You know what they did to Bradley Manning and other whistleblowers right? Aaron Shwartz? Did you respect them or were they in the trash heap of yesterday's bitter pill of unentertaining/unsettling headlines? Before Snowden, no one knew about secret courts that robbed people of their civil liberties under a circular writ of National Security. You could be whisked away from these decisions without anyone knowing. Companies in America were forced to comply to sending email and other electronic communication without a legal challenge to their constitutional rights. Civil rights lawyers challenging telecoms/NSA wiretapping "harmless metadata" couldn't proceed because the proof was classified and therefore had no bearing to file a lawsuit. That's only the tip of the damning acts our government did and continues to do in order to keep us safe. They did it by taking as much power as they could and never returning it. People are too glib and ignorant about this and what he changed inside America. I don't have much joy seeing him post unpopular things in a state like Russia but why does it have to be binary whether the acts or tweets now delegitimize the sacrifices he made before? Maybe he should have wore spandex and a mask when he did it, faked his death by the government, so we can glorify him a series of movie adaptations. Isn't that our ideal of what heroes are today? Ideals don't exist in reality anyways. Much easier to complain or pick apart than to actually try or live up to them.
It's in the responses. He accused the us/media of lying and spreading rumors of a Russian invasion. When it happened, people started wondering where he went. If I were guessing (I don't follow him on Twitter), he was probably riffing off that false flag thing that blew up because a journalist asked for proof and the official couldn't give it. They were likely right at the time(still can't prove it), but someone like him was super skeptical.
There are worst things than water boarding, secret courts and living on the run. Imaging being forced to date elons exs.
Progress appears to be being made on peace talks also. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/29/world/ukraine-russia-war A deputy Russian defense minister said on Tuesday that Russia would sharply “reduce military activity” near Kyiv and the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, in the first sign of progress as diplomats from Ukraine and Russia discussed a possible cease-fire. Russia also said it was prepared to accelerate the timeline of a possible meeting between President Vladimir V. Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Speaking after talks with Ukrainian officials in Istanbul, Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said the Kremlin was ready to hold such a meeting once a draft peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia was ready. The two delegations discussed international security guarantees for Ukraine, according to Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Mr. Zelensky, an effort that came as a Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed back Russian forces in a hard-fought area near Kyiv, the capital. The talks are being held at a critical moment, with Ukrainian and Western intelligence officials cautioning that despite Ukrainian success in driving Russian troops from the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, Moscow’s forces continue to try to cut off eastern Ukraine and are exacerbating a humanitarian disaster with attacks against critical infrastructure across the country. Addressing the delegations before the talks began on Tuesday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey urged both sides to find a way to end the conflict, saying, “It is in the hands of the parties to stop this tragedy.”
The secret courts were known about before Snowden. There was a whole law and order episode about them long before Snowden
That Russia is pulling back and talking cease fire all has to do with the success of the Ukrainian forces and the failure of Russian forces. Putin's aims of taking Kyiv, replacing Zelensky and demilitarizing Ukraine hasn't succeeded and the if what is currently being discussed ends up being the actual peace agreement Russia would've made marginal gains at massive costs. Russia holding onto Donbas and Crimea just formalizes the situation prior to invasion. Ukraine not joining NATO was the situation prior to invasion. If NATO get's a security agreement with Western countries that isn't NATO membership but for practical purposes puts Ukraine under NATO protection. So that would be a loss for Russia.
I knew about blocking FB but not Twitter. It sounds like it's not blocked but restricted. There is also always VPN and I'm sure Snowden has the capacity to understand and use VPN. But of course, he might be fearing the Russian gov crackdown and jail time for being anti-war. Russia is restricting social media as war in Ukraine continues : NPR Twitter After reports that Russia also fully cut off Twitter on Mar 4, Twitter officials said they could not confirm widespread disruptions beyond the service being throttled, which the company said began at the start of the invasion. But on Mar 7, a Twitter spokesman confirmed that people in Russia are increasingly "having difficulty" using the platform in the country. Officials at Twitter said they were working to restore service in the country. According to the Russian government's online registry, authorities have restricted access to Twitter under a federal law regulating calls for riots, extremism, protests and the spread of false information. Twitter has banned RT and Sputnik in Europe in line with the EU sanctions. Like Facebook, it's also putting warning labels on and reducing the reach of tweets with links to Russian and Belarusian state media outlets.
Prior to the invasion, Snowden tweeted numerous times that Russia is not going to attack Ukraine and that the media and the US/UK gov are making up stuff.
Yes, and those guys/gals were courageous. Snowden was not. I know what he did - I called him a whistle-blower because that's exactly what he was by exposing illegal activities in the US gov. Where he was wrong is when he also released the know-how of NSA operations. The US gov said they had to change their *legal* surveillant methods of terrorists outside the US due to these releases. There is also this: On June 14, 2015, the London Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache, forcing the UK's MI6 intelligence agency to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. Sir David Omand, a former director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence gathering agency, described it as a huge strategic setback that was harming Britain, America, and their NATO allies. The Sunday Times said it was not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden's data or whether Snowden voluntarily handed it over to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow.[108][109] In April 2015, the Henry Jackson Society, a British neoconservative think tank, published a report claiming that Snowden's intelligence leaks negatively impacted Britain's ability to fight terrorism and organized crime.[110] Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, criticized the report for, in his opinion, presuming that the public became concerned about privacy only after Snowden's disclosures. He could have blown that whistle off without exposing NSA methods. To me, he's a whistle blower who was also a traitor (maybe by accident, but the effect was the same).
tl;dr. LOL Summary: Russians are getting their asses kicked so they decided to call this a "strategic pullback"
@basso even after an illegal invasion and a month of war crimes, Trump and the Republicans just can't quit Putin themselves out there. But oh, the Durham investigation lol
I loved L&O. McCoy kicked ass. IIRC, that was his leverage when seeking asylum in case something happened and was not a part of what he gave to journalists. Something did happen in that he couldn't seek asylum in Ecuador and had to settle for Russia with the entire Western establishment on his tail. This is a becoming of a derail for Ukraine, so my position is that there wasn't an environment for whistle blowers to stand up without severe and lasting costs. We can argue on some meta level (in another thread) of whether your and all American's rights as a result of reforms from his leaks are worth more than the consequences of a nebulous global "ability to fight terrorism and organized crime", but he definitely wasn't like Anonymous at that time that leaked anything and everything without a care in the world. Maybe he was too smart and recognized he wouldn't have much time after the leaks to leave the US, but standing up for your and everyone else's rights shouldn't mean you have ready to be waterboarded inside international waters with your balls in a vice. That's banana republic status, and we usually cheer defectors from "the enemy" when the situation is reversed... Maybe we took the L on the Global Scorecard, but he definitely stood up for Liberalism, even if he was rightfully terrified at what our state was drifting towards by the things we done. If you're fully aware with all he's done, ask yourself would you still do it knowing that there's much more than a coin flip's chance that you'd face physical, emotional, financial, and reputational long term harm? Could you leave living in Hawaii while banking nearly half a million a year just to reveal a laundry list of "illegal" and unconstitutional acts that even most members of Congress didn't know or fully understand? A pat on the back is worth that much knowing you have to seperate from your immediate family and homeland whether in jail or overseas? That's rhetorical for you, but I'm more than certain I'd rather live on the beach in relative comfort. Even moreso now than back them, since I'm not as meticulous as Snowden, more idealistically naive (if you speak truth to power, you'll get a medal and a happy ending in your movie!), and we treat his imperfect ass like dirt.
FOLKS - big news, we finally found something that @basso favorite Glenn Greenwald hates more than the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan - it's - Ukraine & NATO's relentless cheerleading for its war of aggression against Mother Russia! @basso why do you guys love GG? This boy is off the goddam rails, heading off the goddam planet.
