4 ms·

I take it you haven't seen that (obviously staged) Q&A with Putin with Snowden calling in, asking a ridiculously softball question. Any person with integrity wo

by Grue3 9y ago

I take it you haven't seen that (obviously staged) Q&A with Putin with Snowden calling in, asking a ridiculously softball question. Any person with integrity would refuse serving as cheap PR for Putin's regime. >You know he was en route to Ecuador when the US revoked his passport right? That made him stuck in Russia, with no way out. That story always seemed improbable to me. Doesn't pass the Occam razor test.

ionised 9y ago
> I take it you haven't seen that (obviously staged) Q&A with Putin with Snowden calling in, asking a ridiculously softball question. Any person with integrity would refuse serving as cheap PR for Putin's regime. Naive to the extreme. He has nowhere else to go but Russia. If he gets deported, its life in prison in some dank US black site, at the minimum. How is insulting Putin in front of the world going to help him at all? Do you really think Putin would change his ways right there if he had done so? Come on. > That story always seemed improbable to me Why? That's what happened.
- Grue3 9y ago
  > If he gets deported, its life in prison in some dank US black site, at the minimum. So what, Manning did go to prison. If you do the crime, get some integrity and do the time instead of being a poster boy for a dictator. >That's what happened. No, what happened is that he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow. The fact is that we don't have direct flights to Equador from Moscow, so if he wanted to go to Equador, and not in Moscow, he probably wouldn't end up here.
  - ionised 9y ago
    > So what, Manning did go to prison. If you do the crime, get some integrity and do the time instead of being a poster boy for a dictator. This is laughable. You say poster boy, I say you are falling hook, line and sinker for the tried and tested character assassinations and smear jobs that the US media and intelligence services love to perpetuate so much. I don't meant to offend here, but; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot > No, what happened is that he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow. The fact is that we don't have direct flights to Equador from Moscow, so if he wanted to go to Equador, and not in Moscow, he probably wouldn't end up here. Who said anything about direct flights? And Ecuador was only one of his potential destinations. He had more than one journey planned to add noise precisely to reduce his chances of being caught in this kind of heinous shit; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident And you seem to be having trouble with even the fact that he had his passport revoked. That did happen.
    - Grue3 9y ago
      So, he wasn't actually going to Equador like you said earlier, but "one of potential destinations". Yeah, right. You can't even keep your story straight, how am I supposed to argue with that? >You know he was en route to Ecuador when the US revoked his passport right? "Useful idiot" (pro-tip: calling people idiots is a bad idea when you don't want to offend them, or to engage in a debate with them) describes Snowden perfectly. He might've meant well at first, but ended up playing Putin's fiddle. The other option is that he's a spy and defected voluntarily. Trying to get to South America via Moscow makes him an actual idiot.
      - ionised 9y ago
        What's not straight about it? You;re the only one having trouble with it. He intended to go to one of three countries in south/central America. Why would you pick and book only one destination when you have US intelligence services trying to hunt you down? That seems retarded. As you seem to be a fan of Occams Razor, what seems to be more likely? That he was a liberty-minded contractor that discovered gross violations of personal privacy and civil liberties across the Western hemisphere and out of a sense of public good he decides to drop the dox bomb on the NSA and release everything he could lay his hands on? or This was some cunning and elaborately orchestrated Russian operation to plant a guy that used to talk immature shit on Ars Technica into the NSA in order to steal documents relating to the US and UK intelligence community's digital panopticon and then having hiom offload all he found to fucking journalists before he ever arrived in Moscow to collect his 'Putin's #1 Boy' trophy and life-time supply of Stolichnaya? I mean, you complain that he didn't outright challenge Putin in a live broadcast. Think about it. What would that achieve exactly? Russia is a lost cause when it comes to personal freedoms and civil liberties. The only way that will change is if Putin and his cronies all fuck right off and die. That's not likely. Snowden can not change a fucking thing about Russia, but a country he was born and lived in? A country that preaches freedom, democracy and liberty and asserts itself as the paragon of virtue where people may actually fucking listen if they can drag themselves away from the news-as-entertainment for a few fucking minutes? As much of an authoritarian shitheel and all-round scum bag as Putin is, he is not responsible for every ill that befalls America. By complicitly buying into the propaganda that the Russians are to blame for every instance of US imcompetence or outright disrespect of its own constitution you are giving the actual assholes a free pass. By blaming the Russian boogeyman under the bed every time a citizen identifies and cries foul of your country's gradual slide into plutocractic surveillance state you accelerate it. I'm not sure why I should be surprised by any of this. This is the country that just made Donal Trump a fucking president and half of whom are convinced that Fox News is fact-based rather than irrational hate-based. Oh, and "useful idiot" is the actual term that's used. I didn't make it up.

by Grue3 9y ago

ionised 9y ago

> I take it you haven't seen that (obviously staged) Q&A with Putin with Snowden calling in, asking a ridiculously softball question. Any person with integrity would refuse serving as cheap PR for Putin's regime. Naive to the extreme. He has nowhere else to go but Russia. If he gets deported, its life in prison in some dank US black site, at the minimum. How is insulting Putin in front of the world going to help him at all? Do you really think Putin would change his ways right there if he had done so? Come on. > That story always seemed improbable to me Why? That's what happened.

Grue3 9y ago
> If he gets deported, its life in prison in some dank US black site, at the minimum. So what, Manning did go to prison. If you do the crime, get some integrity and do the time instead of being a poster boy for a dictator. >That's what happened. No, what happened is that he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow. The fact is that we don't have direct flights to Equador from Moscow, so if he wanted to go to Equador, and not in Moscow, he probably wouldn't end up here.
- ionised 9y ago
  > So what, Manning did go to prison. If you do the crime, get some integrity and do the time instead of being a poster boy for a dictator. This is laughable. You say poster boy, I say you are falling hook, line and sinker for the tried and tested character assassinations and smear jobs that the US media and intelligence services love to perpetuate so much. I don't meant to offend here, but; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot > No, what happened is that he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow. The fact is that we don't have direct flights to Equador from Moscow, so if he wanted to go to Equador, and not in Moscow, he probably wouldn't end up here. Who said anything about direct flights? And Ecuador was only one of his potential destinations. He had more than one journey planned to add noise precisely to reduce his chances of being caught in this kind of heinous shit; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident And you seem to be having trouble with even the fact that he had his passport revoked. That did happen.
  - Grue3 9y ago
    So, he wasn't actually going to Equador like you said earlier, but "one of potential destinations". Yeah, right. You can't even keep your story straight, how am I supposed to argue with that? >You know he was en route to Ecuador when the US revoked his passport right? "Useful idiot" (pro-tip: calling people idiots is a bad idea when you don't want to offend them, or to engage in a debate with them) describes Snowden perfectly. He might've meant well at first, but ended up playing Putin's fiddle. The other option is that he's a spy and defected voluntarily. Trying to get to South America via Moscow makes him an actual idiot.
    - ionised 9y ago
      What's not straight about it? You;re the only one having trouble with it. He intended to go to one of three countries in south/central America. Why would you pick and book only one destination when you have US intelligence services trying to hunt you down? That seems retarded. As you seem to be a fan of Occams Razor, what seems to be more likely? That he was a liberty-minded contractor that discovered gross violations of personal privacy and civil liberties across the Western hemisphere and out of a sense of public good he decides to drop the dox bomb on the NSA and release everything he could lay his hands on? or This was some cunning and elaborately orchestrated Russian operation to plant a guy that used to talk immature shit on Ars Technica into the NSA in order to steal documents relating to the US and UK intelligence community's digital panopticon and then having hiom offload all he found to fucking journalists before he ever arrived in Moscow to collect his 'Putin's #1 Boy' trophy and life-time supply of Stolichnaya? I mean, you complain that he didn't outright challenge Putin in a live broadcast. Think about it. What would that achieve exactly? Russia is a lost cause when it comes to personal freedoms and civil liberties. The only way that will change is if Putin and his cronies all fuck right off and die. That's not likely. Snowden can not change a fucking thing about Russia, but a country he was born and lived in? A country that preaches freedom, democracy and liberty and asserts itself as the paragon of virtue where people may actually fucking listen if they can drag themselves away from the news-as-entertainment for a few fucking minutes? As much of an authoritarian shitheel and all-round scum bag as Putin is, he is not responsible for every ill that befalls America. By complicitly buying into the propaganda that the Russians are to blame for every instance of US imcompetence or outright disrespect of its own constitution you are giving the actual assholes a free pass. By blaming the Russian boogeyman under the bed every time a citizen identifies and cries foul of your country's gradual slide into plutocractic surveillance state you accelerate it. I'm not sure why I should be surprised by any of this. This is the country that just made Donal Trump a fucking president and half of whom are convinced that Fox News is fact-based rather than irrational hate-based. Oh, and "useful idiot" is the actual term that's used. I didn't make it up.