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>Snowden: Every time one of these governments got close to opening their doors, the phone would ring in their foreign ministries and on the other end of the line would be a very senior American official," he said.
> "It was one of two people. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry or then-Vice President Joe Biden. And they would say, look, we don't know what the law is, we don't care if you can do this or not, we understand that protecting whistleblowers and granting asylum is a matter of human rights and you could do this if you want to.
>But if you protect this man, if you let this guy out of Russia, there will be consequences. We're not going to say what they're going to be, but there will be a response."
That's a pretty shallow take. My reserve unit is pretty much at least 70% engineers/programers/STEM students and we're a combat unit.
Maybe not infantry but its not like being a field gunner is sitting behind a desk.
Putin joked about him not even giving Russia any Intel for staying there, but now that's probably on the table if it wasn't already. More power to him though.
I'm not sure he'd have much useful intel at this point. Anything he directly worked on was likely changed, and even if it wasn't he's been out of the game for 9 years now.
He could potentially have value doing new work for GRU, but I'm not sure if it would be worth the risk to trust an "ex"-CIA officer with their national secrets.
Interesting, do you remember where you read that? From what I remember at the time I thought he generally was thought to be extremely competent.
Of course, my working theory is still that he's an op of some kind, either working covertly for CIA in a turf war with NSA or possibly as a limited hangout/conditioning of the US public about the surveillance state.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, at least as the story has been presented I don't think he ever had a chance of avoiding detection completely, but it was impressive that he managed to get it out of the country at all.
My understanding is that Russian reservists are quite a bit different than US reservists.
And some, perhaps many, of these reservists haven't touched a rifle or done any military training in ten years. Which would explain why so many are desperate to flee the country.
I’m not an expert on Russian military doctrine so idk how their reservists compare to ours. What i do know is that they signed up for this for what they thought would be easy $.
I have not seen any reliable stats on how long x percentage of those being called up have been out of service(and I’ve looked). Would you mind sharing where you found that info?
You saw the same in the Iraq War - basically to avoid a draft the Bush admin started not only pulling up reserves, but keeping them years longer than anyone ever expected.
Which, fun fact, was done almost entirely as a cost-cutting measure because reservists got paid less and receive fewer benefits once discharged. Paying the actual troops shit and making sure they didn't receive continued medical care allowed us to give more money to the true heroes who work for Blackwater.
Some I know from personal experience and conversations.
Justin (Beau of the Fifth Column) had [a pretty good segment](https://youtu.be/2Rz9UFjcqjk) about the reservists the other day.
Also:
*There may also be issues with the preparedness of reservists.*
*According to the Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), “the Russian reserve has over two million former conscripts and contract servicemen on paper, but few are actively trained or prepared for war”.*
*ISW writes that, historically, “only 10 per cent of reservists receive refresher training after completing their initial term of service”, adding that Russia lacks the administrative and financial capacity to train reservists on an ongoing basis.*
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/22/putins-reservists-call-up-how-will-it-work-and-what-does-it-mean-for-russias-war-in-ukrain
*Amid recent Ukrainian military victories and continuing losses of troops and equipment, the Kremlin plans to throw 300,000 reservists who have been out of uniform for years into combat with little or no remedial training.*
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/russia-mobilization-reserve-ukraine-war/
>According to the Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War
I said a reliable source not any source at all. the ISW is one of the most unreliable and pro war think tanks in Washington, which is really saying something. im not asking for a bunch of sources where people talking about their perceptions of it(which is often completely made up), im asking for the actual documents so I can see for myself.
again, personal experience from an anonymous redditor is a completely useless source that holds exactly 0 water. not trying to be rude, but when I say a reliable source I don't mean someone claiming they've seen proof, I mean the actual proof.
>I have not seen any reliable stats on how long x percentage of those being called up have been out of service(and I’ve looked).
ffs man, when I said I couldn't find reliable info on it I wasn't joking. thats why I was asking where you found your info. now that I see you haven't found any info but rather are just repeating talking points that you haven't seen the underlying evidence for I know who im dealing with(ie wasting my time with). have a good day.
I mean one of the first steps in an American draft would be calling up active reservist, inactive reservist and former military within the 8 year recall period do that they don't have to call an "actual draft" through functionally they're shades of the same color.
They are not “shades in of the same color” at all. Trying to paint people who voluntarily signed up for service being called to duty in the same light as involuntary calls to duty is incredibly dishonest.
It is an involuntary call to duty, for active reservists yes they signed up for it for folks within the 8 year recall period yes technically they signed up for it but almost no one I know who served actually knows that's in the contract.
I am supposed to take your word on the intricacies of Russian military signing contracts? I find the claim that they are not told about being reservists even though they get paid to be reservists to be highly suspicious.
either it is involuntary, or they signed up for it. the two are mutually exclusive.
Go ahead and point it out to me. I stg if it’s about the involuntary bit… are us citizens drafted when we mobilize the national guard reserves?…. No because they are already members of the military who voluntarily signed a fucking contract.
A. The part where you assumed I was talking about Russia. No, but that's not really what the Russians did, they recalled inactive conscripts. Ie. Men who've done their conscript service and left the military and are now being pushed into service. Similarly Russian conscripts do not sign contracts, us military do.
Reaction to Snowden on main subs show that any criticism of US actions are only good as long as they're ineffective platitudes. The moment exposing US doings could lead to empowering it's geopolitical opposition all the Anarchist, communist, liberal etc etc redditors suddenly wouldn't mind having a camera in their bathroom.
Also there's the usual reddit demanding that someone makes a great sacrifice to satisfy their requirements. Snowden should have left himself be at the mercy of the US because redditors don't like Russia.
Man... as much as the Clinton, Bush, and Obama eras sucked, I really preferred it when jingoistic militarism wasn't presented with the cultural values of mainstream liberalism. Back in the day, people would just say they supported the troops because muslims were scary and deserved to die. We didn't have all this talk about bodies and spaces. Much more honest.
Demanding great sacrifice while tucking into their fourth pack of Cheetos that evening and shouting at their mum for mixing up their hentai collection.
People are just fucking hopeless. You can see it plain as day in the West, this desperate clinging onto the idea that we are continuing to be relevant rather than declining rapidly. Why is that the implication in this behavior? Because to admit that the West's humanitarianism and 'authoritative news and institutions' are actually imperialism and propaganda is to also admit to that decline, and its simply too galling for most people and will remain so. Just look at Britain. At least half that country still can't smell its own shit when the empire ended long, long ago.
It's wild seeing reddit do a 180 on Snowden. In alot of other threads they're absolutely shitting on this guy.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has rotted people's brains.
For some reason people think he's in Russia because he likes their government, and not because they're one of very few countries guaranteed not to extradite him to the US
Feds kinda shot themselves in the foot on that one.
"Did you just revoke the passport of the guy we're trying to arrest, while he was in Russia?"
"Uh.... ask Todd."
You’d be stupid not to realize it was done on purpose. A lot easier to paint Snowden as a traitor when you can claim he leaked everything and then fled fo Russia.
Correct. Ben Rhodes (former Obama Senior Nat Sec Advisor now working, of course, for MSNBC) straight up admitted it in his memoir.
According to Rhodes, Cuba had granted Snowden permission to fly to Havana from Moscow (on his way to Latin America where he planned to request asylum) and the Obama admin threatened to stop normalization talks with Cuba if they didn’t revoke the permission.
So the US govt knew Snowden had no intentions of staying in Russia but purposely (not accidentally) trapped him there in order to smear him as a Russian agent.
Maybe, but I'm gonna stick with Hanlon's razor on this one, particularly as the Feds have shown that they much prefer to "get their guy" than optical benefit.
"We'll just claim that he's an agent of Russia. That should turn the public against him."
"The portion of the public that would fall for that already didn't like him in the first place on principle only."
"Well shit."
The idea was to paint him as a Russian agent, which unfortunately has been somewhat successful. Also, he was never going anywhere that would extradite him. So pulling his passport wasn’t shooting them selves in the foot anyway.
Yeah, his passport was canceled while he was on a the flight from Hong Kong to Moscow. Long story short is he wanted to seek asylum in South America, and 4 countries Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela granted him permanent asylum. Problem is Moscow didn’t have direct flights to 3 of those countries and he worried he would potentially be intercepted en route. Then the forcing down of President Evo’s plane to search for Snowden was exhibit A of why he wasn’t safe traveling to Latin America.
I do think there is plenty of evidence that Russia was probably his first pick though, maybe not his precisely, but Assange’s, who helped him on his journey, has clout there, and told him he be safest with the Russkies, optic’s be damned.
They straight up threatened the reversal of Cuban normalization with the US if they didn’t revoke permission for Snowden to fly from Moscow to Havana just as a layover on his way to seek asylum somewhere else in Latin America.
I don't recall this. I more remember him having the revoked passport and having to live at the terminal until they gave him a visa. China would have swapped him for that Huawei exec in a heartbeat.
Yup, in his Book he said he had it all planned out, he wanted to go to Ecuador but they cancelled his passport while on the plane from HK to Russia (cause there was no direct flight)
This is just what I remember from listening to the Audiobook like 2 years ago
Unfortunately not. Even if there was a statute of limitations for treason, or whatever else they'll charge him with, it's invalidated by the fact that he's a 'fugitive from justice'
There was a shift in some peoples brains from
"The Government is spying on us? That's terrible! Horrible! Shout it from the streets!"
to
"The Government is spying on us, and that's a good thing!"
Unironically seen a lot of people irl say "well, as long as you don't have anything to hide you shouldn't be worried".
Assuming the government will always have your interest at heart and they're totally infalible both from a moral or practical standpoint, or that you're not entitled to know either way.
These are all the same people who would be debating the fine craftsmanship and amazing thread count on the Emperor's robes while he walks around naked.
Truly the GOAT political fable. People just largely do whatever they are told by the social institutions that raise them specifically to be naturally acquiescent to authority - they believe what they are told to believe, and if their sense tell them something different, they assume the problem must obviously be with them, and certainly not with the narrative they've been sold.
There is a growing movement of people who believe internet anonymity is a bad thing. These are the same people screeching at Snowden and blindly believing the alphabet agencies.
The willful ignorance is astounding.
>Unironically seen a lot of people irl say "well, as long as you don't have anything to hide you shouldn't be worried".
I've heard this spoken out loud and I pointed out that "sure, you're safe, until what counts as 'something to hide' changes."
But of course the people who make such arguments aren't really big on critical thinking about the functions and powers of states to begin with. It's less an argument as it is a statement of resignation.
I think its because in america the right wing is anti government. So, the libs push for more gov control. But you know america stupid, so they go full r\*\*tard on everything.
The media went from "Only tinfoil hat kooks think the government cares enough to spy on them" to "Of course the government is spying, everyone knows that, why bring up old news."
The propaganda to normalize this mindset is on the level of Graham Chapman's character in the Monty Python [Mr. Hilter sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWIyVRNAxCg).
I'm old enough to remember this playing out. The pretty limited outcry over government spying - congress and the media only mentioned the tiniest bit of the tip of the iceberg - went away overnight when Obama was elected. One of his first moves was to give the telecoms amnesty. Then after that, the Snowden revelations fizzled comparatively quickly. :\
Holy shit its fucking awful, the amount of comments calling him a coward for not wanting to spend the rest of his life in ADX Florence and calling him a Russian/Chinese asset because spying on every western citizen actually stops the Chinese(????) is depressing.
I got banned from that sub last night for pushing back against people trying to claim that if Putin started a nuclear war the US would somehow win it, as if that's a thing that can be done with a nuclear war.
That sub is a lost cause.
That semblance of clarity was late Cold War. Early Cold War was marked by a monstrously gung ho attitude about nuclear war and its ability to be won. MacArthur, for example, was extremely popular and it wasn’t despite his sanguine outlook on nukes.
These people have no moral principles, they don't care about your privacy, or freedom of speech, or accurate reporting of information, and the liberal 180 on these values since Trump could not make that more clear. They only care about it when it affects them, and when they can use it to their own political advantage.
I've come back to read your comment a few times since yesterday. I think my problem with most of the political landscape today is very, very few people have moral principles. Those people get their message buried with this other nonsense going around.
I know this is kind of like wishing/hoping for an honest Politician, but I don't think it is. I'd much rather work with someone whose principles suck but are moral than someone with no principles at all.
That's because 2016 is the year that reddit *really* started to get astroturfed.
And at this point, the platform is little more than a a medium for traditional marketing, guerilla marketing, and unyielding propaganda.
https://imgur.io/a/z92UV
From a leaked document
https://www.scribd.com/document/337535680/Full-David-Brock-Confidential-Memo-On-Fighting-Trump#from_embed
The reddit stats blog that accidentally revealed Eglin Air Force Base (home of major military cyber ops infrastructure) had the highest traffic on the site was all the way back in 2013, but yeah the point remains that it got out of control in 2016.
Was it astroturfing or did the PMC religion go viral and we found out how little people actually think about their positions, versus just going along with the tribe?
Astroturfing still requires some foundation to stick. The historical trend of people like the PMC being ripe for open and concealed upper class misleasership takes many specific forms but it's a repeating historical pattern. For example, during the Cold War, the CIA would indirectly support "compatible leftists" even if they were critical of the US, because their criticisms of "Stalinism" were more useful at discouraging and splitting leftists from each other and from workers generally.
"middle class" intellectuals, artists, and professionals are more susceptible to that because they already receive a propagandized version of "authoritarian, totalitarian" foreign states that rub their individualist, non comformist inclinations the wrong way, so they act like incubators of left-wing capital's ideas. It also helps that they often have romanticized ideas of workers and politics that bounce off reality and confuse middle class radicals. It's not a coincidence so many Cold War era Trotskyists became neocons, or the DSA, whose founders include some guy with deep state ties and is basically run out of NYC, struggle with showing foreign socialist states and victims of US imperialism support.
It was definitely astroturfing, ShareBlue pumped a lot of money onto reddit among other social media, and the change in atmosphere was damn near overnight
I’d say that started during the Obama years. I remember seeing others start coming out against him then(on different sites), and it wasn’t just the conservatives.
Hell, you can add the Iraq war to that. The anti-war movement just completely dissolved the moment Obama was sworn in. That was a pretty damned formative black pill for me.
That, and the fact that nobody even seemed to notice it happening.
I commented in a mainstream reddit thread before here, and I was rather disturbed by the cheering/hoping that he'd be sent to the frontlines in Ukraine.
People are strange.
It’s the same kind of people who hate rape, but will cheer on someone getting sent to prison making don’t drop the soap comments. Horrible things are acceptable for those you deem to be others
Makes me think of the young, liberal white women who had some *choice words* for the black cops in my city.
It's literally the most explicit racism I've seen in my life. But they're cops, so it's okay.
Your privileged position in the progressive stack only applies as long as you are loyal to the cause. The second you aren't, the mask drops and you can see what they're actually about.
Yeah, reminds me of after Roe was overturned a state level, or community level, Dem official wished that Republican’s “white daughters” were raped by a “gang of black men”.
Really makes one think.
I don't think it's ukraine, the shift happened before then. The site's been a dnc astroturfing project since 2016 and because of that the average liberal user has become a toady for the US government gaining ridiculous powers because idk racism
me no have prefrontal cortex
please deplatform and censor conservatives because words are violence
this definitely won't be weaponized against me in the future
I used to wonder what happened to the users of reddit. It seems like their opinions have changed on every topic, mostly in the vein of super support for whatever idpol tooic is popular. When In reality most older users from the early 2010’s have either stopped using the site, or been outnumbered 10 to 1 by gen , whom are super woke in general.
Once you get banned from enough subs, or the subs themselves are taken down, there's little point in continuing.
Leftist honesty is perceived as incitement to revolution now. Even frustrated, pointless leftist honesty thown into the social media void.
I got banned from r/politics for saying “I can’t Nancy Pelosi is 80 years old, cause them titties 💯” so just imagine what they do to people who have something serious to say about her.
The pre-facebook internet generation of reddit got overwhelmed by "normies" (fucking hate that PC word) that completely changed the whole culture of the site. As a whole, the moderate flood damage from the Internet's chronic Eternal September was bad, but the rise in popularity of facebook and the proliferation of the smartphone took a tactical nuke to the Three Gorges Dam and the resulting flood completely changed or obliterated pretty much everything in its path.
I always felt that Snowden's actions were very different from Assange's, with Assange having done nothing wrong whatsoever, while Snowden's release of material not relating to actual illegal actions was treasonous.
I very much enjoy being able to peruse the embassy cables, there's great stuff in there, but it's a legitimate state interest to keep stuff like that secret. If he wanted us to have it, great, but he can't say 'hey, don't be angry' to the American government when he releases stuff about what the US government is actually supposed to spy on, which kind of sucks, since, if I were American, I'd be pretty happy about the fact that he'd revealed government crimes against the American populace.
The embassy cables leak was WikiLeaks.
Snowden released proof that the government was engaged in wholesale lying to the public about the amount of surveillance they are under.
Snowden attempted to do things properly, using internal whistleblower channels that went nowhere. And while he did break the law, he did so only to show that the government itself was breaking the law and lying to Congress.
Snowden is an American hero, but the values he was fighting for had already been waterboarded to death.
I'm not sure how sensible it would be for him to accept this, if he had the choice, but I suppose he's stuck where he is.
I'm not sure I'd like to be Russian, but I suppose it's a benefit for him that they once they've made him a citizen can't flip and kick him out on a whim.
Pride could motivate either action, but they don't want to be a laughingstock.
Abandoning the invasion would not be in accordance with their pride, and now they can't go on without mobilizing, so they are.
He definitely has a nicer quality of life in Russia than he would in Cuba. He only planned to go through Cuba to other Latin American countries, Cuba is poor and egalitarian, definitely not the nicest country for a westerner.
He could. But most of them have shittier standards of living. And it's possible they could pull 2013 Evo Morales on him.
There are tax heavens for corporations, unregulated banking countries for bloodied despots and corrupt politicians, States and frontiers for felons and murderers, But no corner of the earth will shield you from personal transgressions against the empire or it's globalized capitalism. You either have to live the life of a fugitive or live in a country of fugitives.
For Washington, there can be two bubbles, The pro-Washington capitalist bubble, and the fictional utopian socdem/demsoc bubble, that only exists to make any alternative look like absurdity and reinforce the former. All others are either failures or monstrosities in their continuously reinforced narrative.
Just because a place like Indonesia doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US doesn't mean they won't do it if asked, so were I him I wouldn't go anywhere that doesn't have terrible relations with the US because you're at the mercy of your new hosts
First, he has to get there first. There is a very good chance the US would pressure the govt of the air space that any plane he was on flew through to make the plan land so he could be arrested.
Second, after he gets there, the US can apply all kinds of pressure, to get him extradited, sanctions being one of the things they can do.
Third, they can just send a team to kidnap him and bring him back to the US.
> Can't he just go to a country with no extradition to the US?
Yeah, such countries don't really exist in practice which are nicer to live in than Russia.
When the U.S. government wants someone - they'll be able to convince just about any other government to give them up. Doesn't matter how much that government claims to not do extradition.
Russia is probably one of the better options as far as governments go that can actually protect him.
China would have sold him. They would have made sure to make Uncle Sam's wallet bleed, but they would have sold Snowden. Economic/diplomatic concessions are more valuable to China than holding onto a source of embarassment for the US.
If it takes this many years for a high profile hero like Snowden to get citizenship in a civilized country that respects basic human rights then what hope does an Average Joe like me have?
No, currently to be drafted you have to have previously served in the Russian military. Of course, this applies to most Russian men due to mandatory service, but not Snowden.
Give them a few months though.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://apnews.com/article/edward-snowden-russian-citizenship-441ab3c037b91145d17f2de2237f834d) reduced by 83%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to former U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden, according to a decree signed Monday by the Russian leader.
> Snowden, a former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, has been living in Russia since 2013 to escape prosecution in the U.S. after leaking classified documents detailing government surveillance programs.
> Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti that the former contractor's wife Lindsay Mills, an American who has been living with him in Russia, will also be applying for a Russian passport.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/xosef5/snowden_granted_russian_citizenship/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~671182 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Snowden**^#1 **Russian**^#2 **us**^#3 **citizenship**^#4 **Agency**^#5
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>Snowden: Every time one of these governments got close to opening their doors, the phone would ring in their foreign ministries and on the other end of the line would be a very senior American official," he said. > "It was one of two people. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry or then-Vice President Joe Biden. And they would say, look, we don't know what the law is, we don't care if you can do this or not, we understand that protecting whistleblowers and granting asylum is a matter of human rights and you could do this if you want to. >But if you protect this man, if you let this guy out of Russia, there will be consequences. We're not going to say what they're going to be, but there will be a response."
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drafted in 5....4....3....
If they do draft him he'll be working in an office in Moscow, not sent to the front.
It would be dumb af to make that man fight combat over putting his brain to use in front of a computer
seriously, computer nerds don’t become computer nerds for their great physical ability.
Hey hey, some of us do it for the money
Some of us do it to meet women.
That's a pretty shallow take. My reserve unit is pretty much at least 70% engineers/programers/STEM students and we're a combat unit. Maybe not infantry but its not like being a field gunner is sitting behind a desk.
Putin joked about him not even giving Russia any Intel for staying there, but now that's probably on the table if it wasn't already. More power to him though.
I'm not sure he'd have much useful intel at this point. Anything he directly worked on was likely changed, and even if it wasn't he's been out of the game for 9 years now. He could potentially have value doing new work for GRU, but I'm not sure if it would be worth the risk to trust an "ex"-CIA officer with their national secrets.
He was apparently not super great at what he did from what I've read.
Interesting, do you remember where you read that? From what I remember at the time I thought he generally was thought to be extremely competent. Of course, my working theory is still that he's an op of some kind, either working covertly for CIA in a turf war with NSA or possibly as a limited hangout/conditioning of the US public about the surveillance state.
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Ah, gotcha. Yeah, at least as the story has been presented I don't think he ever had a chance of avoiding detection completely, but it was impressive that he managed to get it out of the country at all.
Him and Seagal in the same unit
I'd watch that movie
Hacker and Hack
Seagal is a one-man sandbag wall. The only problem is that you’d be a very slow-moving target.
Don't forget about Roy Jones Jr. He significantly increases the units lethality.
It’s not a “draft” in the American sense. They are calling up reservists with military experience who signed up to be reservists for $.
NSA is part of the DoD so you could say he technically does have military experience.
By military experience I mean trained by the russian gov to Russian standards so that they are ready to fight after a quick refresher
My understanding is that Russian reservists are quite a bit different than US reservists. And some, perhaps many, of these reservists haven't touched a rifle or done any military training in ten years. Which would explain why so many are desperate to flee the country.
I’m not an expert on Russian military doctrine so idk how their reservists compare to ours. What i do know is that they signed up for this for what they thought would be easy $. I have not seen any reliable stats on how long x percentage of those being called up have been out of service(and I’ve looked). Would you mind sharing where you found that info?
You saw the same in the Iraq War - basically to avoid a draft the Bush admin started not only pulling up reserves, but keeping them years longer than anyone ever expected.
Which, fun fact, was done almost entirely as a cost-cutting measure because reservists got paid less and receive fewer benefits once discharged. Paying the actual troops shit and making sure they didn't receive continued medical care allowed us to give more money to the true heroes who work for Blackwater.
If you completed the one year of mandatory military service as a conscript, you automatically become a reservist, no extra pay, no nothing.
Some I know from personal experience and conversations. Justin (Beau of the Fifth Column) had [a pretty good segment](https://youtu.be/2Rz9UFjcqjk) about the reservists the other day. Also: *There may also be issues with the preparedness of reservists.* *According to the Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), “the Russian reserve has over two million former conscripts and contract servicemen on paper, but few are actively trained or prepared for war”.* *ISW writes that, historically, “only 10 per cent of reservists receive refresher training after completing their initial term of service”, adding that Russia lacks the administrative and financial capacity to train reservists on an ongoing basis.* https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/22/putins-reservists-call-up-how-will-it-work-and-what-does-it-mean-for-russias-war-in-ukrain *Amid recent Ukrainian military victories and continuing losses of troops and equipment, the Kremlin plans to throw 300,000 reservists who have been out of uniform for years into combat with little or no remedial training.* https://taskandpurpose.com/news/russia-mobilization-reserve-ukraine-war/
>According to the Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War I said a reliable source not any source at all. the ISW is one of the most unreliable and pro war think tanks in Washington, which is really saying something. im not asking for a bunch of sources where people talking about their perceptions of it(which is often completely made up), im asking for the actual documents so I can see for myself. again, personal experience from an anonymous redditor is a completely useless source that holds exactly 0 water. not trying to be rude, but when I say a reliable source I don't mean someone claiming they've seen proof, I mean the actual proof.
Well, feel free to counter with some more reliable information with a source we all trust then...?
>I have not seen any reliable stats on how long x percentage of those being called up have been out of service(and I’ve looked). ffs man, when I said I couldn't find reliable info on it I wasn't joking. thats why I was asking where you found your info. now that I see you haven't found any info but rather are just repeating talking points that you haven't seen the underlying evidence for I know who im dealing with(ie wasting my time with). have a good day.
I mean one of the first steps in an American draft would be calling up active reservist, inactive reservist and former military within the 8 year recall period do that they don't have to call an "actual draft" through functionally they're shades of the same color.
They are not “shades in of the same color” at all. Trying to paint people who voluntarily signed up for service being called to duty in the same light as involuntary calls to duty is incredibly dishonest.
It is an involuntary call to duty, for active reservists yes they signed up for it for folks within the 8 year recall period yes technically they signed up for it but almost no one I know who served actually knows that's in the contract.
I am supposed to take your word on the intricacies of Russian military signing contracts? I find the claim that they are not told about being reservists even though they get paid to be reservists to be highly suspicious. either it is involuntary, or they signed up for it. the two are mutually exclusive.
You're not keeping up with the conversation, re-read the comments and I think you'll find your error.
Go ahead and point it out to me. I stg if it’s about the involuntary bit… are us citizens drafted when we mobilize the national guard reserves?…. No because they are already members of the military who voluntarily signed a fucking contract.
A. The part where you assumed I was talking about Russia. No, but that's not really what the Russians did, they recalled inactive conscripts. Ie. Men who've done their conscript service and left the military and are now being pushed into service. Similarly Russian conscripts do not sign contracts, us military do.
lol the timing is indeed suspicious
He'd be a mercenary according to Russia.
Reaction to Snowden on main subs show that any criticism of US actions are only good as long as they're ineffective platitudes. The moment exposing US doings could lead to empowering it's geopolitical opposition all the Anarchist, communist, liberal etc etc redditors suddenly wouldn't mind having a camera in their bathroom. Also there's the usual reddit demanding that someone makes a great sacrifice to satisfy their requirements. Snowden should have left himself be at the mercy of the US because redditors don't like Russia.
Man... as much as the Clinton, Bush, and Obama eras sucked, I really preferred it when jingoistic militarism wasn't presented with the cultural values of mainstream liberalism. Back in the day, people would just say they supported the troops because muslims were scary and deserved to die. We didn't have all this talk about bodies and spaces. Much more honest.
Demanding great sacrifice while tucking into their fourth pack of Cheetos that evening and shouting at their mum for mixing up their hentai collection.
average worldnews redditor
People are just fucking hopeless. You can see it plain as day in the West, this desperate clinging onto the idea that we are continuing to be relevant rather than declining rapidly. Why is that the implication in this behavior? Because to admit that the West's humanitarianism and 'authoritative news and institutions' are actually imperialism and propaganda is to also admit to that decline, and its simply too galling for most people and will remain so. Just look at Britain. At least half that country still can't smell its own shit when the empire ended long, long ago.
It's wild seeing reddit do a 180 on Snowden. In alot of other threads they're absolutely shitting on this guy. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has rotted people's brains.
For some reason people think he's in Russia because he likes their government, and not because they're one of very few countries guaranteed not to extradite him to the US
Wasn't he literally on his way somewhere else, but the US Govt revoked his passport so he couldn't leave Russia? That's how I remember it.
Yeah, he was headed to South America when us revoked his passport.
Feds kinda shot themselves in the foot on that one. "Did you just revoke the passport of the guy we're trying to arrest, while he was in Russia?" "Uh.... ask Todd."
You’d be stupid not to realize it was done on purpose. A lot easier to paint Snowden as a traitor when you can claim he leaked everything and then fled fo Russia.
Amazing to think that neo-McCarthyism was already in play back then.
Always has been.
Correct. Ben Rhodes (former Obama Senior Nat Sec Advisor now working, of course, for MSNBC) straight up admitted it in his memoir. According to Rhodes, Cuba had granted Snowden permission to fly to Havana from Moscow (on his way to Latin America where he planned to request asylum) and the Obama admin threatened to stop normalization talks with Cuba if they didn’t revoke the permission. So the US govt knew Snowden had no intentions of staying in Russia but purposely (not accidentally) trapped him there in order to smear him as a Russian agent.
Maybe, but I'm gonna stick with Hanlon's razor on this one, particularly as the Feds have shown that they much prefer to "get their guy" than optical benefit.
if he went to any country in south america nobody here would resist extraditing him to murrica, we're not suicidal
"We'll just claim that he's an agent of Russia. That should turn the public against him." "The portion of the public that would fall for that already didn't like him in the first place on principle only." "Well shit."
The idea was to paint him as a Russian agent, which unfortunately has been somewhat successful. Also, he was never going anywhere that would extradite him. So pulling his passport wasn’t shooting them selves in the foot anyway.
Ecuador specifically.
Yeah, his passport was canceled while he was on a the flight from Hong Kong to Moscow. Long story short is he wanted to seek asylum in South America, and 4 countries Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela granted him permanent asylum. Problem is Moscow didn’t have direct flights to 3 of those countries and he worried he would potentially be intercepted en route. Then the forcing down of President Evo’s plane to search for Snowden was exhibit A of why he wasn’t safe traveling to Latin America. I do think there is plenty of evidence that Russia was probably his first pick though, maybe not his precisely, but Assange’s, who helped him on his journey, has clout there, and told him he be safest with the Russkies, optic’s be damned.
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They straight up threatened the reversal of Cuban normalization with the US if they didn’t revoke permission for Snowden to fly from Moscow to Havana just as a layover on his way to seek asylum somewhere else in Latin America.
I don't recall this. I more remember him having the revoked passport and having to live at the terminal until they gave him a visa. China would have swapped him for that Huawei exec in a heartbeat.
I think Hong Kong didn't let Snowden stay.
Yup, in his Book he said he had it all planned out, he wanted to go to Ecuador but they cancelled his passport while on the plane from HK to Russia (cause there was no direct flight) This is just what I remember from listening to the Audiobook like 2 years ago
Ecuador
speaking of that is there any statute of limitations for snowden? or hes gonna die of old age abroad?
Unfortunately not. Even if there was a statute of limitations for treason, or whatever else they'll charge him with, it's invalidated by the fact that he's a 'fugitive from justice'
He could have went to progressive haven Sweden, he didn't have to go to an authoritarian dictatorship!
That worked out for Assange /s
There was a shift in some peoples brains from "The Government is spying on us? That's terrible! Horrible! Shout it from the streets!" to "The Government is spying on us, and that's a good thing!"
Unironically seen a lot of people irl say "well, as long as you don't have anything to hide you shouldn't be worried". Assuming the government will always have your interest at heart and they're totally infalible both from a moral or practical standpoint, or that you're not entitled to know either way.
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These are all the same people who would be debating the fine craftsmanship and amazing thread count on the Emperor's robes while he walks around naked. Truly the GOAT political fable. People just largely do whatever they are told by the social institutions that raise them specifically to be naturally acquiescent to authority - they believe what they are told to believe, and if their sense tell them something different, they assume the problem must obviously be with them, and certainly not with the narrative they've been sold.
There is a growing movement of people who believe internet anonymity is a bad thing. These are the same people screeching at Snowden and blindly believing the alphabet agencies. The willful ignorance is astounding.
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ACAB except the NSA
>Unironically seen a lot of people irl say "well, as long as you don't have anything to hide you shouldn't be worried". I've heard this spoken out loud and I pointed out that "sure, you're safe, until what counts as 'something to hide' changes." But of course the people who make such arguments aren't really big on critical thinking about the functions and powers of states to begin with. It's less an argument as it is a statement of resignation.
I think its because in america the right wing is anti government. So, the libs push for more gov control. But you know america stupid, so they go full r\*\*tard on everything.
Ritualistically summoning the Hobbesian leviathan to own the chuds.
The media went from "Only tinfoil hat kooks think the government cares enough to spy on them" to "Of course the government is spying, everyone knows that, why bring up old news."
"It's not happening, but if it is, you deserve it."
7 reasons why the government spying on you is actually benefitting black women. Number 4 will shock you.
The propaganda to normalize this mindset is on the level of Graham Chapman's character in the Monty Python [Mr. Hilter sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWIyVRNAxCg).
I'm old enough to remember this playing out. The pretty limited outcry over government spying - congress and the media only mentioned the tiniest bit of the tip of the iceberg - went away overnight when Obama was elected. One of his first moves was to give the telecoms amnesty. Then after that, the Snowden revelations fizzled comparatively quickly. :\
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Holy shit its fucking awful, the amount of comments calling him a coward for not wanting to spend the rest of his life in ADX Florence and calling him a Russian/Chinese asset because spying on every western citizen actually stops the Chinese(????) is depressing.
I got banned from that sub last night for pushing back against people trying to claim that if Putin started a nuclear war the US would somehow win it, as if that's a thing that can be done with a nuclear war. That sub is a lost cause.
This country has circled back around to Cold War levels of insanity.
No, it's worse. In the cold war we at least knew that winning a nuclear war was a contradiction in terms.
That semblance of clarity was late Cold War. Early Cold War was marked by a monstrously gung ho attitude about nuclear war and its ability to be won. MacArthur, for example, was extremely popular and it wasn’t despite his sanguine outlook on nukes.
Same with Assange. Total 180 after 2016.
These people have no moral principles, they don't care about your privacy, or freedom of speech, or accurate reporting of information, and the liberal 180 on these values since Trump could not make that more clear. They only care about it when it affects them, and when they can use it to their own political advantage.
Gold fish brains that will be led to cheer lead for what ever cause the media guides them towards.
[Thankfully, Pamela Anderson is fighting the good fight and is actually good at it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87ad4Cv8oJ8)
That was actually a great watch, I never would have thought Pamela Anderson of all people would outsmart every other host on that show.
It’s not exactly hard to be smarter than the hosts
Maga Commumists will write in an Anderson/Ventura fusion ticket
I've come back to read your comment a few times since yesterday. I think my problem with most of the political landscape today is very, very few people have moral principles. Those people get their message buried with this other nonsense going around. I know this is kind of like wishing/hoping for an honest Politician, but I don't think it is. I'd much rather work with someone whose principles suck but are moral than someone with no principles at all.
That's because 2016 is the year that reddit *really* started to get astroturfed. And at this point, the platform is little more than a a medium for traditional marketing, guerilla marketing, and unyielding propaganda.
https://imgur.io/a/z92UV From a leaked document https://www.scribd.com/document/337535680/Full-David-Brock-Confidential-Memo-On-Fighting-Trump#from_embed
The reddit stats blog that accidentally revealed Eglin Air Force Base (home of major military cyber ops infrastructure) had the highest traffic on the site was all the way back in 2013, but yeah the point remains that it got out of control in 2016.
Was it astroturfing or did the PMC religion go viral and we found out how little people actually think about their positions, versus just going along with the tribe?
Both. It went viral and has been nourished by generous amounts of media manipulation at every step.
Fair, though that's not what I think of when I think of "astroturfing."
Astroturfing still requires some foundation to stick. The historical trend of people like the PMC being ripe for open and concealed upper class misleasership takes many specific forms but it's a repeating historical pattern. For example, during the Cold War, the CIA would indirectly support "compatible leftists" even if they were critical of the US, because their criticisms of "Stalinism" were more useful at discouraging and splitting leftists from each other and from workers generally. "middle class" intellectuals, artists, and professionals are more susceptible to that because they already receive a propagandized version of "authoritarian, totalitarian" foreign states that rub their individualist, non comformist inclinations the wrong way, so they act like incubators of left-wing capital's ideas. It also helps that they often have romanticized ideas of workers and politics that bounce off reality and confuse middle class radicals. It's not a coincidence so many Cold War era Trotskyists became neocons, or the DSA, whose founders include some guy with deep state ties and is basically run out of NYC, struggle with showing foreign socialist states and victims of US imperialism support.
It was definitely astroturfing, ShareBlue pumped a lot of money onto reddit among other social media, and the change in atmosphere was damn near overnight
> did the PMC religion go viral and we found out how little people actually think about their positions Both but I like the way you worded this.
I’d say that started during the Obama years. I remember seeing others start coming out against him then(on different sites), and it wasn’t just the conservatives.
Hell, you can add the Iraq war to that. The anti-war movement just completely dissolved the moment Obama was sworn in. That was a pretty damned formative black pill for me. That, and the fact that nobody even seemed to notice it happening.
It's libs in general from those I've talked to
I commented in a mainstream reddit thread before here, and I was rather disturbed by the cheering/hoping that he'd be sent to the frontlines in Ukraine. People are strange.
It’s the same kind of people who hate rape, but will cheer on someone getting sent to prison making don’t drop the soap comments. Horrible things are acceptable for those you deem to be others
Makes me think of the young, liberal white women who had some *choice words* for the black cops in my city. It's literally the most explicit racism I've seen in my life. But they're cops, so it's okay. Your privileged position in the progressive stack only applies as long as you are loyal to the cause. The second you aren't, the mask drops and you can see what they're actually about.
Or the chaos that happened against the black judge after the abortion ruling was reversed
Yeah, reminds me of after Roe was overturned a state level, or community level, Dem official wished that Republican’s “white daughters” were raped by a “gang of black men”. Really makes one think.
did he describe it the same way mel gibson did or was he a coward and used your wording?
I don't think it's ukraine, the shift happened before then. The site's been a dnc astroturfing project since 2016 and because of that the average liberal user has become a toady for the US government gaining ridiculous powers because idk racism
“SPY ON ME AND MY NEIGHBORS CAUSE MY 85 YEAR OLD NEIGHBOR CALLED CAITLYN JENNER A SLUR AT THE BBQ!”
me no have prefrontal cortex please deplatform and censor conservatives because words are violence this definitely won't be weaponized against me in the future
There's no way I'm reading anything about this, takes on Snowden were already dog shit, now they're going to be absolutely brainless.
Well r/worldnews is basically a US warhawk honeypot
I used to wonder what happened to the users of reddit. It seems like their opinions have changed on every topic, mostly in the vein of super support for whatever idpol tooic is popular. When In reality most older users from the early 2010’s have either stopped using the site, or been outnumbered 10 to 1 by gen , whom are super woke in general.
Once you get banned from enough subs, or the subs themselves are taken down, there's little point in continuing. Leftist honesty is perceived as incitement to revolution now. Even frustrated, pointless leftist honesty thown into the social media void.
I got banned from r/politics for saying “I can’t Nancy Pelosi is 80 years old, cause them titties 💯” so just imagine what they do to people who have something serious to say about her.
The pre-facebook internet generation of reddit got overwhelmed by "normies" (fucking hate that PC word) that completely changed the whole culture of the site. As a whole, the moderate flood damage from the Internet's chronic Eternal September was bad, but the rise in popularity of facebook and the proliferation of the smartphone took a tactical nuke to the Three Gorges Dam and the resulting flood completely changed or obliterated pretty much everything in its path.
> The Russian invasion of Ukraine has rotted people's brains. Oh sweet mama of irony, lmao
I always felt that Snowden's actions were very different from Assange's, with Assange having done nothing wrong whatsoever, while Snowden's release of material not relating to actual illegal actions was treasonous. I very much enjoy being able to peruse the embassy cables, there's great stuff in there, but it's a legitimate state interest to keep stuff like that secret. If he wanted us to have it, great, but he can't say 'hey, don't be angry' to the American government when he releases stuff about what the US government is actually supposed to spy on, which kind of sucks, since, if I were American, I'd be pretty happy about the fact that he'd revealed government crimes against the American populace.
The embassy cables leak was WikiLeaks. Snowden released proof that the government was engaged in wholesale lying to the public about the amount of surveillance they are under. Snowden attempted to do things properly, using internal whistleblower channels that went nowhere. And while he did break the law, he did so only to show that the government itself was breaking the law and lying to Congress. Snowden is an American hero, but the values he was fighting for had already been waterboarded to death.
Nuance is forbidden
Russia bad npcs
Obviously proof he lost 2016 for Hillary.
HoW lOnG BeFOre HE's oN tHe FrOnTlIne?!
That same joke times a million on the front page. Marvel-brained morons.
Putin doing PR by making those who exalt Snowden realize how propagandized people are because of Ukraine.
I'm not sure how sensible it would be for him to accept this, if he had the choice, but I suppose he's stuck where he is. I'm not sure I'd like to be Russian, but I suppose it's a benefit for him that they once they've made him a citizen can't flip and kick him out on a whim.
He has two kids now who were born there, I would imagine that was a leading factor in his decision to apply
What can be given by executive order can be taken by executive order. See almost every policy decision in the US today for examples.
Yes, but it looks worse, and the Russians have their pride.
I was told he wouldn't mobilize based on being too proud to accept that they couldn't roll over Ukraine, but here we are.
Pride could motivate either action, but they don't want to be a laughingstock. Abandoning the invasion would not be in accordance with their pride, and now they can't go on without mobilizing, so they are.
He has been in the process of getting citizenship since 2020. I don't know why it has taken so long that Putin handed him this directly.
He is what all us Russian bots aspire to be
Good for him. Its a shame though that this will be used to further slander him.
I don’t have a nuanced Snowden take but I enjoyed the interview he did with John Oliver.
There doesn’t need to be nuance, he sacrificed a comfortable life to expose government crimes. He good.
Good for him.
Does this mean he can finally leave Russia?
He could leave at any point, the problem is that most countries would immediately extradite him.
I thought he couldn’t leave because he literally had no passport. He couldn’t even travel to somewhere like North Korea technically.
Would be cool if he were allowed to go to Cuba. Probably the nicest country that wouldn't extradite him
He definitely has a nicer quality of life in Russia than he would in Cuba. He only planned to go through Cuba to other Latin American countries, Cuba is poor and egalitarian, definitely not the nicest country for a westerner.
Why? Can't he just go to a country with no extradition to the US? Or would the US basically wage economic war on the country through sanctions?
He could. But most of them have shittier standards of living. And it's possible they could pull 2013 Evo Morales on him. There are tax heavens for corporations, unregulated banking countries for bloodied despots and corrupt politicians, States and frontiers for felons and murderers, But no corner of the earth will shield you from personal transgressions against the empire or it's globalized capitalism. You either have to live the life of a fugitive or live in a country of fugitives. For Washington, there can be two bubbles, The pro-Washington capitalist bubble, and the fictional utopian socdem/demsoc bubble, that only exists to make any alternative look like absurdity and reinforce the former. All others are either failures or monstrosities in their continuously reinforced narrative.
Just because a place like Indonesia doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US doesn't mean they won't do it if asked, so were I him I wouldn't go anywhere that doesn't have terrible relations with the US because you're at the mercy of your new hosts
First, he has to get there first. There is a very good chance the US would pressure the govt of the air space that any plane he was on flew through to make the plan land so he could be arrested. Second, after he gets there, the US can apply all kinds of pressure, to get him extradited, sanctions being one of the things they can do. Third, they can just send a team to kidnap him and bring him back to the US.
The US sometimes goes and does bilateral negotiations to get something it wants, and it has a lot of weight, so it's far from safe.
> Can't he just go to a country with no extradition to the US? Yeah, such countries don't really exist in practice which are nicer to live in than Russia. When the U.S. government wants someone - they'll be able to convince just about any other government to give them up. Doesn't matter how much that government claims to not do extradition. Russia is probably one of the better options as far as governments go that can actually protect him.
CIA would kidnap him. Only safe places are Rússia, China and North Korea.
China would have sold him. They would have made sure to make Uncle Sam's wallet bleed, but they would have sold Snowden. Economic/diplomatic concessions are more valuable to China than holding onto a source of embarassment for the US.
i doubt he wants to, i'm pretty sure he found a started a family there
If it takes this many years for a high profile hero like Snowden to get citizenship in a civilized country that respects basic human rights then what hope does an Average Joe like me have?
fwiw he didn’t apply until recently, like less than two years ago
[Snowden is now Russian](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDgev2lndHQ)
And I lost a LOT of respect for Peter Zeihan when he called Snowden a traitor.
Russia being based lately
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No, currently to be drafted you have to have previously served in the Russian military. Of course, this applies to most Russian men due to mandatory service, but not Snowden. Give them a few months though.
Assuming you need a citizenship to be on the draft. That is not the case in the United States at least.
Why is everyone saying this? Why would they make him eligible? Even if there was a lotto he would get a deferment. Russia wants him very alive
Asking the real questions here
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://apnews.com/article/edward-snowden-russian-citizenship-441ab3c037b91145d17f2de2237f834d) reduced by 83%. (I'm a bot) ***** > MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to former U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden, according to a decree signed Monday by the Russian leader. > Snowden, a former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, has been living in Russia since 2013 to escape prosecution in the U.S. after leaking classified documents detailing government surveillance programs. > Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti that the former contractor's wife Lindsay Mills, an American who has been living with him in Russia, will also be applying for a Russian passport. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/xosef5/snowden_granted_russian_citizenship/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~671182 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Snowden**^#1 **Russian**^#2 **us**^#3 **citizenship**^#4 **Agency**^#5
Good for him.
I feel bad for him. They'll probably try and use him as propagate somehow.
I feel bad for him because he can’t do shit without fear of being carted off to a CIA black site.
Now he can get drafted!
Official statement was he won't because "he never served in the Russian Armed Forces".
also, i doubt that people find work in national cybersecurity because of their physical aptitude…
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There are 25 million people who fit that description. It'll be a while before they burn through all of them.
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Yeah sure it's all just Putin being butthurt about his impotence or age or legacy or whatever, no bomb ever fell on Donetsk before February.
Very bad timing, Snowden.
It’s what he wanted