Report: Snowden Stayed At Russian Consulate While In Hong Kong 107
cold fjord writes "The Washington Post reports, 'Before American fugitive Edward Snowden arrived in Moscow in June — an arrival that Russian officials have said caught them by surprise — he spent several days living at the Russian Consulate in Hong Kong, a Moscow newspaper reported Monday. The article in Kommersant, based on accounts from several unnamed sources, did not state clearly when Snowden decided to seek Russian help in leaving Hong Kong, where he was in hiding in order to evade arrest by U.S. authorities on charges that he leaked top-secret documents about U.S. surveillance programs. ... he celebrated his 30th birthday at the Russian Consulate in Hong Kong, the paper said — though several days earlier he had had an anticipatory birthday pizza with his lawyers at a private house. ... The article implies that Snowden's decision to seek Russian help came after he was joined in Hong Kong by Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks staffer who became his adviser and later flew to Moscow with him. Harrison, the article suggests, had a role in the making the plans. ' More at the South China Morning Post."
Re:Good. (Score:1, Interesting)
Err, yes, I was "even alive" during the Cold War. My mother worked in Moscow for a time under Khrushchev. I can't speak on behalf of all Russians, but unless you're part of the emergent minority upper-middle class who have got to speak loudly about how much more "free" they are, and taking account of technological improvements, it was a better life in Russia then than now. (Don't confuse the USSR with Stalinism - that would be like judging the US by the heydays of black slavery.)
Now, I expect I have as much personal experience of North Korea as you - i.e. none - but it doesn't come close to representing what the USSR was like, and no amount of angry propagandising is going to help your case.
It is some of the ex-satellite states of Eastern Europe which have seen real improvement since the end of the Cold War - they were treated as resources for plundering, just as the US has kept so many South American nations under its heel via support for military coups. Fortunately, the people of Eastern Europe are enjoying autonomy now, but a lot of South America is still pretty fucked.
As you were saying...