General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A reminder...Snowden had NO ALTERNATIVE but to go to Russia. [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)He should do a VISA commercial!
That's just a big old straw man argument there -- that's a very well constructed straw man, he has the shirt, the overalls, a cute little hat, eyes, a big smile woven into his straw head, and even a pair of Farmer Brown's gloves on his straw man hands, but he's still a straw man.
Why didn't he just run to Iceland, where he insisted he wanted to go in the first place? Could it be because he was hiding out in the Russian Consulate in HONG KONG, a place where he'd visited before when he was working for DELL in Japan? And why would he run to the RUSSIAN Consulate? Perhaps because he'd made plans in advance to so do?
Why didn't he just head down to ECUADOR, where Julian Assange had already found a few friends?
Greenwald and Poitras could have met him ANYWHERE. There was no "rule" that they had to meet in HK. Hell, South America would have been far more convenient for GG.
He went to China because it was a hop, skip and a jump from Russia, because he knew he could get a room at the Russian consulate, and he could get help leaving and hiding out in the once-and-perhaps-future USSR. No doubt the room he had at that high end hotel had been swept for bugs--and maybe even bugged anew--by his Russian friends. Who knows, maybe they even rented it for him.
Going to HK (and then saying "Gee, I wanna go to Iceland...no, South America!!" gave Russia cover, as though they had no role in the mess until, oh, alas, alack, poor Ed got "stuck" in Russia (of course, his stay at the Russian consulate kinda screwed that plausible deniability). Russia--or China, for that matter--could have given him travel documents in a day, if they wanted. Hell, Russia could have "Depardieu'd" him and made him a citizen with a wave of Putin's magic wand--and then he could go on his way with his freshly minted Russian passport.
But no--none of that happened. WHY?
Because he's where he intended to be in the first place.
He maybe, just maybe, thought Putin could get him to South America, eventually...but he didn't count on Raul Castro hedging his bets. Raul knows his economy is on the fritz, his lifeline to free fuel depends on keeping Maduro in power (and that is getting more expensive for him every day, what with the brain drain of physician's assistants, nurses, and a large chunk of his military sent to Caracas to professionalize the GNB), and if the shit hits the fan, he's going to find it in his interests to do more reaching out to his closest neighbors simply for the well-being of the population, if nothing else. If that involves "free and fair elections" with an actual opposition, and maybe a genteel retirement, well, so be it.
But then again, that whole "I wanna go to Iceland/South America" story could have been a canard. His little pal Sarah over at Wikileaks, Snowden's former paramour, shepherded him through the entire process of getting into Russia with the greatest of ease and aplomb. And Snowden proudly states that he is "an indoor cat" that lives on ramen noodles and chips (you can get those anywhere), so what's the difference where he lives, really, so long as the heat is working and he can get a Putin-monitored "Feel The Freedumb" internet connection?
When I hear hoofbeats, I think horses. Snowden is HOME. This whole "asylum for a year" nonsense, subject to renewal, is for the easily-duped Society for the Adoration of Eddie crew. They'll play this game out as long as they can get column inches in major papers...once nobody cares, Eddie will either get, or reveal he's already had for years, a Russian passport and full citizenship.