documents that revealed that the American government was conducting mass surveillance and obtaining private information about American citizens among others. The American government acted swiftly and on June 21, 2013, the United States Department of Justice charged Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and deliberate theft of property of the American government.

So where is Edward Snowden in 2021? According to the latest reports, Edward Snowdens current location is in Russia. In June 2013 Edward Snowden flew into Russia to escape the authorities in Hong Kong and he has remained there ever since. Russia granted Snowden the right to asylum in 2013 and extended it every year. In October 2020, Russia granted permanent residency to Snowden and he makes a living now by speaking to civil rights activists and students both in Russia and abroad using the Internet and video link-ups. Even though he is not allowed to leave Russia he has the freedom to travel anywhere he wants inside the vast nation. Lindsay Mills joined Snowden in Moscow, Russia, in 2014 and later married him. They had a baby boy in December 2020 and he has been given Russian citizenship by the Russian authorities.

The Edward Snowden leaks marked a watershed in government surveillance programs and for the first time, the American security apparatus was forced to explain itself to the general public. They have not forgiven Edward Snowden for this and perhaps never will. While Snowden maintains that he leaked this information to inform the American public about what is done in their name and how the government is secretly working against them, the people who disagree with him have called him a traitor and criminal. The American government is constantly trying to bring him back to America and face justice and Snowden has claimed that they simply want him gone. Over the years several TV programs, TV shows, documentaries, and films have been made on Snowdens life and his actions and the debate about him continues. He is currently safe in Moscow, Russia, and the strongman of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is standing up to the American government. Nobody knows how long this will last and Edward Snowden continues to live his life in Russia constantly looking back over his shoulder to see if his past catches up with him one fateful day!

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Where is Edward Snowden Now 2021? What did Snowden Do?

Undermining encryption systems to give governments access to citizens personal messages would be a colossal mistake with disastrous consequences, said former CIA contractor Edward Snowden, who participated via videoconference in the first World Youth Day forum. Encryption

Privacy was meant to be the power of individuals, [] to protect ourselves from the institutional giants, [] either in modern times or in earlier times, argued Snowden, aforementioned by CNBC. It was an insulating layer that allowed those of us who have very little power in society [] they could think, act and associate freely, he added.

The former CIA and NSA collaborator also charged the tech giants for their desire to extend surveillance over their users. The same companies that have worked so hard to spread encryption over the years now [] they want to have as much information as possible, he explained, noting that those firms they are limiting the use of end-to-end encryption in the fields that serve your business interest. They dont have a social mindset, Snowden added. They dont care. They care about their interests, he said.

Disclaimer: This article is generated from the feed and not edited by our team.

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Privacy is the power of individuals: Snowden warns that weakening the encryption of messages ... - Market Research Telecast

Its not often that major news organizations coordinate to sift through a large trove of leaked company documents and agree not to publish stories about them until a certain date. But in the world of news related to Facebook, these are extraordinary times.

Something similar happened in 2016 when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published financial leaks in an investigation called the Panama Papers, uncovering details of the global elites tax havens, and in 2013 after exNational Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden released top-secret documents, kicking off a storm of coverage in global newspapers about how the U.S. and other governments spyon citizens and organizations.

Now its Facebooks turn.

Upcoming news stories based on thousands of Facebook documentswhich whistleblower Frances Haugen worked to release to more than a dozen news organizations as diverse as the Associated Press, CNN, Le Monde, Reuters and the Fox Business networkarent likely to be as revelatory as those epic leaks of time past. For one, the Facebook documents were the basis for the series of impactful stories from the Wall Street Journal, which received them from Haugen months ago. Those pieces revealed how the companys research showed Facebooks products could be toxic for some teens and offered details about how there were internal concerns that the company wasnt doing enough to stop human trafficking coordinated through its platform or to remove other dangerous content. The reporting led to a U.S. congressional hearing two weeks ago. But Haugen felt there were more stories to be told.

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New Facebook Storm Nears as CNN, Fox Business and Other Outlets Team Up on Whistleblower Docs - The Information

After disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud in 2017, hewasforced to relinquish his assets, including a highly collectible edition of the Wu-Tang Clan albumOnce Upon a Time in Shaolin.The U.S. government sold it this past summer for $4 million to, it has now been revealed, a cryptocurrency collective called PleasrDAO.

Shkreli, who is now serving a seven-year prison sentence,placed the winning $2 million bidon the album via the online auction house Paddle 8 in 2015.

The collective, which has been storing the record in a New York City vault, says they want to make the two discs 31 tracks more widely available to listeners. But thats despite Wu-Tangs leader, RZA, and producer, Cilvaringz, specifying in the original sale that the music could not be publicly released for 88 years, until2103.

Martin Shkreli exits federal court on May 3, 2016. Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images.

This album at its inception was a kind of protest against rent-seeking middlemen, people who are taking a cut away from the artist. Crypto very much shares that same ethos, the collectives chief pleasing officer, Jamis Johnson, told the New York Times. The album itself is kind of the O.G. NFT.

In fact, the new sale came with an NFT instead of a physical ownership deed. PleasrDAO paid $4 million in cryptocurrency to an intermediary represented by Peter Scoolidge, a lawyer who helped broker the deal with Cilvaringz.

The government received what waspublicly known to be owed under the asset forfeiture order, Scoolidge told theTimes,or about$2.2 million according to recent court filings.

Masta Killa, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, U-God, Cappadonna, Raekwon the Chef, and Inspectah Deck of the Wu-Tang Clan. Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images.

Ahead of the sale,Scoolidge was given the rare opportunity to listen to the record in order to determine it was in working order. He used a Discman, playing the music for a select group oflaw enforcement and representatives of the U.S. Marshals, the U.S. attorneys office, and the Department of Justice.

As you can imagine, the tracks have a lot of colorful language on them, [so] theres a lot of giggling [as] people who are not hip-hop people [are] listening to this stuff, Scoolidge told Rolling Stone. It was pretty funny.

The collective that bought the album has 74 members. The groups name is a portmanteau based on the NFT artist Pplpleasr and the acronym D.A.O., which stands for decentralized autonomous organization.

Since it was founded less than a year ago, the collective has acquired a number of high-profile digital works, including NFTs by Edward Snowden and Pussy Riot, as well as one based on the popular Doge meme, which it began selling to the public in fractional shares.

This beautiful piece of art, this ultimate protest against middlemen and rent seekers of musicians and artists, went south by going into the hands of Martin Shkreli, the ultimate internet villain, Johnson told Rolling Stone.

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A Cryptocurrency Collective Has Been Revealed as the $4 Million Buyer of Martin Shkrelis Collectible Wu-Tang Clan Album - artnet News

Diane Weyermann, who oversaw the making of potent documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth, Citizenfour and Food Inc., and in so doing helped change the documentary world from an earnest and underfunded backwater of the movie industry into a vibrant must-see category, died on Oct. 14 at a hospice facility in Manhattan. She was 66.

Her sister Andrea Weyermann said the cause was lung cancer.

Diane was one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever known, said Al Gore, the former vice president and presidential candidate whose seemingly quixotic mission to educate the world about climate change through a decades-long traveling slide show became an unlikely hit film with an odd title, An Inconvenient Truth. She was enormously skilled at her craft and filled with empathy, he added, in a phone interview. It is not an exaggeration to say she really did change the world.

So did his movie. An Inconvenient Truth earned an Oscar in 2007, and Mr. Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize that same year, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The film, which became one of the highest-earning documentaries ever made, was the second documentary made by the activist film company Participant, where Ms. Weyermann was a longtime executive, and hardly anyone in Hollywood thought it was a good idea. It was a movie about a slide show, after all.

When the filmmakers screened it for a major studio in hopes of getting distribution, some of the executives fell asleep. There was audible snoring, recalled Davis Guggenheim, the director, and when it was over, one of them said, No one is going to pay a babysitter so they can go to a theater and see this movie, but well help you make 10,000 CDs for free that you can give to science teachers.

Dejected, Mr. Guggenheim, Mr. Gore, Ms. Weyermann and others repaired to a steakhouse in Burbank, Calif., to brood, but Ms. Weyermann refused to be cowed.

Just wait till Sundance, she said.

An Inconvenient Truth received four standing ovations at the Sundance Film Festival, and Paramount bought the distribution rights.

Participant had been started in 2004 by Jeff Skoll, a social entrepreneur and the first president of eBay, with its own mission: to make movies about urgent social issues. A former public interest lawyer, Ms. Weyermann was running the documentary program at the Sundance Institute when Mr. Skoll hired her in 2005, though he was worried that Robert Redford, a friend and the founder of the institute, would be irked. (He wasnt, and blessed the move).

From the start, Diane brought knowledge, relationships, context and industry insights into our team, Mr. Skoll said in an email. Participant was a small, burgeoning company at the time, direct film industry expertise was limited, and we had very little documentary experience.

Participant would go on to make more than 100 films, including the features Spotlight, Contagion and Roma and the documentaries My Name Is Pauli Murray and The Great Invisible.

Diane built an incredible slate of films that have made a difference in everything from nuclear weapons to education to the environment and so much more, Mr. Skoll added. She was the heart and soul of Participant.

It was Ms. Weyermanns job to find, fund, form and promote documentaries from all over the world, and she traveled constantly to do so.

In 2013, Laura Poitras, the director of Citizenfour the Oscar-winning tale of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who exposed the governments widespread surveillance programs was holed up in Berlin when Ms. Weyermann came to see her.

Diane knew I couldnt travel to the U.S., Ms. Poitras said, because she was worried that she might be detained or arrested; during the course of her reporting, Mr. Snowden had become a fugitive and a cause clbre. She wanted to make sure I was OK, and I wanted her to see the cuts. I had hundreds of hours of film, and I told her right off, Im not going to be able provide any documentation film studios typically require detailed written proposals and she immediately said, Were going to do this and Ive got your back.

She loved being in the editing room, Ms. Poitras added. She had an amazing ability to see a film when it was really raw and be in tune with it and what the filmmaker needed. You wanted her notes; she always made the work better.

A directors whisperer is how Mr. Guggenheim described her.

It wasnt just the big box-office movies she supported, said Ally Derks, the founder of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. It was the small, fragile films she nurtured, too. She was in India with Rahul Jain, whose movie about pollution in New Delhi had just screened at Cannes. She was in Siberia with Victor Kossakovsky the Russian filmmaker whose 2018 film, Aquarela, has barely any dialogue or human beings and takes an immersive look at water, from a waterfall in Venezuela to glaciers crumbling in Greenland.

In a review in The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis called Aquarela a stunning, occasionally numbing, sensory symphony, and took note of the films ending: a rainbow over the worlds tallest waterfall. It feels, she wrote, a little bit like hope.

Diane Hope Weyermann was born on Sept. 22, 1955, in St. Louis. Her father, Andrew, was a Lutheran minister; her mother, Wilma (Tietjen) Weyermann, was a homemaker and later worked for a glassware company.

Diane studied public affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, graduating in 1977, and four years later earned a law degree from the Saint Louis University School of Law. She worked as a legal aid lawyer before attending film school at Columbia College Chicago, graduating in 1992 with an M.F.A. in film and video.

That same year, Moscow Women Echoes of Yaroslavna, her short documentary film about seven Russian women, filmed by a Russian and Estonian crew, was screened at Ms. Derkss festival in Amsterdam. Ms. Weyermann also made a short film about her fathers hands.

She turned from making movies herself to helping others make them in 1996, when she became director of the Open Society Institutes Arts and Culture Program, one of the billionaire investor George Soross philanthropies, now known as the Open Society Foundation. She started the Soros Documentary Fund, which supported international documentaries that focused on social justice issues.

When Ms. Weyermann was hired by the Sundance Institute to set up its documentary film program in 2002, she brought the Soros Fund with her. There she set up annual labs for documentary makers, where they could work on their films with others, creating the sort of community that documentarians craved.

In addition to her sister Andrea, Ms. Weyermann is survived by a brother, James. Another sister, Debra Weyermann, an investigative journalist, died in 2013.

In 2018, Ms. Weyermann became co-chair, with the screenwriter and producer Larry Karaszewski, of the foreign-language film category for the Academy Awards. They promptly changed the name of the category to international feature film, pointing out that the word foreign was not exactly inclusive. Diane had a way of cutting through everyday nonsense, Mr. Karaszewski said.

In a 2008 interview, Ms. Weyermann was asked if she thought it was asking too much for a film to make a change in society.

When films are made solely for that purpose, they fall like a lead balloon, she replied. What I love about film is its a creative medium. Its not just Lets focus on an issue and educate, but: Lets tell a story, lets tell it beautifully, lets tell it poetically. Lets tell it in a way that isnt so obvious.

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Diane Weyermann, Executive Who Championed An Inconvenient Truth, Dies at 66 - The New York Times

Succession returned on Sunday night with more of what weve come to expect: affectionate swearing, major business decisions dictated by complex psychosexual dynamics and millionaires treating private helicopters like theyre Uber Xs.

There was one surprising guest star, though: the Bosnian capital where the media kingpin Logan Roy decides to hide out in a distinctly unglamorous airport hotel. It initially seems like an odd choice to his family, until Shiv points out that Bosnia-Herzegovina has no extradition treaty with the US. While Logan is still in control, his decision to fly there is a silent admission that hes scared he might be running out of options.

But are things that simple? Can a global tycoon who fears arrest just disappear to another country? And what sunshine paradises are available to the discerning billionaire, should the heat of the law become unbearable?

If the question is whether an individual with significant means could seek to lawyer up and place himself in a jurisdiction that would maximise the possibility of avoiding extradition then yes, this is possible and indeed likely, says Thomas Garner, a partner at Fladgate law firm who specializes in extradition law.

There are countless high-profile fugitives living abroad, including Julian Assange, Mike Lynch and Edward Snowden. Probably the longest-standing high-profile fugitive would be Roman Polanski. Hes been on the run from the US since 1978 and has managed to live a comfortable and productive life on the lam in France thanks to his French nationality and the fact that France wont extradite its own nationals.

Logan was also lucky to have been able to escape the country in luxury, on one of a fleet of private planes. While not involving the US, the case of Carlos Ghosn was probably the most spectacular recent example of a determined high-net-worth individual planning and executing an escape which involved him being smuggled out of Japan in a box on a private jet, Garner said. Hes now in Lebanon, where he is safe from extradition to Japan.

Things are not that simple for Logan: just because Bosnia doesnt have an extradition treaty doesnt mean it wouldnt extradite him if the US wanted Logan to return.

The US is a relentless and notoriously aggressive extradition partner. Its prosecutors have a famously long reach, says Garner. People often talk about non-extradition countries in reality the lack of a treaty is no barrier to extradition if a country wishes to cooperate with the US. It is relatively common for countries to enter into bespoke one-off agreements with states in order to secure the extradition of a high-profile target. However, there are also several regimes who are opposed to the US or who may see political capital in shielding a fugitive. The issue with this sort of strategy is that you are at the mercy of the state who is protecting you. If Putin decides there is political capital in handing over Snowden to the US, then it is game over, and when Ecuador tired of Assange, he was soon out of the embassy and in Wandsworth prison.

The episode also shows Logan battling with his son over who will retain the services of the lawyer Lisa Arthur (a fictional stand-in for Gloria Allred, one may assume) in order to fight the cover-up of allegations. However, when it comes to his personal liability, Logan might have to return to the US to fight any case brought against him.

One peculiar feature of the US justice system is something called the fugitive disentitlement doctrine, explains Garner. This means that an individual is barred from fighting his case remotely in practice, this hinders substantive applications being made in respect of the allegations or case until they return to the US.

Ive seen this manifest itself in particularly unfair ways. One client had what appeared to be a knockout blow to the allegations but a judge refused to consider an application to dismiss the proceedings until he returned to the US, where he would inevitably have been detained for months pending the resolution of the matter. The US authorities are very aggressive and determined when it comes to pursuing defendants overseas. They proactively build cases against individuals, using informants and cooperating witnesses.

One remaining mystery is why Logan would choose to head to the Balkans rather than somewhere with warmer weather and more six-star hotel suites: neither the Maldives nor Indonesia has an extradition treaty with the US. And in the real world, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the US have some historical agreements.

The decision might have been an artistic one. Sarajevo is where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and more recently the site of one of the bloodiest civil wars in recent history.

As Logan spends most of the episode shouting Its war! and Well fucking beast em!, the location might be more of a nod to the beginning of a vicious and drawn-out battle.

See the original post here:
The US has a long reach: a legal expert on how Successions Logan Roy could avoid extradition - The Guardian

If you're an expat who likes the weather in the Netherlands, please explain it to me. Personally, now that we're heading into autumn and winter, my mind wanders off to those moments cycling to work in 4-degree celsius torrential rain on a Monday morning. In the dark.

But the weather also has its benefits. Usually, it creates an excuse to snuggle up in a dimly lit brown cafe, have some deep-fried snacks and good beer with friends. And the festive season is coming up.

We've got Halloween coming up, which has procuredsemi-permanent recognition here in the Netherlands, even though most of us Dutchies are still on the fence as to how we're supposed to celebrate Halloween properly. Dressing up and getting hammered is fairly easy, but the whole trick or treat thing sometimes backfires.

You see, since forever we've celebrated Sint Maarten. I only vaguely recall the whole idea behind Sint Maarten, to be honest: some dude called Maarten, born in Hungary around 316 A.D. to two roman parents (If his dad's name was Nortius Maximus, I'm going to keel over laughing), basically had the philosophy of giving out stuff to the needy.

Good on him. It subsequently became linked to Christianity. You see, Maarten - even though interested in said religion - didn't want to become a Bishop, but he made the error of hiding from his devotees in a cot full of geese.

Again, Monty Python sketches pop up in my head.

Sint Maarten is basically a day to remember that the coming months will be harder, and that food will become scarcer.

Halloween is pretty much the same thing. Except this is a Celtic fest, originally, where people believed that the ghosts of the dead would come back to earth and - for some reason - thought it would be a good idea to mess with their crops. So, if you see someone staggering across the street wearing a slutty nurse costume, don't judge. Remember: they're warding off ghosts.

The idea behind the two is similar: stock up, share, 'cause it's gonna be tough.

Then we've got the similarities between Sinterklaasand Santa Claus, where admittedly there's a bit of a - lets call it a tussle - in opinions about the first one. I'm guessing there's probably a rap sheet to be found somewhere on Santa as well. I mean: Edward Snowden had to take up residence in Russia, so maybe that's why Santa lives on the North Pole

I could continue on for a bit to illustrate how basically all of the holidays we humans in different cultures celebrate are based upon the same principles. I think Bill and Ted summarised it best: "Be excellent to each other."

Don't judge.

Today, I read an article where the term "Wokum" was coined (whoever came up with that one is a genius, by the way). I liked that description. It was followed by the sentence: "all modern discussions are being settled here."

Nobody raised an eyebrow when Chris Pontius from Jackass did handstands in a kilt to show off his wiener on Dam Square (if he'd been on a bicycle path though, things might have worked out poorly for him).

But, the thing is, these next few months will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows, due to the festivities. And opinions. Opinions are like a**holes, they say -everyone has one.

So, going into these next months of scarce food, rising gas prices, and what else the world will throw at us - like the distressed baboon it's rapidly becoming - welcome to Wokum. Be excellent to each other.

See original here:
Welcome to Wokum... - IamExpat in the Netherlands