American hypocrisy on extradition

By Frank Moraes 

Glenn Greenwald wrote a very insightful article the other day on the hypocrisy of the United States government and and media. It circled around this business of Obama calling off the summit with Vladimir Putin. The White House gave a number of reasons for this including the fact that Russia is persecuting homosexuals. But everyone excepts the fact that it is just that Russia was given Edward Snowden temporary asylum.

Since when did the United States government give a flying fuck about the treatment of the powerless anywhere, even in the United States. After all, it was only last year that Obama "evolved" on the issue of gay marriage. As it is, Obama is perfectly fine with locking up cannabis and cocaine users for decades at a time -- even though he has quite publicly admitting to doing the same thing himself. So it's all about Snowden, because if there is one thing that the administration does care about, it is punishing whistleblowers, or as Obama calls them, "people involved in espionage."

Greenwald noted that the United States and Russian do not have an extradition treaty. So Putin isn't doing anything unusual, much less illegal. But guess who the United States does have an extradition treaty with? Italy. And yet, our great nation of laws broke its treaty when the Italian government asked for the extradition of Robert Lady and other CIA operatives who were convicted in absentia of kidnapping for the purpose of torture. And last year, the United States refused to extradite Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to face genocide charges in Bolivia. And a couple of years before that, we wouldn't extradite terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela.

But we need to have our priorities. These three examples are only kidnapping for the purpose of torture, genocide, and terrorism. Snowden is accused to leaking potentially embarrassing documents. And let us not forget, these three men only harmed poor and weak people. Snowden annoyed some very powerful people. That's the kind of crime that must be punished!

Meanwhile, the press is right there to stoke anger at Russia without providing any context. Even last night's The Daily Show was on it. But more generally, the media have gone out of their way to attack Snowden and put what he's done in the worst possible light. Check out this great argument between Greenwald and James Risen against the entirely typical mainstream apologetics of Jeffrey Toobin. Note how Toobin's arguments devolve into, "You gotta be kidding me!" Because all right-thinking journalists know that the government is always right. And notice also that Piers Morgan is only one tiny step more reasonable than Toobin:


So we continue on with the United States government acting like the corrupt super power that it is. Meanwhile the media spew out their usual happy talk about how we are all good and the evil Russian government just won't follow the law. I grew up during the Cold War. One of the things that we celebrated was that we had a free press whereas the Soviet Union had the government run Pravda. But even then, our press provided one-sided news that rarely came close to the truth. It is the same now -- at least if you get your "news" from the television. 

Afterword 

Jeffrey Toobin's claim is that it is great that we are talking about all of this stuff. Additionally, he admits that we are only discussing this stuff because of Edward Snowden. But he thinks that Snowden is a criminal who shouldn't have leaked the documents. James Risen counted him (and most in the mainstream press), "That's the thing I don't understand about the climate in Washington these days. People want to have debates on television and elsewhere. But then you want to throw the people who start the debates in jail." Morgan bails out Toobin by immediately pushing a straw man, "Is there no limit?!"

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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The adult in the room

By Carl 

The interesting dynamic that is the relationship between Obama and Putin has a new twist, and it's one we should welcome: 

On Wednesday evening, when U.S. President Obama cancelled his upcoming visit to Moscow, the Russian reaction was perhaps most clear in the way that Vesti, the state's main propaganda TV channel, conveyed it on the channel’s website. Buried about half way down on the page, underneath a story about Russian tourists in Turkey, Vesti announced: "The invitation for Obama stands." Beside that was the somewhat diversionary headline: "Barack Obama will travel to St. Petersburg for the G20 summit." The actual news — that Obama had decided not to meet with his Russian counterpart before, after or during the G20 summit in St. Petersburg next month — was clearly not something the official spin doctors wanted to advertise.

After a year spent honing their anti-American rhetoric — on issues ranging from the adoption of Russian children to missile defense in Europe and the civil war in Syria — the Kremlin message makers were suddenly eager to claim that President Vladimir Putin didn't really mean for things to go this far. "Sure, Putin uses this rhetoric, but it's not so much anti-American as anti-Euro-Atlantic," says Evgeny Minchenko, a Kremlin-connected political strategist. "And keep in mind that he has tried to stop short of a head-on collision."

So, shorter Kremlin: Holy fuck, he's not that idiot Bushy BooshBoosh! 

Indeed, he is not. And he's not going to kowtow to the likes of a tin-plated moron who trades offices like a Southern governor.

Putin has played the U.S. since at least 9/11, using our War on Terror as cover for all kinds of sins in Georgia and Chechnya, and let's not forget the 130 Russians who died in a terrorist standoff in a Moscow theater.

Yes, this is the guy Edward Snowden wants protecting him, but won't give up secrets to. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Keep in mind that, as Bush pursued a unilateral American foreign policy with healthy servings of imperial aggression, without engagement or advisement from what could have been its strongest ally in fighting terrorists, Putin took both offense and advantage of Bush's narrowed focus to become an active player in the Arab and Muslim world, particularly as the development of the Russian natural gas industry saw Russia become a major player in the energy field that previously had been dominated by the OPEC nations.


Putin began to develop ties to Venezuela, Syria, and North Korea, partly to further their own energy markets but also to assist them, it seems, in keeping America occupied. Our response?

To place a ballistic missile system in 2007 along the Polish border, nominally to protect against, errrr, Iranian and North Korean missiles.

This provocative move came a few short years after Bush removed us, again, unilaterally, from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaties in 2002.

While I cannot and will not defend Putin's responses to any of these actions, in hindsight his motivation becomes clear: he saw a new Cold War starting up. I'm not sure that was an unjustified position to take. 

So here comes Obama, tasked with both maintaining the façade of those missiles being vital to American security, while having to defuse Russian imperial ambition and coax (or bully) them on board with regards to Syria and Iran, and possibly North Korea.

Is ignoring a summit opportunity the way to go? Keep in mind that both Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel will still be meeting with their Russian counterparts as part of the G-20 Summit and that both Obama and Putin will have opportunities to communicate, possibly even privately, while in St. Petersburg. So it ain't over yet. The message is sent. Let's see how Russia responds. As indicated by the Time magazine article, the signs are hopeful.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

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Russia codifies extreme anti-gay bigotry

By Michael J.W. Stickings

While I respect the position Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking on the whole Snowden saga, there's really nothing else I like about the guy, and more and more it looks like he and his ilk want to turn their country into a right-wing dictatorship resembing the fascist states of old. For example:

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law [on Sunday] one of the most draconian anti-gay laws on the planet.

The new law, coming only seven months before Russia is to host the Winter Olympics in Sochi, would ban anything considered pro-gay, from gay-affirmative speech, to gays holding hands in public, to even wearing rainbow suspenders.

The law also contains a provision permitting the government to arrest and detain gay, or pro-gay, foreigners for up to 14 days before they would then be expelled from the country.  That provision ought to send chills to anyone gay, lesbians, bisexual or transgender who is planning to attend or participate in the Winter Olympics.

It is now literally illegal in Russia to say that you are gay.  It is illegal to kiss your partner in public – say, after you win a gold medal.  It is illegal for a gay athlete to wear the rainbow flag.  Or even to acknowledge during an interview that they are gay – or for the foreign press to acknowledge it – unless they mention that gay sexual orientation in a negative way.

Yes, Russia makes even Texas look progressive.

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The truth shall set you free, Edward Snowden. Hopefully.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Edward Snowden, stuck in Russia, keeps taking his lumps back home -- from media types who think that journalism amounts to nothing more than passing along government propaganda; from defenders of the surveillance state of all types, including the apologists on the left who are shamefully taking a stand against freedom; from Obama supporters who think the president can do no wrong and so must be right about this; from ordinary citizens who have swallowed the government's propaganda without any doubt at all.

And the U.S. -- more specifically, the Obama Administration -- is ratcheting up the pressure. Obama stupidly called him a "hacker" recently, but, then, he has proven himself time and time again to be a proponent of the national security state, a continuation of Bush-Cheney, enabling the authoritarianism that threatens American democracy and principles of liberty enshrined in the Constitution. And Biden personally intervened to try to talk Ecuador out of providing asylum to Snowden.

The latter seems to have worked. Ecuador is now saying it won't provide asylum and that helping him was a "mistake." Oh, really? Just what threats did Biden make? Or, rather, what promises did he offer in exchange for this?

Russia, for its part, continues to protect Snowden, but one wonders for how long, and at what cost. In response to Snowden's request for asylum in Russia, Putin, finding him in a tough spot (what's worse for him: driving a wedge into relations with the U.S. or appearing to bow to U.S. pressure?), said this:

If he wants to go somewhere and they accept him, please, be my guest. If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must cease his work aimed at inflicting damage to our American partners, as strange as it may sound from my lips.

I would say that he is doing a great service to the U.S., and it's interesting that Putin, who has been an admirable voice on the Snowden saga, chose those words, implying that Snowden may be "inflicting damage" specifically on the U.S. government ("our American partners") but not on America beyond that, and certainly not in any universal sense.

But will Snowden comply this this? He may be on the run, but he's a whistleblower, a truth-teller, a reporter of what the powers-that-be would rather remain unreported. Would he really just... stop?

Apparently he's made a request for asylum to 15 different countries. According to an official at the Russian Foreign Ministry:

In the document Snowden reiterated once again that he is not a traitor and explained his actions only by a desire to open the world's eyes on the flagrant violations by U.S. special services not only of American citizens but also citizens of European Union including their NATO allies.

I hope he finds a welcoming home. I really do. It would be awful were he to be returned to the U.S. to face nothing like a fair trial and to be held up as a traitor for having the courage to expose the flagrant transgressions of his homeland. That would be unwarranted vindication not just for Obama but for the national security state generally, allowing the American people once more to close their eyes to what is being done in their name.

For his part, Snowden issued a statement yesterday, via Wikileaks. It concludes:

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

This isn't just about the Obama administration, it's about what it stands for, about what it's doing. It's the national security state that is afraid -- afraid of the people, afraid of genuine democratic rule.

Be informed. Be angry. Demand constitutional government.

A lot of us stand with you, Mr. Snowden. Stay strong.

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Vladimir Putin gives America the finger by giving Edward Snowden a free pass

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Let's not make too much of this.

Snowden may very well be in a transit zone at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport that lies beyond Russian sovereignty, and so it's not clear what Putin could do.

But let's face it, he's an authoritarian with little respect for the rule of law, other than his own law, and so he could no doubt make things difficult for Snowden, not least by bowing to American pressure to send him back home to face "justice" (i.e., injustice).

But that's not Putin, giving in to such demands -- not when he can take the occasion to give America the finger:

In his first public comments on the case, Mr. Putin said that Mr. Snowden — the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents about American surveillance programs — had committed no crime on Russian soil and was "a free man" who could choose his own destination. "We can only extradite some foreign nationals to the countries with which we have the relevant international agreements on extradition," he added. "With the United States, we have no such agreement."

Giving America the other one as well, a gleeful double bird, he added that Snowden sees himself as a "human rights activist" who "struggles for freedom of information" and, just to drive home the point, indicated that the U.S. is being hypocritical in going after a dissenter, the implication being that the U.S. shouldn't complain when he does the same, which, of course, he often does (e.g., Pussy Riot).

What fun.

Here's Putin the Autocrat standing behind a facade of legal niceties while sticking it to the U.S. -- at a time when he's facing growing international pressure, particularly from the U.S. and its G8 partners, over his support for the Assad regime in Syria. For a time, I was wondering if there was a deal to be made: I'll give you Snowden if you lay off Syria. But now it just looks like he's taking great pleasure making the U.S. look inept and ridiculous and desperate.

Let me be clear: I'm no fan of Vladimir Putin. I loathe him, in fact.

But even if it's all part of his self-serving agenda, he's doing the right thing with Snowden, letting a free man facing persecution look for a new home.

And hopefully Snowden will find what he's looking for, with Putin's admirable restraint helping him get there.

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