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> flight to asylum in Russia. Ironically Snowden tweets about freedom of information from Russia, where Putin literally kills journalists

by asjw 6y ago

phkahler 6y ago
Snowden is like a thorn in the side to some people in the US government. Putin probably like him right where he is.
- selectodude 6y ago
  No different than all of the Soviet dissidents we gave asylum to for no reason other than to piss off the soviets.
- netsharc 6y ago
  Sadly Snowden is in a position where Putin can use him for a trade. One possible scenario I thought is Trump getting desperate and asking Putin for Snowden to be extradited so Trump can rah rah about being the man that got "the traitor". Meanwhile Putin would get whatever it is Putin wants from this trade, because as we know Trump is an unparalleled genius in deals...
  - jerkstate 6y ago
    Come on. Trump's base thinks Snowden is a patriot. Do you even know Roger Stone?
    - fit2rule 6y ago
      Snowden is a patriot in my mind, and I'm no Trump supporter. Just because you associate Snowden with Trump, as per standard agitprop victim procedure, doesn't mean that you should ignore the very real criminal behaviour that Snowden revealed to the world. You should probably pay more attention to the fact of illegal behaviour, more than playing cult doll games ..
      - jerkstate 6y ago
        Every time I say something that can vaguely be construed as not correctly hating Trump or his supporters on this forum I get responses like this, using insulting emotional phrases like “cult doll games.” I was merely pointing out what I see as a misconception in his likely motivations. I still think the scenario GP presented is extremely unlikely and alarmist, why would you call my post agitprop and not that one?
        fit2rule 6y ago
        Just so its clear, I'm not aligned with the collective view that Trump is a Putin agent - I think this is an excuse used to ignore America's true, real crimes, against humanity which occurred way before Trump came to power, and is a deflection from the real issue - which is that America has been getting away with the murder of innocent people for decades in its illegal wars. From my point of view, it'd actually be GREAT if America could get along with Russia. This would require a great deal of humility and a vacation of vast amounts of hubris on both sides, however. "Trump is a Russian agent" is a meme designed to protect fragile American ego's from the truth, which is that America, through its unhindered asymmetric, illegal wars, is the #1 cause of violent, murderous upheaval in the world today - and therefore actually kind of deserves the orange buffoon tearing things to pieces. When war criminals are allowed to roam free, eventually the society they choose to rule becomes their target. That said, I don't love/hate Trump as an idol, either way. He is the least of America's problems. You're right though, we will trigger a great deal of animosity from the Trump-hating(,-loving) collective when we point this out. Agitprop is designed to push the collective mind in a desired direction - all the hating of Trump right now is doing, is preventing Americans from inspecting the real, legitimate war crimes and crimes against humanity that their nation has been committing - Trump-hatred is an Emmanuel Goldstein-like distraction mechanism. "The Party" (Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CFR) still gets away with murder, whoever is the figurehead...
        jerkstate 6y ago
        Well, I mostly agree with you, not sure how much I can add to this without getting way into the weeds besides saying that I hope that the sacrifices of people like Snowden were not in vain and the USA does eventually get their intelligence agencies under control.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      That is most decidedly not true. If it was, his base would be clamoring for restrictions on the NSA’s spying. The truth is: no one in the public cares.
      - jerkstate 6y ago
        What's your source for your claim that Trump's base does not care about warrantless spying? You can see an example of priorities in coverage and reaction to the recent defeat/delay of the FISA re-authorization in the House. Here's a recent article from a right-wing outlet, PJ Media, which I feel is at least somewhat representative of Trump's base: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/28/house-fails-to-pass-fisa-re-authorization-after-trump-veto-threat-n442011 https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/28/... If this wouldn't draw readers, why would they write the article? Here's a counterpoint article from the left-wing outlet Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/28/pelosi-pulls-fisa-bill-amid-objections-from-gop-and-progressives-286939 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/28/pelosi-pulls-fisa-b... To get a flavor of what his base thinks, you can look through replies to some of his tweets on the matter: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1266017512162037761 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12660175121620377... Not sure how you came to your conclusions, please elucidate me.
        AndrewBissell 6y ago
        The only reason Trump's base cares one whit about FISA is because it was used (yes, quite illegitimately in my opinion) to spy on Trump and his campaign & staff in the runup to his inauguration. If they actually care about mass surveillance and such, why doesn't Trump put forward some proposals and measures to reign it in? Instead he is seeking to expand it with his AG trying to ban E2E encrypted messaging.
  - belorn 6y ago
    Simple solution: the US give Snowden his passport and guaranties that they won't go after him while he fly to a any other country that is willing to offer him asylum. The Evo Morales grounding incident showed what happens if Snowden tries to leave russia. The US pressured France, Spain, and Italy to forced the airplane of the Bolivia government on the mere suspicion that Snowden may had been onboard. Afterward all three countries basically said "ops, sorrrrry, we was ordered by the US to do this". Julian Assange later claimed that it was he who told the US about the flight in order to distract the US agents, which resulted in the Bolivian ambassador to Russia demanding that Assange apologize for putting their president's life at risk. Illustrates nicely how the game of politics works.
BLKNSLVR 6y ago
Ironically the US, the "land of the free", forced Snowden to stay in Russia because that's where he happened to be when the US canceled his passport.
- Craighead 6y ago
  Ironically had Snowden sought mental health assistance he wouldn't be in Russia after breaking into secure systems he never received authorization to
kdtsh 6y ago
He knows what he’s doing. If he’s quiet about Russia’s crimes against freedom of expression, it’s because he’ll be in serious danger if he says anything about them - and Snowden going under for saying something true doesn’t do him or anyone else any favours, considering if he did drag Russia through the mud we probably wouldn’t learn anything new. Never forget that he unveiled a domestic and international surveillance and spying program which is unparalleled in all of history. The fact is, for all Russia’s brutality towards journalists, the scale of Snowden’s findings of US crimes against free expression and privacy dwarf anything Putin has ever done - he wishes he could have a domestic spy agency as effective and popular as the NSA.
- chinesempire 6y ago
  > unveiled a domestic and international surveillance and spying program which is unparalleled in all of history China
  - kdtsh 6y ago
    We could argue about this, or we could agree to disagree and just acknowledge that the US' domestic and international spying programmes are some of the most far-reaching and intrusive in history.
    - chinesempire 6y ago
      The problem with this definitions is not that they are wrong, they aren't, the problem is consequences. DDR was much smaller than US and his program was more limited than any actual one, given the advancements in technology of the past decades. And yet, STASI was much more effective and disruptive than many other similar projects before and after. At its peak STASI employed around 2% of the entire East Germany population. With the information gathered and the prevention of external influences, they could literally convince people that they were living in the best World possible using just a tiny wall and propaganda. Those who denied it, doubted about it, had contacts with western entities or were suspected of conspiring against the SED, were incapacitated, it doesn't imply they were killed on the spot, but they were made harmless, arrested, hospitalized, institutionalized in psychiatric wards or "disappeared" in concentration camps.
mindslight 6y ago
It's not ironic, but rather straightforwardly pragmatic. A free press is an ideal to strive towards because it's something that local thugs generally attempt to shut down. Distance helps prevent coercion, and the adversary of your adversary is an ally. Analogously, the US is ideally hosting as many Russian-community-focused independent speakers as possible. The question you should be focused on is why did this whistleblower have to flee to Russia to begin with?
- chinesempire 6y ago
  Isn't it ironic to post about freedom of press from the country where press is not free and journalists are killed? Iceland and Switzerland are free countries as well and refuse extradition to US
  - mindslight 6y ago
    'Isn't it ironic to post about police brutality from a city where the police beat protestors?' Unless Snowden is proclaiming the virtues of being in Russia, then where he is has little bearing on the validity of what he's saying. Either making it to Iceland or Switzerland is logistically challenging (see: Bolivia), or the downsides of being in Russia aren't particularly bad when you're not speaking out against Russian interests.
    - chinesempire 6y ago
      Snowden flew to Russia He chose to go there Would it be ironic to move to a city where police is brutal, knowing very well it is, by accepting an invite from the major of the city and then tweeting about police brutality in other parts of the World? Yes it would. I live 30kms away from Switzerland, it's really not that challenging to go there. Maybe being in Geneva to secretly investigate the Swiss bank system working for CIA, writing that Switzerland is like "living in an opposite World" just because your own country is living a financial crisis (2008) while Swiss were shielded by their government from it and refusing to testify against NSA while Switzerland offered asylum in exchange for cooperation, didn't work too well for him When it became clear that there was no ground to make it a political case, they dropped the offer Switzerland provides political asylum, not criminal asylum (Whether Snowden is a criminal or not is not relevant)

> flight to asylum in Russia. Ironically Snowden tweets about freedom of information from Russia, where Putin literally kills journalists

by asjw 6y ago

> flight to asylum in Russia. Ironically Snowden tweets about freedom of information from Russia, where Putin literally kills journalists

phkahler 6y ago

Snowden is like a thorn in the side to some people in the US government. Putin probably like him right where he is.

selectodude 6y ago
No different than all of the Soviet dissidents we gave asylum to for no reason other than to piss off the soviets.
netsharc 6y ago
Sadly Snowden is in a position where Putin can use him for a trade. One possible scenario I thought is Trump getting desperate and asking Putin for Snowden to be extradited so Trump can rah rah about being the man that got "the traitor". Meanwhile Putin would get whatever it is Putin wants from this trade, because as we know Trump is an unparalleled genius in deals...
- jerkstate 6y ago
  Come on. Trump's base thinks Snowden is a patriot. Do you even know Roger Stone?
  - fit2rule 6y ago
    Snowden is a patriot in my mind, and I'm no Trump supporter. Just because you associate Snowden with Trump, as per standard agitprop victim procedure, doesn't mean that you should ignore the very real criminal behaviour that Snowden revealed to the world. You should probably pay more attention to the fact of illegal behaviour, more than playing cult doll games ..
    - jerkstate 6y ago
      Every time I say something that can vaguely be construed as not correctly hating Trump or his supporters on this forum I get responses like this, using insulting emotional phrases like “cult doll games.” I was merely pointing out what I see as a misconception in his likely motivations. I still think the scenario GP presented is extremely unlikely and alarmist, why would you call my post agitprop and not that one?
      - fit2rule 6y ago
        Just so its clear, I'm not aligned with the collective view that Trump is a Putin agent - I think this is an excuse used to ignore America's true, real crimes, against humanity which occurred way before Trump came to power, and is a deflection from the real issue - which is that America has been getting away with the murder of innocent people for decades in its illegal wars. From my point of view, it'd actually be GREAT if America could get along with Russia. This would require a great deal of humility and a vacation of vast amounts of hubris on both sides, however. "Trump is a Russian agent" is a meme designed to protect fragile American ego's from the truth, which is that America, through its unhindered asymmetric, illegal wars, is the #1 cause of violent, murderous upheaval in the world today - and therefore actually kind of deserves the orange buffoon tearing things to pieces. When war criminals are allowed to roam free, eventually the society they choose to rule becomes their target. That said, I don't love/hate Trump as an idol, either way. He is the least of America's problems. You're right though, we will trigger a great deal of animosity from the Trump-hating(,-loving) collective when we point this out. Agitprop is designed to push the collective mind in a desired direction - all the hating of Trump right now is doing, is preventing Americans from inspecting the real, legitimate war crimes and crimes against humanity that their nation has been committing - Trump-hatred is an Emmanuel Goldstein-like distraction mechanism. "The Party" (Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CFR) still gets away with murder, whoever is the figurehead...
        jerkstate 6y ago
        Well, I mostly agree with you, not sure how much I can add to this without getting way into the weeds besides saying that I hope that the sacrifices of people like Snowden were not in vain and the USA does eventually get their intelligence agencies under control.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    That is most decidedly not true. If it was, his base would be clamoring for restrictions on the NSA’s spying. The truth is: no one in the public cares.
    - jerkstate 6y ago
      What's your source for your claim that Trump's base does not care about warrantless spying? You can see an example of priorities in coverage and reaction to the recent defeat/delay of the FISA re-authorization in the House. Here's a recent article from a right-wing outlet, PJ Media, which I feel is at least somewhat representative of Trump's base: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/28/house-fails-to-pass-fisa-re-authorization-after-trump-veto-threat-n442011 https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/28/... If this wouldn't draw readers, why would they write the article? Here's a counterpoint article from the left-wing outlet Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/28/pelosi-pulls-fisa-bill-amid-objections-from-gop-and-progressives-286939 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/28/pelosi-pulls-fisa-b... To get a flavor of what his base thinks, you can look through replies to some of his tweets on the matter: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1266017512162037761 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12660175121620377... Not sure how you came to your conclusions, please elucidate me.
      - AndrewBissell 6y ago
        The only reason Trump's base cares one whit about FISA is because it was used (yes, quite illegitimately in my opinion) to spy on Trump and his campaign & staff in the runup to his inauguration. If they actually care about mass surveillance and such, why doesn't Trump put forward some proposals and measures to reign it in? Instead he is seeking to expand it with his AG trying to ban E2E encrypted messaging.
- belorn 6y ago
  Simple solution: the US give Snowden his passport and guaranties that they won't go after him while he fly to a any other country that is willing to offer him asylum. The Evo Morales grounding incident showed what happens if Snowden tries to leave russia. The US pressured France, Spain, and Italy to forced the airplane of the Bolivia government on the mere suspicion that Snowden may had been onboard. Afterward all three countries basically said "ops, sorrrrry, we was ordered by the US to do this". Julian Assange later claimed that it was he who told the US about the flight in order to distract the US agents, which resulted in the Bolivian ambassador to Russia demanding that Assange apologize for putting their president's life at risk. Illustrates nicely how the game of politics works.

BLKNSLVR 6y ago

Ironically the US, the "land of the free", forced Snowden to stay in Russia because that's where he happened to be when the US canceled his passport.

Craighead 6y ago
Ironically had Snowden sought mental health assistance he wouldn't be in Russia after breaking into secure systems he never received authorization to

kdtsh 6y ago

He knows what he’s doing. If he’s quiet about Russia’s crimes against freedom of expression, it’s because he’ll be in serious danger if he says anything about them - and Snowden going under for saying something true doesn’t do him or anyone else any favours, considering if he did drag Russia through the mud we probably wouldn’t learn anything new. Never forget that he unveiled a domestic and international surveillance and spying program which is unparalleled in all of history. The fact is, for all Russia’s brutality towards journalists, the scale of Snowden’s findings of US crimes against free expression and privacy dwarf anything Putin has ever done - he wishes he could have a domestic spy agency as effective and popular as the NSA.

chinesempire 6y ago
> unveiled a domestic and international surveillance and spying program which is unparalleled in all of history China
- kdtsh 6y ago
  We could argue about this, or we could agree to disagree and just acknowledge that the US' domestic and international spying programmes are some of the most far-reaching and intrusive in history.
  - chinesempire 6y ago
    The problem with this definitions is not that they are wrong, they aren't, the problem is consequences. DDR was much smaller than US and his program was more limited than any actual one, given the advancements in technology of the past decades. And yet, STASI was much more effective and disruptive than many other similar projects before and after. At its peak STASI employed around 2% of the entire East Germany population. With the information gathered and the prevention of external influences, they could literally convince people that they were living in the best World possible using just a tiny wall and propaganda. Those who denied it, doubted about it, had contacts with western entities or were suspected of conspiring against the SED, were incapacitated, it doesn't imply they were killed on the spot, but they were made harmless, arrested, hospitalized, institutionalized in psychiatric wards or "disappeared" in concentration camps.

mindslight 6y ago

It's not ironic, but rather straightforwardly pragmatic. A free press is an ideal to strive towards because it's something that local thugs generally attempt to shut down. Distance helps prevent coercion, and the adversary of your adversary is an ally. Analogously, the US is ideally hosting as many Russian-community-focused independent speakers as possible. The question you should be focused on is why did this whistleblower have to flee to Russia to begin with?

chinesempire 6y ago
Isn't it ironic to post about freedom of press from the country where press is not free and journalists are killed? Iceland and Switzerland are free countries as well and refuse extradition to US
- mindslight 6y ago
  'Isn't it ironic to post about police brutality from a city where the police beat protestors?' Unless Snowden is proclaiming the virtues of being in Russia, then where he is has little bearing on the validity of what he's saying. Either making it to Iceland or Switzerland is logistically challenging (see: Bolivia), or the downsides of being in Russia aren't particularly bad when you're not speaking out against Russian interests.
  - chinesempire 6y ago
    Snowden flew to Russia He chose to go there Would it be ironic to move to a city where police is brutal, knowing very well it is, by accepting an invite from the major of the city and then tweeting about police brutality in other parts of the World? Yes it would. I live 30kms away from Switzerland, it's really not that challenging to go there. Maybe being in Geneva to secretly investigate the Swiss bank system working for CIA, writing that Switzerland is like "living in an opposite World" just because your own country is living a financial crisis (2008) while Swiss were shielded by their government from it and refusing to testify against NSA while Switzerland offered asylum in exchange for cooperation, didn't work too well for him When it became clear that there was no ground to make it a political case, they dropped the offer Switzerland provides political asylum, not criminal asylum (Whether Snowden is a criminal or not is not relevant)