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Whatever he's doing now, he still did the right thing as an American by honoring his oath to uphold the US Constitution when he exposed the abuse against our rights. He deserves a pardon so he can return home.
It's really sad the way he got captured in Russia during his escape. I think he rightly believed that was somewhere the US couldn't likely get to him, and he was right, but his understandable fear of US persecution blinded him to the fact that the danger from enemies of the US was just as great.
Putin captured him to use as a pawn against the US and to try to extract any remaining information he could from him and I'm sure at this point he's mostly accomplished that goal. I feel like at this point he is basically a political prisoner and he has to play along and cooperate with the regime to survive, I don't think Putin would ever let him leave even if he was pardoned, he's too useful to keep under his thumb. I hope to be proven wrong and that he escapes someday, whether released legitimately as being past his usefulness, or by fleeing and finding somewhere else to hide, but I'm not optimistic with the state of the world these days.
The cost of whistleblowing can be very high and very permanent, as they are in this case, and no amount of protection will ever make you totally safe from consequences, and that's the way the powers that be like it despite what they may say.
Putin captured him to use as a pawn against the US
This is not how things happened. He got stranded in Russia when the USA cancelled his passport, he was en route to Ecuador (at the time they had a government that was willing to give him asylum).
You don't need a passport to claim asylum. The whole story reeks tbh. He stayed in Russia because he wasn't allowed to leave. Or because he was a Russian agent. But there are many diplomatic avenues to get from one sympathetic country to another for a legitimate asylum claim.
But there are many diplomatic avenues to get from one sympathetic country to another for a legitimate asylum claim.
So you say, without providing any proof such avenues exist.
Well duh. You can apply for asylum without a passport. Now try to bridge the ~8k miles from Russia to Ecuador without one, while trying to avoid being deported to the USA, and see how far you'll get. Best case, you'd be stuck for years in some embassy like happened to Julian Assange.
You can apply for asylum in an embassy and receive travel documents if approved. Either Russia or Ecuador could also have just put him on a diplomatic flight. Edward Snowden is not the first person who needed to cross hostile borders to claim asylum. The simple fact of the matter is that he either chose not to do so, or was not allowed to do so.
it was also unclear he has in fact paid any taxes to the Russian government
Seems like a Captain Obvious moment. You work somewhere, your employer pays taxes to the government without even asking if you like it. I'm fully certain that even hardcore anarchist partisans who burn shit at night, pay taxes to the RF government on their day job - to look more like a normal citizen.
this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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