Edward Snowden Vindicated

[Ninurta]

@"Ninurta"

I would say a guy with the security clearance that Snowden had should not "run" to ANY country, I don't care what he thinks his justification to do so was.  That was nefarious crap.

As for Russia, it ain't about the Russian people.  It is about the fact they run their own state with their own interests, which only sometimes comport with ours.  Same thing with China, same thing with any other country.  Snowden had no business being in either of those countries, especially under the conditions he went to them.

Like you probably have, I've met nice individuals the world over.  But what Snowden became a servant of in Russia is not an individual -- it is their collective called the State.  Big difference.

Cheers

I do agree, up to a point. The fact that Russians have their own state with it's own interests is true of every nation on Earth - so we can't use that as the sole criteria for a hostile stance towards them. Now, if their interests run in direct conflict with ours, that's another matter, and should lead to a hostile stance... but, in the case of Russia, WE have pretty much poached most of their Eastern European satellite states (I believe Bulgaria is even in NATO now rather than the defunct Warsaw Pact) and I can see how that would be concerning to Russia - after all, we didn't much care for it when they tried to put missiles in Cuba! Same principle - we seem to be poaching in THEIR back yard.

I don't think we'd much care for it if they poached in the Caribbean or Mexico, and to my mind what we are doing to them is the same exact thing we don't want them doing to us, which is a bit uncool.

What I see are Democrats, Progressives and Neocons railing against Russia, and I can only lay that down to the collapse of communism there. Just a few short years ago (from my perspective) their stance on Russia was entirely opposite. The only real difference is the lack of communism there now, and their lack of aggression towards us. I don't see those two changes as good reason to talk shit about Russia, but that's just me.

On a personal level, some of the best friends I've ever had started out as enemies - we just had to first fight it out, establish a pecking order, and figure out which shit belonged to whom. I tend to extrapolate from the small to the large, as Miyamoto Musashi advised in his "Book of Five Rings". He said "from one thing, know ten thousand things"... and nations are, in the final analysis, just big collections of people. What people can do, nations ought to be able to do, too, going by that extrapolation.

Russia appears to be a bit put out with China currently, due to Chinese expansionism, and I think, personally, this might be a great time to broach the subject of an uneasy alliance between us, and against the CCP... but railing against Russia is not a good step in that direction, a fact which I am sure is not lost on the Leftists who are promoting division.

I have no doubt that is the very reason they are promoting division - to divide and conquer.

Russia is no longer the Soviet Union, and folks might want to consider stepping into the 21st century and leaving the Cold War behind where it belongs, in the LAST century instead of this one.

Now someone is going to label me as a "Russian disnformation agent". I don't care. That will tell me more about them than they know about me.

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