{"id":6727,"date":"2013-07-05T09:30:50","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T09:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=6727"},"modified":"2013-07-05T09:30:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T09:30:50","slug":"oliver-stone-iceland-support-for-snowden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=6727","title":{"rendered":"Oliver Stone, Iceland support for Snowden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"oliverstone\"<\/a>‘It’s a disgrace that (President) Obama is more concerned with hunting down Snowden than reforming these George Bush-style eavesdropping techniques,’ the outspoken director said Thursday at a Czech film festival. Snowden is reportedly holed up in a Moscow airport waiting for a country to grant him asylum.<\/p>\n

Controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone is looking to get in on the fracas surrounding Edward Snowden, calling the fugitive secret-leaker a \u201chero.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stone, no stranger to making contentious statements, was appearing at a July Fourth appearance at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic, where he was scheduled to show two episodes of his new TV series, \u201cThe Untold History of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stone went on to encourage foreign countries to offer asylum to Snowden, who is reportedly holed up in Moscow\u2019s Sheremetyevo Airport after fleeing Hong Kong following his disclosure of confidential cellphone and Internet usage data surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency.<\/p>\n

Edward Snowden, a former analyst with a U.S. defense contractor, withdrew his application for asylum in Russia on Monday after President Vladimir Putin said he would have to stop leaking NSA documents.<\/p>\n

“To me, Snowden is a hero, because he revealed secrets that we should all know, that the United States has repeatedly violated the Fourth Amendment,” Stone said.<\/p>\n

“He should be welcomed, and offered asylum, but he has no place to hide because every country is intimidated by the United States,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Snowden has applied for asylum in 21 countries and has been rejected by at least 12 of them, including Austria, Brazil, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Iceland, India, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Spain and Switzerland.<\/p>\n

Bolivia and Venezuela remain possible landing places for the fugitive 30-year-old, who faces espionage charges in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Member of Iceland’s parliament \u00d6gmundur J\u00f3nasson made a proposition to receive Snowden on Thursday morning, the last day before the 63-member legislative body begins their summer leave.<\/p>\n

Granting citizenship to Snowden, who admits to revealing key details of U.S. surveillance activities would circumvent the rule that he must be on Icelandic soil to apply for asylum there.<\/p>\n

The same tactic helped get eccentric chess master Bobby Fischer to Iceland from Japan in 2005 to escape U.S. prosecution for breaking sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia, according to 21st Century Wire.<\/p>\n

Ogmundur Jonasson, whose liberal Left-Green Party is backing the proposal along with the Pirate Party and Brighter Future Party, put the issue before the Judicial Affairs Committee, but the idea received minimal support.<\/p>\n

‘We wanted to do this earlier,’ wrote Pirate Party politician Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson on his Facebook page. ‘But citizenship is an extremely delicate issue when it’s granted by parliament instead of granted through ordinary legal processes.’<\/p>\n

Iceland’s parliament, known as Althing, saw three Pirate Party members elected in 2013. NPR billed the party as an ‘international online freedom movement.’<\/p>\n

Jonasson argued to parliament on Thursday that Snowden ‘is now being chased and has nowhere to go,’ according to Icelandic media.<\/p>\n

Snowden also has a friend in former Icelandic presidential candidate Asthor Magnusson, who is collecting signatures from Icelanders as part of a petition to make his a citizen.<\/p>\n

‘I appeal to the oldest parliament in the world, the Althing in Iceland to grant a citizenship to Edward Joseph Snowden and issue him with travel documents for safe passage to Reykjavik,’ Magnusson wrote in an appeal to Parliament, according to RT News. ‘As matters have developed, I think that Icelanders should say ‘This is enough’: We support open society and human rights. It’s a basic human right to grant this man asylum in Iceland.’<\/p>\n

The ruling Conservative and Moderate parties could halt the bill. And some have speculated that the country’s president, \u00d3lafur Ragnar Gr\u00edmsson, could succumb to pressure purportedly being placed on international leaders by the U.S. government and veto the legislation. – Daily News\/Daily Mail<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘It’s a disgrace that (President) Obama is more concerned with hunting down Snowden than reforming these George Bush-style eavesdropping techniques,’ the outspoken director said Thursday at a Czech film festival. Snowden is reportedly holed up in a Moscow airport waiting for a country to grant him asylum. Controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone is looking to get … Continue reading “Oliver Stone, Iceland support for Snowden”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[422,3,10,123],"tags":[3053,2548,3723],"class_list":["post-6727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-news","category-united-states","category-world","tag-ed-snowden","tag-iceland","tag-oliver-stone"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/oliverstone.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6727"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6730,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727\/revisions\/6730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}