Is Snowden Putin's Puppet?
By Garry KasparovGarry Kasparov is the chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation.
Snowden’s Revelations Shouldn’t Distract from Putin’s Brutal Rule
Whistleblower, traitor, hero, villain, Snowden may be many things at once but his apologies for the brutal record of Putin and the Russian state are inexcusable.
It is human nature to want to put a face on our stories, whether or not it really fits. Like a footballer making or missing a penalty in the final seconds of a game, one individual often gets credit or blame when he is mostly just a diversion from more important stories. Heroes and villains make for good narratives and this is especially true when someone can play both roles at the same time. That is the case of Edward Snowden, a traitor and spy to some and a whistleblower and hero to others. I have no special knowledge about his actions or his leaks, but I would surely feel differently about him had he not taken refuge in Russia, where his asylum request tacitly endorsed the dictatorial regime of his gracious host, Vladimir Putin.
My reaction is not only due to Snowden’s first statement from Russia, while he was still in legal limbo at the Sheremetyevo airport, in which he included Putin’s Russia—a police state and patron of despotism worldwide—on his list of nations that “stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless.” Putin’s many political prisoners would disagree quite strongly, and Snowden could have been more respectful of the many injured and dead among journalists and his fellow whistleblowers in Russia.
One note on Snowden’s NSA revelations, however, speaking as someone who grew up under the all-seeing eye of the KGB and who is fighting its modern rebirth under Putin. It is exasperating to hear blithe comparisons between the NSA, and other western spy organizations, and the vicious internal security regimes of the USSR and East Germany. The NSA is to the Stasi what a bad hotel is to a prison. It is not what a government does with data that defines it, it is what it does to human beings.
Any encroachment on the personal freedoms and rights of individuals by a government should be protested and debated, absolutely. The mechanisms to protest such abuses must be exercised regularly or they will be lost. But citizens behind the Iron Curtain were not terrified of the intelligence services because of data collection. We lived in fear because we knew what would happen to us if we gave any hint of dissent against the regime. As often as not, no data at all was required to persecute, disappear, torture, and murder potential enemies. If a court actually was involved, and evidence desired, it could simply be fabricated. And no, to take on the next argument I often hear, brutal totalitarianism does not begin with surveillance by a liberal democratic state. It begins with terror, it begins with violence, it begins with the knowledge that your thoughts and words can end your career or your life.
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/29/snowden-s-revelations-shouldn-t-distract-from-putin-s-brutal-rule.html
Note: The headline "Is Snowden Putin's Puppet?" originates on the front page of TDB: http://www.thedailybeast.com/
The remaining headlines, in Boldface on this page, appear over the article as it appears in the first link at "more:" above.
= new reply since forum marked as read
it is to laugh!!!
just
be any danger at all?
why else would he be praising Russia's Human rights? That or he's living in a make believe world where up is down and down is up.
Finally, somebody is talking about this from the Human Rights Campaign..
"I have no special knowledge about his actions or his leaks, but I would surely feel differently about him had he not taken refuge in Russia, where his asylum request tacitly endorsed the dictatorial regime of his gracious host, Vladimir Putin."
My reaction is not only due to Snowden’s first statement from Russia, while he was still in legal limbo at the Sheremetyevo airport, in which he included Putin’s Russia—a police state and patron of despotism worldwide—on his list of nations that “stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless.” Putin’s many political prisoners would disagree quite strongly, and Snowden could have been more respectful of the many injured and dead among journalists and his fellow whistleblowers in Russia."
It was unbloodyreal.. ES was being repspectful to Putin.. jumping head first into the whole propaganda thing. I'd feel differently about ES if he hadn't praised Russia's human rights from the get-go like a damn puppet and if he weren't slinging propaganda missives from Russia like a wound up robot. Bill Maher hit it square on target when he said everything that comes out of his mouth is "fuckin' nuts". Why is that? Whose agenda is this?
This>>>>
".. The NSA is to the Stasi what a bad hotel is to a prison. It is not what a government does with data that defines it, it is what it does to human beings."
Totally ignored by the "Russia good-USA bad"crowd.
snip// from your link, DV..
" The idea that an individual could carry out this mission and then flee to China and take refuge in Russia without any involvement by the KGB is hard to believe. Combine these logical suspicions with his asylum claim and the aforementioned false equivalency between dictatorships and democracies and Snowden is hardly cut out to be a sympathetic figure among those who respect the universal nature of human rights."
Yeah, it's hard for me too.. and I don't believe it.
"Sochi will be defined by how well the Olympics shine a spotlight on the corruption and repression of Putin and all who willingly overlook his crimes."
Thank you for this piece from Garry Kasparov the chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, Don Viejo~
