What a strange world we live in, when you have to run from the US government after revealing its illegal and unconstitutional activity and hope for safe haven in Putin's Russia.
Putin's government is supporting the church, and promoting traditional family values. They have instituted significant money benefits for families with children, and as a result the much talked about decline in Russia's population has been stopped in 2013. For the first time in modern Russian history there are more babies born in Russia than people die of old age. http://www.amren.com/news/2013/06/russias-population-decline...
The laws prohibiting "gay propaganda" should be viewed in the context of these policies. Obviously, being gay as such is not illegal in Russia. There are gay bars in any large Russian city, and quite a few of celebrities have admitted to be gay. However, they have made it illegal to promote homosexuality publicly.
Then, there are economic policies of Putin that would make Reagan jealous. Russian government has adopted a flat 13% tax rate on all incomes in 2001. Not only this has made Russia one of the lowest tax jurisdictions in the world. Most importantly, the flat rate has removed thousands of 'tax exceptions' that is the source of economic inefficiencies and outright corruption in most of 'developed' countries. Here is a noted US conservative lamenting that Putin has achieved something he had worked on most of his life. "We won the Cold War, but Russia gets a flat tax while America is stuck with a Byzantine tax system based on class-warfare ideology." http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2003/03/russias-....
Finally, the 'freedom of press opression' and 'political persecution of opponents' thesis is in many ways overblown. Most popular Russian internet media outlets are openly anti-Putin (lenta.ru, slon.ru etc. etc.). The most listened to news/talk-show radio station (Echo Moskvy) is strongly anti-Putin, and a very popular cable TV channel (Dozhd) is also anti-Putin and anti-establishment.
And the trial of the poster-child of anti-Putin opposition Mr Khodorkovsky (who was imprisoned years ago on fraud and tax-evasion charges) has just been recognised as a 'non-political' by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) (read: Khodorkovsky was indeed a crook, and his sentencing was not influenced by his anti-Putin stance). http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-european-court-khodorkov...
Putin's government is also following Western conservative script with regard to intellectual property. Actually, today the have effected a broad-reaching anti-piracy law that would outlaw any internet site that publishes links to illegal movie download or torrent-trackers. To Putin's credit, the downloaders of illegal content themselves will not be prosecuted. So, parents of teenagers need not worry about gigantic fines etc.
Obviously, Putin is no friend to US conservatives, primarily because Putin is a nationalist and conducts an independent foreign policy. What is good for Russia need not be good for the US. And vice versa. But Putin may be good for those Russians that hold traditional conservative values. Hell, such people may feel Russia is the last bastion of true conservatism left in the world, while not being exactly a Pinochet-like fascist place.
Minus the extra judicial killing and prosecution of any serious political opponent.
Just to be clear, I don't try to judge Putin's russia through the "prism" of western media bias, I am sure he has done a lot of good for his country, but he has also done boatload of fucked up shit.
There are claims that Dr Kelly was killed by Tony Blair for opposing Iraq war. But I am not believing it either.
You aren't supposed to be aware, is the idea.
constant, evidence-based accusations of widespread electoral fraud
Accusations of fraud are mostly aboutRussian parliament elections of 2011. Pro-Putin party was accused of fraud in many districts, which I personally think is correct. (But, strangely enough, Israeli foreign minister, has found those elections fair and democratic... http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/lieberman-russ...)
On the other hand, most definetely Putin did not need any fraud to help him win presidential elections in 2012. He had an overwhelming support among common Russians. Forecasts by anti-Putin polling organisation Levada Centre promised him 63% of the vote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_presidential_election,_...), and he indeed got 63.5%. His closest competitor (a communist) got 17%.
To win elections fraudulently, Putin had to doctor close to half of the bulletins, which seems unlikely, given worldwide scrutiny of the election, and his own efforts to dispel doubts such as installing live webcams at every polling station etc.
Tl;dr Putin won because he is popular, not because of the fraud.
I don't think there is a lot of support in favor of Snowden in USA, don't be confused by internet activism. The reality is most people is US doesn't care about snowden or the implications of his revelations.
In the current US, anti-government activism is a foreign concept. You won't find a lack of people complaining about the government, but you won't find them on the street and make some noise untill there is some real change.
Even the occupy movement was largely a farce and it wasn't really against the government.
This is spot on. Most people here don't even know his name. To the ones that do, he is "that guy that leaked all those secrets." It pains me to say it, but it's true.
The odd thing is that with the recent House vote that almost successfully de-funded the NSA with regards to the meta-data collection program, it seems that a lot of our representatives were ahead of the population (or responding to the more activist elements of the population) on the issue.
>Even the occupy movement was largely a farce and it wasn't really against the government.
I was there that first day that it started. To be fair, the movement was largely about the relationship between the government and the private sector, not just the private sector.
Now after a decade of American led wars, invasions, drones... and now the mass surveillance program, we slowly start to realize that maybe things are not as good as they seem.
Perhaps, it's time to reassess the past established roles and look at the world afresh.
Again, name the country which is acceptable, possible to travel too, and out of US reach.
Snowden has to take whatever he can get.
And he has to run to Russia, a country that has much much worse human rights records (at least publicly, it is possibly that US government privately is much worse in human rights).
I think the people of the USA should ask their government what is the legal way to expose government wrongdoing, _to the extend Snowden did_, without being prosecuted and having to run for his life? I am afraid, currently no such law exist.
Why is there no chance of him getting a fair trial? Are you accusing Federal judges of being corrupt puppets of the Obama administration or something?
As to Federal judge's my understanding is that (might be wrong) most of these appointments are political in nature. And at least in case of supreme court the judges tends to align with their ideological bias and their interpretation of laws often wildly differs. Don't quote me on it though, just my understanding.
Also this has been going on for so long, why didn't anyone else from NSA use said well-defined legal channel to expose NSA activity or at-least put them up for scrutiny.
I can think of 3 reasons:
1) There is no well-defined legal channels to expose NSA illegal activity, to the extend Snowden did.
2) NSA only hires people who are morally corrupt.
3) NSA employees are genuinely concerned about their safety and well-being if they want to expose NSA.
As dissenters within the agency, they have a more accurate idea about how all of this works in practice than nearly anyone else.
That depends on a lot of factors:
- are you homosexual
- ethnically caucasian
- A subscriber to Islam
- have a name that matches the name of someone on a no-fly list
- an 'enemy combatant' (ages 13 and up)
- an activist of sorts
Or anyone of a hundred other arbitrary criteria. Those could make the difference between a safe & secure life 'just' being harassed periodically by people in uniform or spending time in Gitmo or Siberia.
Actually, that matters in Russia a lot, too. Although, their meaning of the word is different (Russian Caucasians are people originated from around the Caucasian Mountains; that's where all the guerilla fighting is currently going on).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ludvigovich_Bartini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka
Be careful what you wish for.
The reality is not as bleak as what the western propaganda made USSR out to be while it was out to destroy the only alternative political system on the same planet.
And what is the ratio? For example, try calculating this ratio for aircraft designers of the period: imprisoned_designers / free_designers. I don't think the result would be pretty.
I was interested enough to make (completely unscientific) assessment of what happened to some of the emigrants to USSR.
I've looked through all 8 Finnish emigrants listed in Wikipedia category [1]. The result isn't pretty: 3 executed during Great Purge, 1 commited suicide, 1 killed during civil war, 1 "lucky" to die just before Great Purge. The rest 2 were politicians (one of which was very high ranking). No scientists or engineers or technicians.
And here is the same assessment of all 7 American emigrants listed in Wikipedia category [2]: 3 spies; 1 scientist (Arnold Lokshin); 1 composer (Karl Rautio); 1 short-term technician, not allowed to go back to US, Gulag prisoner (Alexander Dolgun); 1 car toolmaker, not allowed to go back to US for 44 years (Robert Robinson).
Ignoring spies, we've got 2 miserable fates, and 2 good fates. So your ratio for US emigrants is 2/2. And those two are good mostly because of political reasons: the composer of Anthem of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic; and asylum seeking scientist.
Do you still want to move to (hypothetically restored) USSR?
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Finnish_emigrants_to_t...
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_emigrants_to_...
You didn't mention what kind of USSR would you like to be restored. Of course, there were different periods in Soviet history, with various rate and cruelty of persecutions. To stress my point I chose one of the most hideous periods. But unfair persecutions were always there.
This statement is so generic, that it's very hard to argue about it. "World at large", "directly related" - what do mean by those exactly?
Pre-Gorbachev era was certainly safer to live in than Stalin era. But I would argue that "cruelty" was actually one the pillars of the Soviet system. Totalitarian system couldn't survive without the excessive use of force. That's why it's called "totalitarian". Less cruelty leads to less control, and finally leads to collapse of the system. Foreign intervention had very little to do with the collapse of USSR.
In fact I come from a country which used to be communist(Poland) and a lot of people(older people) say that it was fantastic. Obviously they don't realize that these policies pretty much ruined our economy and were unsustainable in the long run, but they don't care - they want their nice jobs, free stuff from the government and paid holidays twice the year.
Well, if that isn't the best damned endorsement in history!