Great Goof
It looks like Aeroflot and the Cuban Ministry of Tourism just pulled off a great goof and scored some major hard currency by ‘leaking’ that Edward Snowden was listed as a passenger on a flight between Moscow and Havana.
Apparently dozens of journalist took the bait and didn’t figure out until after the aircraft left the gate that Snowden wasn’t on board. Then after a 12-hour alcohol-free flight to Cuba, they learned that they would have to stay in Cuba 3 days.
So, Vladimir is happy that there are fewer journalists in Russia. Aeroflot is happy that they filled up an aircraft at the highest price for tickets. Cuba is happy that they have dozens of extra visitors who will be paying for rooms and food for three days.
It’s nice that someone has figured out how to make money from the lemming ‘journalism’ that currently infests the Western press.
9 comments
Yah, I was ROFL when I heard about that. Talk about your classic misdirection plays!
My guess is that the Wikileaks plane (yes, they have a plane!) is going to be spiriting off Mr. Snowden in the dead of night to someplace that has a direct flight to… well, somewhere else :).
After I saw a guess in comments at Corrente, it struck me that sea air might be nice this time of year. Plenty of time to learn a new language and customs and not worrying about the rest of the world.
He could sail to a neutral country to be picked up for a flight to wherever he was going, and be out of the spotlight.
Just read on the BBC web site that they won’t let the journalists out of the airport on the Cuban side, they’ll force them to stay in the terminal, eating meals from the airport concessionaires and sleeping on the airport benches. Suh-WEEET! Couldn’t happen to a better lot of vultures :).
This is the sort of thing that Mack Sennett was noted for and a staple of early local TV on Saturday morning.
This is truly becoming a farce, and distracting from the real problems of what the US is doing to its citizens.
Yah, a distraction. Though actually little was surprising to me about Snowden’s revelations. I’d followed the development of this through the Bush years, I wasn’t dumb enough to think that Zero quit spying on Americans just because he claimed to be a “civil libertarian”. I must admit that it’s somewhat vindication knowing that all my paranoid ruminations on what the government was doing turned out to be true. Is it really paranoia if they really *are* spying on you? Actually, I sort of wish that it *had* been paranoia…
LOL Yeah… I was so PMSL when I read about this! 😀 Perfect. 😀
I just watched the Pilot for a new TV series Under The Dome, (created by Stephen King) and it had the typical King jab’s at the USA. The one that made me laugh was:
Joe: What if the government built this thing?
Dale: I doubt it.
Joe: Why?
Dale: Because it works.
And people say King has no sense of humor, or knows anything about reality. 😉 😀
From a professional point of view, I’m really torqued that if they were going to do it, they were so bad about concealing it. We used to be able to do this well while we were sending people to moon, and now we can’t pull off a wire-tap without getting caught. Pathetic, really pathetic.
As soon as I saw Total Information Awareness I knew things were headed this way. They said they stopped it, but that was BS. Rumsfeld was moving money around like crazy. Military installations couldn’t pay their utility bills while Congress was throwing billions at the DoD. Billions of dollars are unaccounted for under the ‘CEO White House’.
Badtux, when Senator Zero voted for retroactive immunity for the telcos, it was obvious he intended to continue what was going on. He just extended a minimal effort to get Congress to sign on as co-conspirators.
Kryten, in the sense that Government of the US once did build things, and those things lasted for decades of service, King would be considered wrong. Given that the government now contracts out everything, they are lucky if the pens work to sign the contracts.
OT: Kryten, I see where Mr Rudd has returned the knife to Ms Gillard. Your politics are much more interesting than ours.
LOL In that above quote, Dale is an US Military Iraqi Veteran who’s quite jaded. As you can tell. 😉
OT: LOL Yeah Bryan… ) Been reading & watching news yesterday & today about Rudd & Gillard. It’s always highly amusing when all the old (mostly failed) politicians come out of the woodwork to voice their opinion (or when the reporters hunt them up). 😀
And just for the record… I said this would happen a just after Gillard and the puppet masters knifed Rudd, on this very blog if I’m not mistaken. 😉 My hope is that Rudd has learned a couple lessons whilst in limbo and will drastically improve his choices of Ministers and his management style. 😉 Labor had no choice though if they want to win the next election. It seems even the puppet masters know this. If Abbott wins, everyone is screwed, even them.
AFR had a nice article: Rudd’s revenge, Gillard gone
ABC News has full coverage (of course) Rudd Returns
It’s like he’s the Prodigal Son! I dunno… It’s gonna be tough to drag back the electorate, though Abbott is his own worst enemy, so unless Rudd screws up badly, he has a chance. Timing will be important, but he will have to convince Regional voters. But that only half the battle, they will have to win back the States and toss out the Lib State Gov’s during their next elections, this is where Labour has lost it over the last 6 years or so. Not a lot of point winning a Federal election when the States can tell him to drop dead and do their own thing for the most part. *shrug*
I guess we’ll see. 😉
Yeah… It’s gonna be interesting! 😀
That’s what I mean, Tony Abbott is a trip. He could be elected to the Senate from any state in the South running as a Republican. There have been times when he has almost made me think he was a slightly smarter Rick Perry, the governor of Texas.
Based on what I’ve read, Gillard seemed to be good at retail politics, but couldn’t make the leap to the national stage. She certainly didn’t inspire loyalty among the Labor MPs, and she messed up badly calling the election before she had actually accomplished anything.
Australia is in better shape than almost everyone else, but Labor doesn’t seem to be able to convince people to give them a shot at governing with a real majority.
It is a much faster ‘game’ in Australia than the US, almost the difference between handball and cricket.