Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away". 

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Hong Kong/China let whistleblower Ed Snowden fly away to a Russian airport, Putin has refused to send him to the USA, so the story goes. Ecuador is rumored to be Ed's destination, and a US senator has said Ecuador risks losing trade status if he is granted asylum there. Government spokesman Fernando Alvarado said at a news conference.today: "Ecuador gives up, unilaterally and irrevocably, the said customs benefits."  Ecuador is said to have offered the USA $23 million (about the same amount as they benefited from the trade agreement) to finance human rights training in the USA. The funding would help "avoid violations of privacy, torture and other actions that are denigrating to humanity," Alvarado said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/27/us-usa-security-ecuador-idUSBRE95Q0L820130627

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/26/us-usa-security-snowden-congress-idUSBRE95P1DR20130626


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Meanwhile, on the home front, the birds are singing, pre-dawn until after sunset. They always sound so gol-darned happy.