"Nobody is turning a blind eye to Russia's offences."
Except Snowden. Hence the hypocrisy. Obviously he is there to save his own neck and I get that.
I was pointing out what epalnit was getting at because obviously those commenting didn't understand.
The issue is America's hypocrisy -- we claim to be a shining beacon of democracy and shout down from our ivory tower. We impose restrictions on Chinese exports across the world by advocating preemptive defense against state-sponsored cyber-attacks, and yet we have our own tendrils constricting the world in the same manner. We claim it's to fight terrorism, but it's the same manner of economic and political espionage that China is so guilty for.
The Russian government is upfront and honest about being despotic but our representatives spread calculated lies and half-truths, and play legal games with what "collect" and "spy" mean.
The US government even has the gall to engage/infiltrate security research organizations to manipulate and degrade the quality of security for their own benefit. We are maliciously undermining the information security of the world.
His presence in Russia may look like tacit complicity of Russian practices, but he hasn't expressed such a thing so it would be imprudent to make such assumptions. It's like choosing between living in a lion's cage or swimming in shark-infested waters -- would you risk swimming with the sharks to prove a point about how deadly the sharks are, especially when you just threw some chum at them?
The guy met his martyr quota already, he doesn't need to go to jail.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6872856
From justin66:
"I don't say this very often but I don't think people are as dumb as you think they are. People who think Snowden is a traitor would feel the same if he were in Iceland or something right now."
Your other objection has a simple answer too: as Westerners it behooves us to get our own house in order. Suppose I told you "Our house is a mess, let's clean it up," and you became indignant and said, "Where are all the pithy insights about the neighbor down the street? Their living room is a pig sty!" That would be an absurd misdirection.
If the world was Snowden's oyster – if he had the luxury to choose to live freely anywhere in the world and yet he still chose to live in Russia – then pointing out the irony and hypocrisy would have merit.
As it stands, he had little or no luxury of choice. What country would have taken him that wouldn't put him within the reach of the force from which he is fleeing?
Well, perhaps they'd rather hear about a worldwide operation run by the number one superpower (the US), and with tons of also complicit powerful allies all around the world, than about what some second rate, provincial ex-power does at 1/10 the scale.
Stalin died in his bed of old age. Mao. Tons of western equivalents.
It's mostly good guys that get fucked over -- that's what history teaches us.
He had an OpEd in the new york times and people ate up his phony ass rhetoric with a goddamned spoon.
Remember when Mitt Romney said that Russia was perhaps the greatest geopolitical threat to the west and everyone laughed in his face, said the cold war was over, and called him an idiot? People seem to have a vested interest in deluding themselves that Putin isn't a bad guy, and that a bad guy in charge of one of the most geoplotically active nations in the world with an enormous nuclear arsenal is somehow not a big deal.
So, he pretty much did what most western powers do with umpunity since age immemorial? Minus threatening, controlling and/or invading non-neighborhouding countries?
Let's draw some stark fucking lines here.
Assassinating your avowed enemies in a time of war, that's one thing. Assassinating your home grown political opponents, that's another thing entirely.
Using the legal system to pursue whistleblowers who probably should be protected, again, that's one thing. Killing whistleblowers, that's another thing entirely.
If you can't recognize the difference then you are actively providing support for some of the most evil and repressive regimes in the world by making fuzzy what should be clear-cut moral boundaries.
