Snowden to meet with human rights groups in Moscow | Hacker News Reader

Snowden to meet with human rights groups in Moscow

english.ruvr.ru

118 pointsznowi31 comments

The Russian government is endorsing a meeting between an American dissident and human rights groups - pinch me, I must be dreaming.

It seems that the old Cold War days of political intrigue between East and West are back with a vengeance. What's fascinating is to think about how much this is orchestrated by Putin and how much by Snowden. If it's the former then there is some long term strategy that the Russians are playing (political domination of Western Europe within 100 years, anyone?) If it's the latter then, given all the pressure of recent events, he must be a very remarkable individual indeed.

Never underestimate an entities willingness to engage in blatant hypocrisy if they believe they can benefit out of it.

There's a very common theme on sites like HN or reddit (and I'm not implying you're using it here, but your comment may at least suggest it - if not, forgive me, my comment is not directed at you specifically) that although western governments can be dicks, they are still nowhere near 3-rd world countries' governments when it comes to human rights and other things you, western countries' residents, take for granted.

However, in my view, the thing to realize is that almost all achievements the west made came not from a system of governance, but from individuals continuously restricting those who govern and from the entrepreneurial talent that flourished when government didn't bother them. To say that western governments are somehow better than a Russian government is to be ignorant. They only thing they are better at is lying and deceiving its people about its own importance to the society.

That's simply not true. Western countries have significant differences in structures that enable them to achieve compared to Russia. The key one that springs to mind is a rule of law that courts actually follow. Compare Russia after signing the Helsinki Accords, and it's constitution which had all sorts of freedoms that were totally ignored, to the West.

When you look at recent Kremlin activity like the expropriation of entire corporations, jailing of people like Magnitsky, murder of journalists and dissidents abroad you'll realise that there are no checks or balances in place at all.

The rule of law is a misleading term. If you have money, you can afford expensive lawyers and staying out of prison for certain crimes. If you don't, well, then you're out of luck. That's not significantly different from the Russian system, except that in Russia nobody is delusional about the fact that money IS law. Also, when someone sues you, you're most certain to not only lose your time in court, but also money on lawyers, thus the system can be and is used for legitimate blackmailing.

Finally, US government can jail anyone at any time without trial, even US citizens (Bradley Manning). There is no rule of law.

Re: Bradley Manning -- skim through the UCMJ and the Manual for Courts Martial some time. You may be surprised what you find.

The law may have been followed but the perception may be different. People often (always?) reason in the perception world, then act (in the real world) based on the results of that reasoning.

It is highly doubtful that goverments could plan a century ahead.

Wise men don't plan; wise men steer.

Putin or the russian government planing this meeting is less likely than you working for the USA government to spread conspiracy theories in social networks over the NSA case in favor of the US gov by playing the patriotism card.

Live stream in the airport: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RjENf...

Anyone else wonder if this is misdirection to mask his already having fled to South America?

For all we know, he could still be in Hong Kong.

Putin seems to think he has been in Russia. How would he get Putin to play along?

I think that Snowden is in Russia, but honestly, I'm sure Putin would welcome any opportunity to poke Obama a bit.

The thought crossed my mind too but I think this is probably legitimate.

Ignoring the comparative levels of freedom in the respective countries, wouldn't it seem to be a safer bet to seek asylum in Russia than Venezuela? Russia seems far less politically volatile and more likely to resist US pressure over a 50 year time span.

I doubt the government would let him keep publishing his works. While it is an ok solution he might want to go to the country that will let him to run the course of his disclosures.

My understanding is that Snowden has already given everything to a bunch of journalists, encrypted, who can access the data even if something happens to him.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/25/greenwald-s...

He's looking for a solution because what if his plane is hijacked ?

I know it's ironic given recent revelations, but am I the only one who's super-reluctant to click on any link ending in .ru or .cn?

No jingoism here - probably just too many years on Windows have me paranoid.

Keep up with that

I'm paranoid about clicking on any links regarding these revelations on a site self-labelled "hacker"-news... even reading The Guardian!

And it disturbs me. I'm quite certain I'm on a algorithmically generated shortlist as a result of following this mess.

I know the internet hasn't been the 'wild west' for quite some time, but it morphed into 'panopticon' pretty damn quickly.

Shortlist? That would be a very, very long list. So long in fact as to be totally useless. There is a cure for Internet paranoia. Fresh air and sunshine.

Shortlist? Used as a metric between deciding whether your get you next job, your affordable insurance policy.... long lists are easy to store and use with prejudice.

I'm thankful that fresh air and sunshine is a viable pursuit for my weekend sojourn. Not so much for urban poor.

"No jingoism here" => proceeds with jingoism.

You probably should not trust any news sources that come from these two domains anyway. Pretty much guaranteed to be Russian or Chinese propaganda.

As opposed to the propaganda free US media?

US media is mostly privately owned.

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