He's structured his journey so that if the USA tries to force the plane to Havana down in a US airport, it will create an international incident with Russia. The USA could give two shits about antagonizing Cuba, but Russia is still scary.
This is slightly strange: the best onward flight to Havana is Aeroflot 150, which departed Moscow SVO 30 minutes ago. This makes Snowden's layover in Moscow likely to be over 20 hours, so one must wonder if he plans to stay there a while.
If he will indeed fly HK-Moscow-Havana-Caracas without delay, he may finish with flight V04101 on Monday at 23:50 Venezuela time (21:20 California time).
"Citing a source close to Snowden, Russian news agency Interfax reported that the whistleblower’s final destination will be Venezuela with a transfer in Havana, Cuba. He will reportedly be on flight SU150 to Havana, leaving Moscow on Monday and then on flight V-04101 to Caracas."
That wouldn't be a problem, it is reported that "Nobody will detain Snowden at Sheremetyevo, if his visa is alright - police", so he is not in danger while waiting.
Why do we know all this? If he had such a perfect plan why does the whole world know where he's headed? Or maybe he's just really bad at keeping secrets.
We know all this because this is a message from those countries. It's big middle finger to the USA. They are saying: we know exactly where he is and what he is doing but we are not going to stop him - because fuck you. If you read the HK press release, this is so well stated actually "Snowden is going to russia and we are not going to do anything about it. BTW, what about you spying our embassy again?".
My step-father told me a great story about the Cuban Missile Crisis. While Washington and Moscow at each other's throats, he was on a US Navy warship turning away freighters carrying missiles bound for Cuba. As his boat got close to the Russian ships, the crews on either side would wave at each other and take pictures. Regular ol' people to be friendly no matter their background and are not representative of how their governments operate! Please remember the difference between us Americans and the policy makers who represent us :)
Of course I do :) I've been living in the US for 4 years now. Some of my best friends are American. Regular people are just regular people, just like me and you and most [1] people reading this.
[1] Thanks to Snowden, I can confidently write most and not maybe
Seymour Hersh is still writing for the New Yorker, Woodward writes extensively on US politics, Michael Moore is still making movies, and Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg can still discuss US foreign policy over a kitchen table.
Do you honestly think they're all the same? We're discussing a scandal about the NSA being exposed as doing something I for one have always assumed they were doing as a matter of course (indeed, I assumed they did worse and believe they probably do). Mostly I hoped the NSA was more competent.
Maybe not China, but the thought that the US is somehow "free-er" than the rest of the world (yes, including Russia) is false. People in Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, UK, Japan are probably as free as people in the US, if not more.
Free-er is not the only metric I care about, but in fact in terms of individual liberties the US is hard to beat. Can you buy assault rifles in any of those countries? Do you elect judges and vote on how national parks control predator populations? It's "free" and democratic in ways that seem pathological. (The fact that the exercise of some of these liberties is a disaster for the majority who would happily surrender them is another story entirely.)
Can you buy non-pastorised cheese in the USA? What about imported Salame from Italy? Can you kiss a girl of your age if you are 16? Can you drink at 20?
No, No, No, No. If your measure of "freedom" is being able to buy assault rifles, your measure of individual liberty is very biased (and silly).
There are plenty of weird laws in the US, mainly at state level, but overall the US is free and democratic in ways most other countries (with any real central government) are not. Most of your examples (cheese, kissing girls) are bogus. The ban on cured Italian meats is typical non-tariff agricultural trade BS and Europe is more guilty of that than the US (Australia and New Zealand can point fingers though, and also have liberal drug policies, etc.)
But the US wins big on freedom of speech. Almost no other country protects free speech as well as the US does (flawed as it is) and that's not a stupid measure.
His examples are not bogus. These are real restrictions that limit "freedoms". What about the absurd drinking age? I can count tens if not hundreds of laws that show you how "un-free" people are. What's worse is that adults have actually spent time making them "illegal". It's funny, you think your free but you're always free within the limits. In the US, you are always free to choose between X and Y. Never Z!
I don't necessarily agree with you that an American more freedom of speech than say, a British person. But assuming it is, well, US: 1 (freedom of speech), Europe: 10 (for all the other nonsense illegalities in the US).
P.S: It is quite ironic you are saying the US wins big on freedom of speech in a thread on this article. Not saying that a European state wouldn't do the same to a whistleblower (many wouldn't though; especially Scandinavian countries), but even if they would, the governments didn't put themselves in that situation in the first place.
I would categorically disagree with that. Look at freedom of speech as one example. Talk to the authors in Canada who have been stifled because their speech didn't conform to the gov't multicultural agenda.
Is the US the most free country in the world by every measure? Of course not. Overall is it one of the most free or the most free? I would say yes.
It also gives cover to the Russian government. They could rightfully report that he did indeed have a ticket to Cuba but leave out the fact he also has a ticket to somewhere else, or maybe the plane on its trans-atlantic journey is forced by circumstance to land briefly in a friendly country somewhere along the flight path. We should know soon enough :)
Do you think anyone taking a commercial flight is going to be able to hide that from US intelligence?
Since there's no one else for him to hide from, what's the point of not telling the public? On the contrary, he probably feels much safer knowing it's impossible for US agents to silently intercept him en route.
It's ironic that Snowden's destination, Venezuela, is fairly authoritarian itself: the 2008 Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index rated Venezuela as a "Hybrid Regime", and as the least democratic state in South America. His countries of aid so far (China, Russia, possibly Cuba) have a similarly poor record. I guess Snowden doesn't have a problem getting help from, or possibly living under, an authoritarian régime, if it suits his interests. Not a terribly principled man. Indeed, it would be better for the cause of domestic surveillance were he to subject himself to the mega-press event that would be a criminal trial in the U.S. Obviously the outcome would be much worse for him in that case.
It's disappointing to see you write this, codex. I thought you were a pretty smart guy.
You seem sure that a trial in the US would be a mega-press event. You mean, like the Manning military trial? Are you reading the press coverage of Snowden? The TV press coverage? How do you think he would be portrayed by the US media? Surely you're not that naive. Indeed it might be better for the cause of domestic surveillance to have him tried in the US press and a federal court in Virginia, right outside Washington. Most Americans, the ones who get their news passively from TV or who do not watch the news much, would never even know what happened; his fate would be decided quickly and without fanfare, except announcement of the severe punishment he receives, to show that "leakers" are some sort of "insider threat": scare tactics (and maybe a high profile prosecution as part of some US Attorney's political aspirations to one day run for office). The more he evades this (expected) fate, the more he embarasses Washington, and the more otherwise ignorant Americans will learn who he is and what his principles are.
His principles seem pretty clear so far: Do you want every packet that travels over the Internet to be clear text, captured and analyzed by governments? Or do you want reasonably secure communications, free from prying eyes, similar the US postal mail? Do you want the government to decide this for you, in secret? Snowdon thinks you should be entitled to decide for yourself.
Your comment about the democratic ratings of other countries and getting help from authoritarian regimes if "it suits his interests" could easily be applied to the US government as well. They will deal with regimes as it suits their interests, regardless of the form of government of those regimes, so long as it suits their interests (e.g. oil). The government does what it has to do to acquire oil so you can run your car, applicances, devices, etc. And Snowden is doing what he has to do to enable his country (and maybe others) to debate the question of spying on what travels over the Internet.
It's possible the press would not portray his trial fairly, but the proceedings are public, and a trial would draw continued press, whereas if Snowden successfully seeks asylum, the story goes cold.
I should elaborate on Snowden's choice of helper countries: is a national security risk to the United States. Here you have someone in possession of state secrets who needs help from a foreign government. That's the definition of compromised. What is he going to trade for protection? More classified information, of course--possibly much more sensitive information than the relatively harmless, widely known) programs like PRISM. He has national security information, and foreign governments want it. This information will eventually flow to the intelligence agencies of China and/or Russia.
Strangely, Venezuela is deemed undemocratic in right-wing newspapers and democratic in left-wing ones. As far as I can judge by myself, it's certainly as democratic as the US or any European country. I mean at least there were real ideological differences between the two last presidential candidates. Whereas Obama's simply going on with the Bush policies, while in Europe people aren't allowed to choose their economic policy through vote.
Its a giant red flag that he fears the US more than any of these countries -- which, as Americans, would assume would happily interrogate him for years to get the valuable intelligence he allegedly holds. Watching very closely.
It's not a red flag. He's committed a crime in the US. If I shot someone in Australia and fled to Iran that wouldn't be a "red flag" about Australia. (I'm not saying Snowden did anything wrong, but he definitely committed crimes under US law.)
Honestly, China and Russia fare extremely bad. Cuba has been better these last few years, but still is a single party undemocratic regime. Venezuela OTOH seems quite reasonable.
Venezuelan here, and I can tell you that there is nothing reasonable about Venezuela these days. The big scandal here is that USA citizens had been monitored without a warrant but in Venezuela government agencies had been doing that for years and without any shame.
They had shown in national TV, audio recordings of phone conversations just to embarrass people that are no pro-government (nothing relating to felonies or crimes, just to make fun of them). So it is ironic indeed.
This doesn't seem worse than what's happening in the USA (monitoring... just about everybody; keeping hundreds of political prisoners at Gitmo for 12 years and counting) or Europe (UK government spying on... just everyone; or the countless robberies and abuse of power of Sarkozy, Berlusconi and friends).
It is worse in the sense that the have no shame to hide it, at least in the US was a secret. On the other hand, it is ironic to do what he did and then escape to a country where freedom conditions are way worse.
Poor. [1, 2]
Pretty much everything bad that the US does, these countries do worse by an order of magnitude.
We use hyperbole to compare Snowden to political prisoners in these countries, but I imagine that idea would seem pretty ridiculous to a real political prisoner in China or NK or Russia.
Given that the HK governments press release reads like diplomat speak for "fuck you, we let him leave even though we know exactly where he left from, and btw. fuck you for spying on us in case you wondered why we're not doing your dirty business (ps: fuck you)", while many other governments would have bent over backwards to accommodate the US, it does indeed seem to have been a quite good starting point.
Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. But I'm pretty sure whoever wrote that press release immensely enjoyed being allowed to write something so, by diplomatic standards, incredibly crass.
It was brilliant. Hong Kong didn't immediately jump when the US Government said to jump. It enabled Snowden to get away.
So let's take score. US military has over a hundred bases globally. The CIA operates in over a hundred countries. The US intelligence budget is over $80 billion. The NSA can 'see' practically everything. And there goes Snowden, escaping on a common commercial flight out of Hong Kong.
If anybody looks stupid, it's clearly the US Government.
HK is also one of the few places in the world that both offered a reasonable chance of not turning him over and didn't arouse too much suspicion when he requested time off.
I can't imagine the NSA looks too kindly on non-business trips to Caracas, Moscow, or Havana. Even Iceland could have turned some heads given its recent streak of standing up for itself.
He has roundly ruined HK for future whistleblowers though!
> If anybody looks stupid, it's clearly the US Government.
Not really. What can they really do? Usually, they'd bully countries into submission. Hong Kong proved it does not bow down to the US. They also cannot really kidnap him or anything like that. It's way too public at this point, and as "terrible" the CIA sometimes is, they're not a bunch of murdering assholes like the Mossad.
You are correct the Mossad assassinates people routinely.
However, this is a poorly chosen rhetorical attack in defense of the CIA since the US currently is engaging in a global assassination war using drones and other means which has murdered far far more people than the Mossad ever has, and far more of those people are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Mossad at least picks specific and known enemy leaders and tends to assassinate only them up close and personal. It is true there is collateral damage, but the collateral killings caused by the US assassinations are much greater. The CIA is deeply involved in selecting targets and running the assassination programs, just as it was involved in horrific torture, abuse and war crimes committed against thousands of people in recent years. The CIA is a powerful and dangerous criminal organization which routinely engages in crimes against humanity. There is absolutely no defense possible for the crimes committed by the CIA.
The argument that "at least the CIA doesn't assassinate" like some other country that has nothing to do with Snowden's case makes no sense. It's simply not true that the CIA doesn't assassinate as much as the Mossad. The CIA assassinates far more, and far more indiscriminately. The CIA assassinates by giving american kids videogame-like control over flying robotic drones and having them assassinate anyone who they think looks suspicious while eating candy and drinking soda safe in an air conditioned room thousands of miles from where the robot planes are flying patrols. When they see someone they feel like shooting they shoot them and it is assumed that person is a "militant" because they said so. To them it is a fun videogame about shooting what they call "ragheads", and other derisive terms even worse. They keep track of their kill counts as a competition. At no point do they take responsibility for their actions, consider their targets human beings, seek justice, risk their own lives, or display any intelligence or skill. They are just cowardly thugs playing a video game where they shoot up random people who are a religion and color they don't like, because that's their job.
I completely agree with everything you said. I strongly oppose drones as well, and I know all about them. I was not defending the US or the CIA. I always thought the DoD runs the drones operation. I did not know however (or just did not make the connection) that the operatives are members of the CIA as well. But now I do know :)
Ah, OK. Yeah, the drone program is run by the CIA, although on May 20, just a month ago, Obama said that he was thinking about giving "some" control of it to the Pentagon - apparently for the first time. That was a surprise to most people who assumed the Pentagon had some sort of control over it before the announcement last month.
"President Barack Obama's administration has decided to give the Pentagon control of some drone operations against terrorism suspects overseas that are currently run by the CIA, several U.S. government sources said on Monday."
The article suggests that the Yemen assassination program will be transferred to the Pentagon, but the CIA will retain total control over the Pakistan assassination program to "maintain deniability for both the United States and Pakistan", which seems pretty Orwellian a statement given that they are obviously acknowledging it by saying they want to maintain deniability.
There's tons of articles on the drone program, the Stanford study I linked to above (Living Under Drones) is a very good intro.
There's also lots of coverage about the random nature of the assassinations. We're not at war with these countries so it can't be considered a military act of defense, at best it is an assassination. I'm not sure we should even call them assasinations though when the target is not known at all and some guy is just shooting people at random for fun. I believe the accurate term there is "genocide", "murder", and "psychopathic spree killing". Rather than a crazed individual though, it is a "normal" person, who has undergone some training, is working for a contractor who pays him, and the entire thing is managed by a state. Is a state running such programs a legitimate entity at this point? A pretty reasonable argument can be made for "no". It's interesting and disturbing from a psychological standpoint that after all the genocide in the 20th century and the talk against that genocide, that these sorts of state run programs still exist, and the sorts of countries that run them and what sort of values they claim to represent and defend.
If you don't want to be "bullied" with extradition requests and espionage charges, then you should avoid working in intelligence, then selling or giving away information that required clearance to get.
Incidentally, this rule also holds if you plan to work in Russian or Chinese intelligence agencies.
From watching CNN, the tone I get from the government is that they mainly want him so they can send a message to other potential leakers that this sort of behavior won't be tolerated.
Is he important enough to move heaven and earth for? I didn't get that. The Obama administration needs to tread very carefully here, which is why, so long as Snowden doesn't make a stupid mistake, which it looks like he won't, he'll be able to squirrel himself away in Latin America. Obama, as head of state, needs to at least make the appearance he's protecting the power and prestige of the government. But he also needs to avoid looking like the terroristic assholes we're at war with.
It's a very thin line, and I'm actually a little impressed with how he's handling this.
One question that I saw floating around on Twitter is how could the US Gov charge Snowden on espionage? Espionage doesn't apply or does it?
Let's say you and I share some secret. When I pass that information you trusted in me to a third party (who is interested in acquiring that information) secretly for some favor (cash/kind) only then it becomes a case of espionage no?
When I share facts that were meant to be confidential according to you with everyone through a public channel then how does it become a case of espionage? It's only a revelation albeit a forced one.
Espionage is probably being defined in this instance as "aiding the enemy." It doesn't matter if you secretly divulge information. If you release information publicly that could be used by 'the enemy' then you have helped 'the enemy.'
They don't charge him on espionage. They charge him under the law that is called Espionage Act, which prohibits a number of things, including revealing classified information to somebody not authorized to see it. Unfortunately, most journalists either don't know the difference or can't resist the temptation of a catchy headline.
I haven't seen the indictment, but I assume he's been charged under one or more provisions of 18 USC Ch. 37[1], otherwise known as the Espionage Act of 1917, which covers things like "Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information".
Dictionaries are not the final arbiter of criminal law.
Funny how none of the defense contractors that were hacked by the Chinese had to face these charges. Some rules for some, other rules for the rest of us.
You can consider whatever you want to be gross negligence. The legal system, on the other hand, would look to things like the exact circumstances, the reasons things were done as they were, and whether and to what degree the relevant actions deviated from relevant rules, regulations, and standard practices in similar situations.
And unless you have all of that information, you can't possibly make that judgement.
Like I said, it's just my opinion dude, so don't get all worked up. And if you're not getting worked up, my apologies, but that's how your replies seem to me.
For instance, it seems like common sense or widely accepted practice that sensitive materials should be stored on machines that should be air-gapped, and common knowledge informs legal decisions about what is gross negligence or not.
"If one has borrowed or contracted to take care of another's property, then gross negligence is the failure to actively take the care one would of his/her own property."
Obviously this is open to interpretation and maybe the contractors responsible leave their own private affairs open willy-nilly to the world, but I would suppose they shouldn't have security clearance then...
How are you proposing that tens of thousands of people around the globe working together on multi-billion-dollar projects perform their jobs effectively if all the information is stored on isolated machines?
Geographic isolation, first, so no more "globe-spanning" workforce on trillion-dollar projects. Then they can only work on a dedicated internal network on machines they leave in the office, which media-isolation limited to heavily controlled workstations so someone can't copy things over USB or burn it to disk or upload it via a VPN tunnel.
That seems fair, considering the magnitude of the expenditures and the nature of the work.
So, at this point, are you saying unspecified Lockheed employees should be brought up on criminal charges for doing their work in a manner approved and even directed by the US government?
Or do you just not have any idea how government contracting works?
Edit: Perhaps I should be more clear. There are multiple companies working on these projects. Some of them are in multiple countries. The US government has awarded contracts for various parts of the F-35 project to these various companies and told them to work together. The government knows this will involve communicating between multiple sites around the world.
Even within the US, the government knows different companies are in different states, and does not expect the entire workforce of every company to relocate to one place. These contracts are awarded to geographically diverse companies for political reasons, which you might not like, but that's how it is.
You can't charge people with a crime for executing on a government contract in exactly the manner they are supposed to.
So if I want US military secrets, all I have to do is hire someone to infiltrate, dig them up and then transmit them in the clear for me and my friends to read - and then it is not espionage, because it's "only a revelation"?
Hmm right, that's certainly a catch! But if you consider the situation: why would an enemy acquiring such information would want to come in public domain and shroud it as "a revelation"? It's a useless escape route if the acquiring party is true enemy.
No one would want to lose the advantage of having secretive information by blowing it in the open, right?
Secondly, from what I see from comments above the law makers are using Espionage Act of 1917 to frame/indict all whistleblowers. 1917. Framework of 1917 being applied in the year 2013 :-) That seems bit of a joke in itself.
I am curious to know how Snowden is financing his travel, lodgings and meals at this point since, presumably, his access to US financial accounts has been cut off. Does a warrant for arrest enable US authorities to place a hold on his accounts?
Without a residency visa of some kind, it is difficult to open foreign financial accounts abroad. Perhaps he has a bag full of cash although that may create some issues of its own with various immigration authorities.
Venezuela's recent former president, Hugo Chávez, was broadly and openly against the United States. His successor is relatively untested, having been in office only two months. If Snowden stays in Venezuela, it could be an interesting gauge of sentiment there. In any case, there's not much of a working relationship between Venezuela and the US, which is desirable for Snowden.
The problem is not whether the government is fragile or not, is whether Russia will stand for Venezuela at the end. I'm Venezuelan and I can be sure that the government has enough problems right now to be in War or anything like that with USA. Russia would be a better place to stay.
Thanks. That kind of explains things a little, I did remember Hugo Chavez being quite vocal against the US. But was under the impression that the new government was less vocal in that regard. I guess I'm wrong. And probably Mr. Snowden would be the one to know.
The new government does seem to be less vocal so far. But the person who (narrowly) won the last election was Chavez's preferred successor, so there hasn't been a major change in policies. I think it's still an open question how their policies will developer longer-term.
In March, Maduro accused the US of trying to kill his opponent in the bid for President, right after accusing the US of giving Chávez cancer that led to the seat being empty in the first place.
Some US politicians asked for a recount after the Venezuelan election, as has become customary. There was no recount.
Please correct yourself. There was a recount, and it ended up showing there was no irregularities.
And No, it is not a partisan opinion. Unless you think Jimmy Carter and hundreds of other organizations controlling the vote AND the recount are part of a communist plot.
Would you accept an audit conducted behind closed doors, which for unknown reasons did not include the electoral notebooks uniquely identifying each voter, for an election that had more than 3,200 irregularities[1] including instances of individuals attempting to vote multiple times? I wouldn't, and I'm not sure Jimmy Carter would either.
The audit was a public act where participated all the parties, with the curious exception of the one who solicited it. It was open to the public, and filmed. People around the world was invited and witnessed it.
The electoral notebooks were audited twice. The first time before the October 2012 elections and the second one before the 2013 elections. In both case, the opposition parties approved the process. Now they are asking for a new audit of the used notebooks, one not supported by the law. They only asked for a new audit to try to keep alive their "protest".
Those 3,200 "irregularities" are anonymous, unsubstantiated, and in many cases patently false reports made in an opposition website. Some examples included "Ms. Mary, a witness from the government party didn't assisted to the process the day of the election", "An electronic machine didn't work". And you have the "grave" accusation like opposition witness expelled of the voting centers at gun point. The only problem is that there's no support for those accusation. No police report, no video, no witness willing to swear before a court of law. Or you have an accusation, like the one made by Capriles in public tv that a voting center had more votes that voters... if you count all the votes in the building but only the voters of one station poll in the building.
These kind of irresponsible denounces will be laughable and those who spread them condemn to the public ridicule if the media would do its job. Instead, they have been keeping repeating the number of (alleged) denounces without spending one second in their substance. For god's sake! The denounces officially presented to the electoral council were a printing of a powerpoint presentation devoid of any actionable piece of information that could be used to investigate them.
What good is the fact that the notebooks were audited before the last elections? The whole point of including them in the audit process is to fully ensure that each vote is valid and tied to a unique individual, not simply verifying whether an anonymous ballot was cast one way or another. The CNE can but doesn't want to include the notebooks, and the excuse is that the law doesn't require them to.
As far as the irregularities, my point wasn't they should all be automatically taken seriously, but certainly it should be within the CNE's interest to try to dispel some of the more plausible accusations such as voters attempting to vote multiple times under different identities.
Well I won't edit my parent comment now because it might make your reply here look strange. But whether there was (or even should have been) a recount was hardly my point. It was just to illustrate that Washington has a history of political disagreement with Caracas, it goes both ways, and the recent elections haven't settled things.
Well, if that is your point, it is indeed a valid one. I would say that there are not disagreements but a growing mismatch in the strategic goals of both countries. The more Venezuela looks for building a diversified economy (thus leaving the role of an oil-only USA-only extra-cheap supplier), the more USA will press Venezuela government to subdue it to do what they want. That has nothing to do with being rightist or leftist, or with human rights, or any of that. It's only about geopolitics and USA goals and needs.
But yes, you are right, the recent elections haven't settled things.
* There is customary to make a check of the 54% of the vote stations. This was done the same day of the elections, before publishing the official results.
* There is not customary make a "recount" of votes in Venezuela.
* Nevertheless, the electoral council accepted a request made by the opposition to check the another 46% of the stations.
* The opposition welcomed the new audit... for a few hours.
* Then they added a lot of new requests and refused to participate in the audit.
* The audit result confirmed the original result.
I was stationed at Pearl Harbor fairly far back in the previous century. There was a group of protesters just outside one of the gates, doing nothing but handing out copies of the Constitution to people leaving the base.
They were arrested for trespassing, as they were standing on usgov property. But they were really arrested because they were making trouble.
No, I don't remember their affiliation or what they were trying to accomplish. Maybe they actually were just troublemakers, which has never been against the law but which will always attract a smackdown.
On the other hand, Edward Snowden didn't have much to do in the last month except spend a few hours talk to reporters -- and plan just this.
If Venezuela is his final destination, going by way of Moscow and Cuba is clever. It avoids going through any countries that would honor an INTERPOL Red Notice or a "diffusion" notice for his detention.
In fact the source reported that “He chose such a complicated route in the hope that he would not be arrested on the way to his final destination of Venezuela,”
You're right, of course. It's only $450 to go direct from Hong Kong to Moscow on Aeroflot. Perhaps I should reconsider my summer vacation plans. It costs more to visit my parents in Minnesota. Ugh.
On the downside you have to fly Aeroflot. I saw a flight attendant take a passenger's finished water cup, and reuse it to serve to another passenger. Classy.
Who defines the scum of the earth? You? The so called leaders of the free world? Anything non western or not allied to the US is scum?
If you are fighting against the hypocrisy and frankly tyranny of the west, where would you go to be protected? All that's left is allies, like the UK who will just hand you over, or as you put it, "scum". Whether you like it or not, he has very little choice, the US has too many countries in its pocket.
You argument is down there with the other weasel language (hero, patriot, anti-American, what have you got to hide, etc) deployed against whistle blowers.
So, where you go to try to be safe? Or are you too "patriotic", or is it scared, to ever criticize or expose the US?
You want "damn contradiction"? How about claiming to be leaders of the free world while industrially mass spying on the so called free citizens you claim to lead?
History is full of examples of strange bedfellows as a result of mutual enemies. It is often the only realistic alternative when you face a massive strong opponent.
There's no contradiction in it unless you start providing support to said scum.
This also presumes that we agree with your assessment of who is the bigger scum. The Cuban government is easily more repressive to its own people, but the US government murders far more innocents, for example.
The US is plenty scummy these days. It's busy completely violating the rights of its citizens, ignoring its own governing documents, acting just like a violent, thuggish 3rd world banana government. In fact, its behavior is exactly what I would expect out of someone like Hugo Chavez.
Enemy of thy enemy. It makes perfect sense. What you've got now is a showdown between scumbag nations.
The thing that makes the American propoganda so powerful is that the US Constitution really is an amazing document created with the best of intents. So much so that it becomes very easy to whitewash the universal and permanent truth that government power is dangerous and corrupting.
