Tag: NSA

Sunday Smack

Happy Sunday, everybody! This is the first post ever that I am writing on a train, can you tell? Actually, I am pre-writing it on Saturday, and when you are reading it on Sunday, I am on a boat – a Danube cruise trip (still on my mission to catch-up on this rapidly passing summer). Hope your are all having a great time too! Take a look at what happened this past week, through the lense of my favorite bloggers. Russia’s convoy to East Ukraine and the International Committee of the Red Cross This convoy which turned out not to…

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Sunday Smack

Happy Easter to all those who are celebrating this weekend and all of you who are not, just have a wonderful weekend! 🙂 Should you wish to check out what’s been going on in the world this past week, here’s what I recommend to read: Major Powers Reach Deal To Lower Tensions In Ukraine I’ll admit I am a bit sceptical about this deal and find it hard to believe that any piece of it will be capable of “lowering tensions”. Let’s hope for the best though. Ukraine Calls in the International Criminal Court Now the case is in the…

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Snowden Called in to Putin’s Telethon. Does That Really Make Him a Kremlin Pawn?

Snowden Called in to Putin’s Telethon. Does That Really Make Him a Kremlin Pawn? One of the pleasures in writing about Edward Snowden is his predilection for the absurd. The NSA whistleblower abandons his dancer girlfriend for a life in exile, hides in airports, studies Dostoyevsky, appears by teleconference at a technology conference in Texas, and even attempts to learn Russian to acclimate to his new home in Moscow. It’s a delicious story, and on Thursday, Snowden delivered his latest morsel: He called in to Vladimir Putin’s televised Q&A session with the Russian public. Too bad Snowden’s English is not…

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Sunday Smack

Another week went by and I cannot believe how close we are to the end of this year already. Once again I had to find that bad things happening to me somehow raise my creativity. And being fired from your job is indeed a bad thing. There are also a number of reasons why I should be grateful and happy about this, starting with the fact that working there was a bad decision for me in the first place, but being fired still sucks. Anyway, I have a lot of new plans and ideas and I am ahead of what needs…

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Sunday Smack

I know it’s a clichĂ©, but time really does fly! While our scary horror Halloween party is still yet to happen due to scheduling issues, Pinterest, as well as malls and supermarkets are already flooded with Christmas stuff. And for me it somehow feels like summer just ended. How about you all? Meanwhile, this was a really busy week in world affairs with a lot of great reads on my favorite blogs. On world affairs: 3 Reasons Why this Iran Breakthrough is a Very. Big. Deal We don’t know how big of a deal exactly it is yet, as talks…

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Sunday Smack

Happy Sunday, everyone! This past one turned out to be only a two day working week for me. I was not so politely asked by my not so polite superior to take some days off while she’s going to be in the office, so we are not gonna have to meet. At one point in my forced holiday (that I have spent out of town) I was even grateful for her, feeling that I really needed these days off. Nevertheless, I spent some time thinking about my future in this job where I mostly have to spend 10+ hours per…

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Sunday Smack

Hope you all had a great week and an even better weekend! Here’s a few news stories to look back to: On world affairs: EU reaction to the NSA Affair Well, hacking world leaders’ cell phones is a serious issue. I would even double Lawfare’s Ingrid Wuerth calling it a diplomatic disaster. It is still unclear though how deep this will impact EU-US relations. UPR and Israel Israel has refused to atted its review session of the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review, being the first state ever to do so. The rescheduled review is about to take place…

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