this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
227 points (95.2% liked)
Working Class Calendar
1455 readers
31 users here now
!workingclasscalendar@lemmy.world is a working class calendar inspired by the now (2023-06-25) closed reddit r/aPeoplesCalendar aPeoplesCalendar.org, where we can post daily events.
Rules
All the requirements of the code of conduct of the instance must be followed.
Community Rules
1. It's against the rules the apology for fascism, racism, chauvinism, imperialism, capitalism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and heterosexism and attitudes according to these isms.
2. The posts should be about past working class events or about the community.
3. Cross-posting is welcomed.
4. Be polite.
5. Any language is welcomed.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I appreciate what he did. I hate that he is in Russia.
Reminder that the reason is in Russia is because the US trapped him there, that was not his intended destination. The US was leveraging every country they could to prevent Snowden flying anywhere. They ended up cancelling his passport while he was on a flight from Hong Kong to Moscow in transit to a final destination somewhere in Latin America.
So he ended up being stuck in the international terminal in Moscow and not able to even leave the airport since he had no valid passport. Russia and the US do not have an extradition agreement, and the US has always refused to send criminals back to Russia, so they did the same, also citing that his actions would not have even violated Russian law. Eventually over a month later they processed a temporary one year asylum request since he was stuck in Russia anyway. And that was extended until he was granted permanent residency in 2020.
In short the only reason he ended up in Russia is because the US trapped him there.
To be fair to him, he's been in Russia since like 2013 which was before all the Ukraine stuff really started to blow up. And from a practical point of view, he's probably much safer there than he would be in any US friendly country.
It's unfortunate that his actions in the interests of raising awareness of mass surveillance to the US public were also in the interests of the Russian state, which will be all to happy to see the US government undermined in some way.
Nonetheless, I think he done the right thing.
After Georgia "stuff" blew up though. And everything before that. And let's be real, you could see who would be their head today even back in 2013.
He deserved better.
I suspect he is in the equivalent of house arrest now, whether officially or otherwise. A pet.