Erstellt am: 2. 7. 2013 - 15:18 Uhr

Flight Said Ed and Good Lobbying

Reality Check: The Edward Snowden Odyssey continues plus the unfairly tainted reputation of lobbying, explained.

The Longest Stopover Ever?

Well, actually no. THIS is the story of an EIGHTEEN YEAR stopover at an international airport. I was amazed to find that there is a wiki-page all about looooong stopovers.

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A passenger sleeps waiting for his plane in Terminal D of the Sheremetyevo International airport in Moscow, Russia.

So, NSA-leaker and computer-geek pin-up boy Edward Snowden is maybe/maybe not still in a transit lounge of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport. Waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
Which country will have him? Under which conditions? He's broken his silence and replied to Russian President Putin's request to stop leaking American info in order to stay in Russia, with a hearty, "Flight please!"
Wikileaks have wikileaked the countries besides Ecuador and Iceland where Snowden has applied for asylum: Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, and Venezuela and AUSTRIA.

Being purely egotistical, I hope he comes to Austria so I can land the mother-of-all-exclusive interviews and finally win that Pulitzer that has evaded me for so long for some reason (see writing style above).
Charles Maynes is our correspondent in Moscow... he gave us the latest on the on-going saga of Edward Snowden...

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A picture dated 06 December 2012 shows former member of the European Parliament and former Interior Minister of Austria, Ernst Strasser

I Believe in the Good of Lobbying

And in the Weird Connections Category, speaking of Snowden, my eyes rotated in my skull when I read this recently. I have no way of knowing if what the article claims to be true is true but what I do know is that Ernst Strasser personifies an example of how lobbying can be used for not good things eventually. BUT lobbyism is not equal to corruption. Quite the contrary according to Liz David-Barrett, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Corporate Reputation in the Saïd Business School, at the University of Oxford.