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Not if he wants to live in that country, or at all. The reason why he's in Russia and not buried in an unmarked ditch is because Russia considers exposing Amer

Not if he wants to live in that country, or at all. The reason why he's in Russia and not buried in an unmarked ditch is because Russia considers exposing Americas equal hypocrisy to be politically useful.

KennyBlanken 5y ago
In the US the media is neither state owned nor state controlled, with the exception of Voice of America. The closest we have to state-owned is NPR, and if you think NPR is the lapdog of the government, you don't listen to NPR very much.
daniel-cussen 5y ago
I think it's perfectly reasonable to give the only country that gave him asylum a pass, and turn a blind eye. He's under no obligation to be a megaphone against injustice in all forms in all places.
- PakG1 5y ago
  He's not giving them a pass. But there's only a few countries right now where he can be alive and well. None of them would be considered free the way you would desire, and so if he wants to remain alive and well, he has certain obligations. It's better for him than being dead.
  - midev 5y ago
    I love it. He leaves for one of the most repressive countries in the world, but gets a pass because he's critical of the United States. This is why nobody takes him or his supporters seriously.
    - PakG1 5y ago
      I read my comment again and I'm not sure how you got from my comment to writing what you did. I think we have a communication problem or a comprehension problem.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      ...nobody... Who are you trying to convince?
      - midev 5y ago
        Oh yeah I forgot how revered he is. Which is why he's hiding in oppressive regimes, lol. Even in the tech community, the most sympathetic group possible, half the people revile him as a self-serving traitor. Nobody takes him or his supporters serious. Hard to hear, I know.
        jessaustin 5y ago
        It's a simple question. You don't seem to have answered it.
        midev 5y ago
        It's kind of a dumb question, to be fair. It should be fairly obvious that I'm trying to sway the people reading the comment.
    - daniel-cussen 5y ago
      You just can't make enemies with everyone at that larger-than-life, history-affecting scale. You can't expect to solve all of the world's problems alone by denouncing every country on earth, even though you probably could construct the argument, for every single country on earth, that that country could be denounced for something. He's just one guy, he does what he can, and assassination absolutely on the table for activists who piss off the most powerful people on the planet enough. Bill Browder talks about what happened to him when he pissed off the most powerful people in Russia. I don't admire the guy, basically he figured out every story he could get into the WSJ or Nytimes made them $41M in preventing stock shenanigans like massive dilution so that his shares actually could appreciate from the rapidly growing Russia economy, so that was his whole angle, shaming those guys in the paper. It's not clear it was truth, or whether it was slander, there was shady business going on, but he's no saint. When a news article is worth $41 million, like how much is that per word, and are you going to get a PR person to review the words, check if you can't get the article to be worth $42M in stock? Are you sure it's exactly $41M? Can't you just give it a little nuance, use a thesaurus maybe? Besides, damningly, he gave up his US citizenship to avoid paying taxes (like he obviously doesn't say that because tax lawyers tell you if you say that you are forbidden from ever setting foot in America for life), and that backfired because that means you are forfeiting America's protection and help because you didn't want to contribute back into the system. And he now can't make political contributions as a citizen, which I'm getting to. He got kicked out of Russia, which makes perfect sense, like this guy thinks he milk American institutions, totally imperialistically meaning imposing American values on Russian companies, for no other reason but to make billions of dollars, and hoard that wealth with cunning tax evasion (guys like this absolutely don't pay taxes for ten years after you stop being a citizen, though that's the law, and to my understanding they literally value the money they pay in taxes 0%, or even negative). And USA actually is fine with you going to some banana republic and lording it over them, I mean it's perverse, but it's happened many many times in US history. And that's precisely why you still have to pay taxes if you're overseas if you're American, though in practice you only pay if you are upper class in a foreign country, which is by design. Or what, you expect the embassies to evacuate you after you caused a revolution, or you want American marines to force a country to redo an election you didn't like, that costs money that has to come from taxes, you don't want to pay anything for that? And that guy is an activist now, he got some other citizenships, he lobbied all kinds of governments to punish a few of Putin's, like, he calls them henchmen or something, maybe they are, I don't know, it's always the same 7 guys and nobody else so they can't get bank accounts, they're the ones who seem to have beaten his lawyer to death. And he says, he's gotten 7 red notices from Interpol from Russia, it's a huge problem if you get just one. It's realistic for him to expect to be assassinated, he says in his book he could have 1000 bodyguards and it wouldn't matter, Putin could get him anyway, and he has other strategies to protect himself. And several assassinations have been attributed to Russia in the last ten years, in London a few times, I think in London repeatedly, the nerve gas some years ago was attributed to them, some polonium in someone's tea, it's a realistic outcome if you're enough of a thorn in a powerful someone's side. So one viable strategy is, piss people off less.
hypeatei 5y ago
IIRC, his original destination wasn't Russia. His passport was revoked before he was able to leave, which meant he couldn't make it to Latin America. But yeah, I agree with your point about the Russian government political motives.
- sodality2 5y ago
  It was a deliberate plan by the intelligence agencies to discredit him ("he's in le russia"). His passport was cancelled specifically when it would leave him stuck in that country.
  - andreskytt 5y ago
    Making definitive claims about plans of intelligence services is not necessarily a very useful endeavor.
busymom0 5y ago
No. He was actually heading to Ecuador but US Admin specifically cancelled his passport while he was in transit at Moscow Airport from Hong Kong. He ended up having to stay at that airport for a while before he got asylum in Russia. And then this became the talking point on how "he's a Russian agent". The administration specifically intended this to happen.
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  This may be a dumb question, but why does that matter? At this point, he’s a famous political refugee; it’s not like he’d be flying commercial. If both Russia and Ecuador wanted to send him to the latter, why should they care that his US passport was revoked?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - busymom0 5y ago
    For 2 reasons: 1. US warned every country in both Europe and South America said to be considering shelter for Snowden of grave consequences should they offer asylum to the whistleblower. Without his US passport, Snowden couldn't go anywhere and Ecuador reversed their safe passage. 2. This also gave political fodder for the establishment cronies to call and label anyone who would defend Snowden a "Russian Agent". I would recommend reading these two by Glenn Greenwald (he was the journalist who worked with Snowden to publish the docs): https://greenwald.substack.com/p/ben-rhodes-book-proves-obama-officials https://greenwald.substack.com/p/ben-rhodes-book-proves-obam... https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-anger-toward-belarus-mounts-recall https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-anger-toward-belarus-mou... > Led by then-Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. officials warned every country in both Europe and South America said to be considering shelter for Snowden of grave consequences should they offer asylum to the whistleblower. Threats to Havana caused the Cuban government to rescind its commitment of safe passage they had issued to Snowden's lawyer. Under Biden's pressure, Ecuador also reversed itself by proclaiming the safe passage document issued to Snowden was a mistake. I would also recommend the Citizen Four documentary: https://youtu.be/EDhB-A23IUk https://youtu.be/EDhB-A23IUk
andreskytt 5y ago
Equal hypocrisy, you say? So what universally accepted scale did you weigh the entirety of US and Russian societies on finding them equal? Maybe it might make sense to look at some metrics with an agreed-upon methodology.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

In the US the media is neither state owned nor state controlled, with the exception of Voice of America. The closest we have to state-owned is NPR, and if you think NPR is the lapdog of the government, you don't listen to NPR very much.

daniel-cussen 5y ago

I think it's perfectly reasonable to give the only country that gave him asylum a pass, and turn a blind eye. He's under no obligation to be a megaphone against injustice in all forms in all places.

PakG1 5y ago
He's not giving them a pass. But there's only a few countries right now where he can be alive and well. None of them would be considered free the way you would desire, and so if he wants to remain alive and well, he has certain obligations. It's better for him than being dead.
- midev 5y ago
  I love it. He leaves for one of the most repressive countries in the world, but gets a pass because he's critical of the United States. This is why nobody takes him or his supporters seriously.
  - PakG1 5y ago
    I read my comment again and I'm not sure how you got from my comment to writing what you did. I think we have a communication problem or a comprehension problem.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    ...nobody... Who are you trying to convince?
    - midev 5y ago
      Oh yeah I forgot how revered he is. Which is why he's hiding in oppressive regimes, lol. Even in the tech community, the most sympathetic group possible, half the people revile him as a self-serving traitor. Nobody takes him or his supporters serious. Hard to hear, I know.
      - jessaustin 5y ago
        It's a simple question. You don't seem to have answered it.
        midev 5y ago
        It's kind of a dumb question, to be fair. It should be fairly obvious that I'm trying to sway the people reading the comment.
  - daniel-cussen 5y ago
    You just can't make enemies with everyone at that larger-than-life, history-affecting scale. You can't expect to solve all of the world's problems alone by denouncing every country on earth, even though you probably could construct the argument, for every single country on earth, that that country could be denounced for something. He's just one guy, he does what he can, and assassination absolutely on the table for activists who piss off the most powerful people on the planet enough. Bill Browder talks about what happened to him when he pissed off the most powerful people in Russia. I don't admire the guy, basically he figured out every story he could get into the WSJ or Nytimes made them $41M in preventing stock shenanigans like massive dilution so that his shares actually could appreciate from the rapidly growing Russia economy, so that was his whole angle, shaming those guys in the paper. It's not clear it was truth, or whether it was slander, there was shady business going on, but he's no saint. When a news article is worth $41 million, like how much is that per word, and are you going to get a PR person to review the words, check if you can't get the article to be worth $42M in stock? Are you sure it's exactly $41M? Can't you just give it a little nuance, use a thesaurus maybe? Besides, damningly, he gave up his US citizenship to avoid paying taxes (like he obviously doesn't say that because tax lawyers tell you if you say that you are forbidden from ever setting foot in America for life), and that backfired because that means you are forfeiting America's protection and help because you didn't want to contribute back into the system. And he now can't make political contributions as a citizen, which I'm getting to. He got kicked out of Russia, which makes perfect sense, like this guy thinks he milk American institutions, totally imperialistically meaning imposing American values on Russian companies, for no other reason but to make billions of dollars, and hoard that wealth with cunning tax evasion (guys like this absolutely don't pay taxes for ten years after you stop being a citizen, though that's the law, and to my understanding they literally value the money they pay in taxes 0%, or even negative). And USA actually is fine with you going to some banana republic and lording it over them, I mean it's perverse, but it's happened many many times in US history. And that's precisely why you still have to pay taxes if you're overseas if you're American, though in practice you only pay if you are upper class in a foreign country, which is by design. Or what, you expect the embassies to evacuate you after you caused a revolution, or you want American marines to force a country to redo an election you didn't like, that costs money that has to come from taxes, you don't want to pay anything for that? And that guy is an activist now, he got some other citizenships, he lobbied all kinds of governments to punish a few of Putin's, like, he calls them henchmen or something, maybe they are, I don't know, it's always the same 7 guys and nobody else so they can't get bank accounts, they're the ones who seem to have beaten his lawyer to death. And he says, he's gotten 7 red notices from Interpol from Russia, it's a huge problem if you get just one. It's realistic for him to expect to be assassinated, he says in his book he could have 1000 bodyguards and it wouldn't matter, Putin could get him anyway, and he has other strategies to protect himself. And several assassinations have been attributed to Russia in the last ten years, in London a few times, I think in London repeatedly, the nerve gas some years ago was attributed to them, some polonium in someone's tea, it's a realistic outcome if you're enough of a thorn in a powerful someone's side. So one viable strategy is, piss people off less.

hypeatei 5y ago

IIRC, his original destination wasn't Russia. His passport was revoked before he was able to leave, which meant he couldn't make it to Latin America. But yeah, I agree with your point about the Russian government political motives.

sodality2 5y ago
It was a deliberate plan by the intelligence agencies to discredit him ("he's in le russia"). His passport was cancelled specifically when it would leave him stuck in that country.
- andreskytt 5y ago
  Making definitive claims about plans of intelligence services is not necessarily a very useful endeavor.

busymom0 5y ago

No. He was actually heading to Ecuador but US Admin specifically cancelled his passport while he was in transit at Moscow Airport from Hong Kong. He ended up having to stay at that airport for a while before he got asylum in Russia. And then this became the talking point on how "he's a Russian agent". The administration specifically intended this to happen.

jakelazaroff 5y ago
This may be a dumb question, but why does that matter? At this point, he’s a famous political refugee; it’s not like he’d be flying commercial. If both Russia and Ecuador wanted to send him to the latter, why should they care that his US passport was revoked?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- busymom0 5y ago
  For 2 reasons: 1. US warned every country in both Europe and South America said to be considering shelter for Snowden of grave consequences should they offer asylum to the whistleblower. Without his US passport, Snowden couldn't go anywhere and Ecuador reversed their safe passage. 2. This also gave political fodder for the establishment cronies to call and label anyone who would defend Snowden a "Russian Agent". I would recommend reading these two by Glenn Greenwald (he was the journalist who worked with Snowden to publish the docs): https://greenwald.substack.com/p/ben-rhodes-book-proves-obama-officials https://greenwald.substack.com/p/ben-rhodes-book-proves-obam... https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-anger-toward-belarus-mounts-recall https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-anger-toward-belarus-mou... > Led by then-Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. officials warned every country in both Europe and South America said to be considering shelter for Snowden of grave consequences should they offer asylum to the whistleblower. Threats to Havana caused the Cuban government to rescind its commitment of safe passage they had issued to Snowden's lawyer. Under Biden's pressure, Ecuador also reversed itself by proclaiming the safe passage document issued to Snowden was a mistake. I would also recommend the Citizen Four documentary: https://youtu.be/EDhB-A23IUk https://youtu.be/EDhB-A23IUk

andreskytt 5y ago

Equal hypocrisy, you say? So what universally accepted scale did you weigh the entirety of US and Russian societies on finding them equal? Maybe it might make sense to look at some metrics with an agreed-upon methodology.