Neither Hong Kong nor Russia are good asylum candidates. Russia wants to make asylum conditional on something he may no longer even have any control of and Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the US which makes it pretty useless even though it is a nice place to live. He didn't turn down Ecuador. Ecuador just decided that they enjoy being the US's bitch too much. The US vice president must have promised him something. Who knows what. Maybe to suck his dick, but that's just my own speculation. For whatever reason Ecuador no longer seems like they would grant him asylum.
While I disagree that releasing documents about government abuse is the same as "whoring" I agree that Hong Kong was a very foolish choice for a place to make his stand. That choice may end up costing him his life. I also think withdrawing his application for asylum in Russia may have been a bad choice. What he really needs is a temporary travel document so that he can fly to a country that will grant him unconditional asylum. Asylum in Russia may have allowed him to get those travel documents until he can seek citizenship elsewhere. Also, once he is a Russian citizen the US would have no right to abduct him when he is traveling somewhere. That means he could live in another country as a tourist and just make visa runs to renew his visa. Then his chioce of countries becomes very large indeed. The lack of a passport is his main problem right now. Russian asylum would solve that eventually.
Please renounce your US citizenship. Since you obviously don't think that is any sort of sacrifice. Go live in exile for the rest of your life and then get back to us.
And if you really believe in what you are saying now, you should pour gasoline all over yoruself and light a match. Seriously. Then we will all know that you really mean what you say. IOW, you go first.
If he ran out of cash he would be as good as dead. I doubt that's the case. If anything his parents could send him money through third parties etc. I just hope he was smart enough to get all of his funds free from US banks before leaving for Hong Kong or at least before revealing his identity.
Can you give a specific example of how Russia is worse than the US in terms of human rights violations? Are you thinking of something specific? I have heard that their police are as bad as ours in terms of violence and corruption, but I haven't heard much about what the Russian government has done to violate human rights.
Do they have something worse than gitmo and assasination of their own citizens without a trial, strip searches at the airport before you can travel, routine suspicionless roadblocks etc? The US has a very long list of human rights violations. It's not easy to be worse.
But until he has had his trial he must be considered to be 100% innocent. Until a court of law has proven his guilt to a jury. As of now he has merely been accused of a crime. That alone makes the invalidation of his passport unjust. Of course the government doesn't care about justice. Like any criminal organization, they just want their revenge against the guy who exposed their illegal and immoral actions to the world.
To a citizen of a free country, Snowden has committed no crime. At least no more of a crime than criticizing his government. He is a dissident of a repressive regime that likes to claim it is not repressive. Nothing more.
Owning a passport/travelling between countries is a privilege not a right.
It is not a privilege at all. It is one of the most basic human rights: the right to move about freely whether or not a repressive government wants you to. If you believe you have no inherent right to travel without your government's permission then you are nothing more than a slave who is owned by your government. A passport was never intended to be a permission to travel document. It is just intended as proof to other countries that you truly are a citizen. That you were truly born in that country. Revoking a passport to prevent travel is an abuse of that purpose. It sickens me that so many Americans believe that is soon as they leave their home their ability to move about freely is a privilege bestowed upon them by their government. That is just pathetic.
However now he seems to just be leaking anything and everything. "The NSA is spying on China!" "This NSA is spying on the EU!" Not only is that shit really not that surprising, but it really isn't the kind of thing he can make the same claim about in terms of public good.
So far he hasn't leaked anything about spying on our enemies. Only on our friends. I was not aware that we were doing that. So the release of this information was of benefit to me. It's possible I am the only American citizen who didn't realize that we spied on our best and closest allies, but I highly doubt it.
So he has not released "anything and everything" and he has not released any information that is "not surprising". At least not to a rational US citizen without inside knowledge who is not also a consiracy theorist.
How can the Russians possibly be any worse? Short of home video surveillance I don't think any regime could be worse. The US government is already doing nearly everything it is possible to do with current technology that does not allow direct reading of thoughts.
So you'd rather be tortured to death in gitmo? But you do understand that other people may not share your enthusiasm for their own torture and death, right?
Revoking a passport is pretty close to revoking citizenship. If you live abroad it is funcionally equivalent. The consequences are almost exactly the same. Without a passport you cannot prove to other countries that you are a genuine citizen of the country where you were born. It's the equivalent of a dirty trick and is quite unjust.
His crimes have not been proven in court. Under our system he must technically still be considered innocent. A free country would not consider his crimes to be real crimes, but nevertheless he did break the laws of the repressive regime that we live under here in the U.S.
He is certainly a valid asylum seeker. He's no different from a dissident who speaks out against any other repressive regime and faces life in prison or death if he is sent back to the country of birth. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I think someone will take him. He applied to Cuba. I would imagine they might agree. If only just to annoy the US. Cuba would actually be quite a nice place to retire and live the rest of your life. Getting money into the country can be tricky though.
Has it not occurred to you that he could have just remained anonymous? He could have leaked everything he has leaked and released who he had worked for. Just saying that the US is doing something bad that involves your privacy would have accomplished nothing.
Can you give an example of a political crime that is not also a legal one? In Cuba, you can be arrested for criticizing the government. In Cuba doing that is a serious crime. Just because it is not a crime, to you, does not mean it is not a crime. In Cuba it is. From Cuba's POV if you do that you are a criminal.
Clearly you are of the opinion that leaking information that your government is doing stuff that many people believe it should not be doing is not a freedom of speech issue. I believe it most definitely is a freedom of speech issue and not a real crime and clearly so do many other people. So, yes, I believe it is 100% purely a political issue because what he has done should not be a crime. I agree that it is a crime in our country, but that is only because, like Cuba, we live under a repressive regime which routinely violates human rights.
You don't think just announcing, "I am a terrorist, but so are you, you fucking pigs!" would do the trick? But if we are all terrorists (and lets face it we all probably are) then there are no innocent victims to protect. And even if there were don't we have a policy of not negotiating with terrorists?
I agree that our government doesn't have an obligation to protect anyone outside of its borders, but this isn't really about protection is it? It's about needing protection from us violating them.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Well, except for foreigners. Those animals have no rights.
[emphasis mine on the last section that is so often left out]
Those were just some of the human rights which the bill of rights, in particular the 9th amendment, are there to try to protect. The constitution gave the government limited powers to do certain things. I don't recall reading anything about spying on every human being on the planet, not even because we are at war, but just because we can. If it's not in the constitution then our government is not allowed to do it. At the very least they need an amendment to be passed which changes the constitution and allows them to do it. Or at least they should. Luckily they have the sly SCOTUS to rubber stamp everything for them and interpret everything in the worst possible way for individual freedom and the best possible way for broad and arbitrary government powers.
Was there some Universal World Surveillance amendment that I missed? Yes, I know it's just a very old, yellowing piece of paper with some nearly indecipherable scribbles on it that no one cares about any more. Hell, even I don't really care about it and I'm a Libertarian. That old piece of paper doesn't really help my cause all that much because the government doesn't interpret it as a limit on their power. That is, they don't believe that if it isn't listed in the constitution they can't do it. As far as they are concerned the only things they can't do are what those pesky first eight amendments explicitly forbid. I'm intentionally leaving out the ninth one because that just screws up their whole interpretation of their role in the world and they feel quite free to ignore it. If they want to do something they don't need anyone's permission. They just do it.
But these are just nitpicky details about what the Founders hoped would save us from exactly the sort of 1984-esque dystopian surveillance and police state that we are facing now. The naive fools. It comes down to this. You believe that the US government has the right and even the duty to do to others what we would consider a violation of our own rights if it were done to us. I disagree. I think it is wrong. I think it violates the most basic tenets of what this republic was supposed to be about. I think it makes us evil and it makes us hypocrites.
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Neither Hong Kong nor Russia are good asylum candidates. Russia wants to make asylum conditional on something he may no longer even have any control of and Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the US which makes it pretty useless even though it is a nice place to live. He didn't turn down Ecuador. Ecuador just decided that they enjoy being the US's bitch too much. The US vice president must have promised him something. Who knows what. Maybe to suck his dick, but that's just my own speculation. For whatever reason Ecuador no longer seems like they would grant him asylum.
While I disagree that releasing documents about government abuse is the same as "whoring" I agree that Hong Kong was a very foolish choice for a place to make his stand. That choice may end up costing him his life. I also think withdrawing his application for asylum in Russia may have been a bad choice. What he really needs is a temporary travel document so that he can fly to a country that will grant him unconditional asylum. Asylum in Russia may have allowed him to get those travel documents until he can seek citizenship elsewhere. Also, once he is a Russian citizen the US would have no right to abduct him when he is traveling somewhere. That means he could live in another country as a tourist and just make visa runs to renew his visa. Then his chioce of countries becomes very large indeed. The lack of a passport is his main problem right now. Russian asylum would solve that eventually.
Please renounce your US citizenship. Since you obviously don't think that is any sort of sacrifice. Go live in exile for the rest of your life and then get back to us.
And if you really believe in what you are saying now, you should pour gasoline all over yoruself and light a match. Seriously. Then we will all know that you really mean what you say. IOW, you go first.
But you do realize that many people disagree with you, right?
If he ran out of cash he would be as good as dead. I doubt that's the case. If anything his parents could send him money through third parties etc. I just hope he was smart enough to get all of his funds free from US banks before leaving for Hong Kong or at least before revealing his identity.
Can you give a specific example of how Russia is worse than the US in terms of human rights violations? Are you thinking of something specific? I have heard that their police are as bad as ours in terms of violence and corruption, but I haven't heard much about what the Russian government has done to violate human rights.
Do they have something worse than gitmo and assasination of their own citizens without a trial, strip searches at the airport before you can travel, routine suspicionless roadblocks etc? The US has a very long list of human rights violations. It's not easy to be worse.
But until he has had his trial he must be considered to be 100% innocent. Until a court of law has proven his guilt to a jury. As of now he has merely been accused of a crime. That alone makes the invalidation of his passport unjust. Of course the government doesn't care about justice. Like any criminal organization, they just want their revenge against the guy who exposed their illegal and immoral actions to the world.
It is not a violation of the human rights to prevent someone wanted on criminal charges from traveling.
It most certainly his. If you do not have the right to move about freely then any other right is meaningless.
To a citizen of a free country, Snowden has committed no crime. At least no more of a crime than criticizing his government. He is a dissident of a repressive regime that likes to claim it is not repressive. Nothing more.
Owning a passport/travelling between countries is a privilege not a right.
It is not a privilege at all. It is one of the most basic human rights: the right to move about freely whether or not a repressive government wants you to. If you believe you have no inherent right to travel without your government's permission then you are nothing more than a slave who is owned by your government. A passport was never intended to be a permission to travel document. It is just intended as proof to other countries that you truly are a citizen. That you were truly born in that country. Revoking a passport to prevent travel is an abuse of that purpose. It sickens me that so many Americans believe that is soon as they leave their home their ability to move about freely is a privilege bestowed upon them by their government. That is just pathetic.
However now he seems to just be leaking anything and everything. "The NSA is spying on China!" "This NSA is spying on the EU!" Not only is that shit really not that surprising, but it really isn't the kind of thing he can make the same claim about in terms of public good.
So far he hasn't leaked anything about spying on our enemies. Only on our friends. I was not aware that we were doing that. So the release of this information was of benefit to me. It's possible I am the only American citizen who didn't realize that we spied on our best and closest allies, but I highly doubt it.
So he has not released "anything and everything" and he has not released any information that is "not surprising". At least not to a rational US citizen without inside knowledge who is not also a consiracy theorist.
How can the Russians possibly be any worse? Short of home video surveillance I don't think any regime could be worse. The US government is already doing nearly everything it is possible to do with current technology that does not allow direct reading of thoughts.
This just in: The world sucks, there are no utopias, but western countries (including the US) are still a heck of a lot better than the alternatives.
Have you actually lived in any of these alternatives? Or put another way, do you have any idea what you are talking about?
So what is your point? That we are now trying those others? Or that democracy isn't anything special?
Go ahead and try to enter another country without your passport. Let us know how that works out for you.
From the POV of other countries he is stateless because he has not document to prove that he truly is a US citizen.
So you'd rather be tortured to death in gitmo? But you do understand that other people may not share your enthusiasm for their own torture and death, right?
Revoking a passport is pretty close to revoking citizenship. If you live abroad it is funcionally equivalent. The consequences are almost exactly the same. Without a passport you cannot prove to other countries that you are a genuine citizen of the country where you were born. It's the equivalent of a dirty trick and is quite unjust.
His crimes have not been proven in court. Under our system he must technically still be considered innocent. A free country would not consider his crimes to be real crimes, but nevertheless he did break the laws of the repressive regime that we live under here in the U.S.
He is certainly a valid asylum seeker. He's no different from a dissident who speaks out against any other repressive regime and faces life in prison or death if he is sent back to the country of birth. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I think someone will take him. He applied to Cuba. I would imagine they might agree. If only just to annoy the US. Cuba would actually be quite a nice place to retire and live the rest of your life. Getting money into the country can be tricky though.
I never signed a contract saying that my government has the right to revoke my ability to move about freely without a conviction or trial. Have you?
Has it not occurred to you that he could have just remained anonymous? He could have leaked everything he has leaked and released who he had worked for. Just saying that the US is doing something bad that involves your privacy would have accomplished nothing.
Can you give an example of a political crime that is not also a legal one? In Cuba, you can be arrested for criticizing the government. In Cuba doing that is a serious crime. Just because it is not a crime, to you, does not mean it is not a crime. In Cuba it is. From Cuba's POV if you do that you are a criminal.
Clearly you are of the opinion that leaking information that your government is doing stuff that many people believe it should not be doing is not a freedom of speech issue. I believe it most definitely is a freedom of speech issue and not a real crime and clearly so do many other people. So, yes, I believe it is 100% purely a political issue because what he has done should not be a crime. I agree that it is a crime in our country, but that is only because, like Cuba, we live under a repressive regime which routinely violates human rights.
You don't think just announcing, "I am a terrorist, but so are you, you fucking pigs!" would do the trick? But if we are all terrorists (and lets face it we all probably are) then there are no innocent victims to protect. And even if there were don't we have a policy of not negotiating with terrorists?
I agree that our government doesn't have an obligation to protect anyone outside of its borders, but this isn't really about protection is it? It's about needing protection from us violating them.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Well, except for foreigners. Those animals have no rights.
[emphasis mine on the last section that is so often left out]
Those were just some of the human rights which the bill of rights, in particular the 9th amendment, are there to try to protect. The constitution gave the government limited powers to do certain things. I don't recall reading anything about spying on every human being on the planet, not even because we are at war, but just because we can. If it's not in the constitution then our government is not allowed to do it. At the very least they need an amendment to be passed which changes the constitution and allows them to do it. Or at least they should. Luckily they have the sly SCOTUS to rubber stamp everything for them and interpret everything in the worst possible way for individual freedom and the best possible way for broad and arbitrary government powers.
Was there some Universal World Surveillance amendment that I missed? Yes, I know it's just a very old, yellowing piece of paper with some nearly indecipherable scribbles on it that no one cares about any more. Hell, even I don't really care about it and I'm a Libertarian. That old piece of paper doesn't really help my cause all that much because the government doesn't interpret it as a limit on their power. That is, they don't believe that if it isn't listed in the constitution they can't do it. As far as they are concerned the only things they can't do are what those pesky first eight amendments explicitly forbid. I'm intentionally leaving out the ninth one because that just screws up their whole interpretation of their role in the world and they feel quite free to ignore it. If they want to do something they don't need anyone's permission. They just do it.
But these are just nitpicky details about what the Founders hoped would save us from exactly the sort of 1984-esque dystopian surveillance and police state that we are facing now. The naive fools. It comes down to this. You believe that the US government has the right and even the duty to do to others what we would consider a violation of our own rights if it were done to us. I disagree. I think it is wrong. I think it violates the most basic tenets of what this republic was supposed to be about. I think it makes us evil and it makes us hypocrites.