Edward Snowden: Living in Russia Is 'Great'

[heavenlyboy34]

Every country is a capitalist country,, and none is..

Capitalism is the human state,, From reacquiring the simplest necessities,, to improving creature comforts. It is human nature.

Countries are run by people.. the State is neutral. People are Capitalists.

No. States are spawn of Satan.

 

[Mani]

Ya, I'm sure living in an upscale neighborhood in Moscow, being a virtual celebrity and having access to some of the hottest women on the planet must be hell.

If Russian women look anything like the trio of Ukranian women I met traveling through China, OMG, wow just wow.


They were super friendly, I was somewhat ignoring them while talking to a buddy nearby because I didn't want to be one of those gross gawker type guys staring at what I thought at least 1 may have been a model of some kind. As I'm walking away to say goodbye to my buddy, one of them says, "Excuse me. Hi! " Woah!? I think I was coming off a little rude standing next to someone and not saying hi. Ended up having a pretty cool conversation for an hour, they were just regular gals, mostly they kept trying to teach me to say, "Fuck you Putin" in Russian. Only negative is they were smoking like chimney stacks. Yuck.

If I was single I would have probably booked tickets to Ukraine the following weekend and done a trip back to Asia via Moscow.


Don't know why the hell Snowden called his GF to join him. Bro you are set for life in that town, treat that GF like the CIA and just disappear bro! I guess that love is real. Damn.


USA media is fairly idiotic and makes the entire planet look like a shit hole, and the common man is an ignorant fool who agrees. All Asian countries are 3rd world shit holes, as well as all Latin American countries. The Middle East is a camel riding shit hole. Africa is an aids infected Ebola infested people starving in the desert shit hole. Europe is too old and it's an old broken down quaint shit hole. Eastern Europe is a former broken communist shit hole. Everything is a shit hole except 'Murika! (and maybe our redheaded little step brother Canada). And if you say anything else is great or cool, or more advanced then 'Murika it offends the common man, because there can be only one! Only one Great country! USA! USA! USA!

 

[UWDude]

USA! USA! USA!

USA! USA! USA! USA!


Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

 

[UWDude]

Last time I was visiting grandma in a Hungary that was still in the bloc, ca. '88 or '89, they were having about 3-4 suicides per month of Soviet air force pilots. They came to Hungary on 2-year billets and basically when they arrived, they needed about a month to crank their jaws off the floor because the wealth of that meager nation was so vast in comparison with any place in the SU that were simply in utter shock. Several weeks before they were due to return to the mammy-land, the pattern was to kill their spouses, then their children, and then themselves. THAT is how dreadful a prospect it was to return to the bread lines.

Prove it. I don't believe you.

Because the pilots, like all officers in the Soviet Army, as well as the politicians and party elite, were more equal than others. This is the way it is in any government. They didn't have to worry about the bread lines. They were always first in line.

What's more, to say 3 or 4, acting fighter pilots, were killing themselves a month, is exaggerated beyond belief. The USSR would have gone into panic mode. You didn't even ever get that kind of suicide rate ever amongst *enlisted*, who were in the thick of the nightmare of world wars, far more severe than bread lines, but that's enlisted, and you want to tell me officers were offing themselves that fast, and their whole family? No... ...way.

1988 and 1989, heart of the age of major western propaganda in the entire area.

And I know you didn't see no suicide pilot commit suicide, though you did write it so a less observed reader would think you had. So all you know about these soviet pilot suicides is what you read in the news.

How much attention did you pay to those stories? Did you pay as much attention as you have to Edward Snowden's releases? (which from you was self admittedly not much) You talk like you know, but how did you learn all this? How did you learn 3-4 soviet pilots a month were killing themselves? Were you in the soviet air force? Did the soviets announce every one? That's strange for a government that keeps secrets well.

 

[osan]

Every country is a capitalist country,, and none is..

Capitalism is the human state,, From reacquiring the simplest necessities,, to improving creature comforts. It is human nature.

Countries are run by people.. the State is neutral. People are Capitalists.

No. States are spawn of Satan.

Both a bit off, IMO.

States do not exist separately from human thought, and thought is the only reality they ever display. Wave wand, people disappear... and where, point to it, is the "state"?

As for "state" being neutral, I suppose in a somewhat strained metaphysical sense that is indeed so, but in terms closer to actual life, I would say it is not because people are rarely neutral in the sense I take you to mean.

 

[osan]

Prove it. I don't believe you.

Well goody for you, sir. It is evident your purpose is to pick a fight and I am happy to say you will not get one here because I'm not here for that.

I don't care the least whether you believe me because you have made manifest a character unworthy of my most minimal esteem. I know what I was told in the place where it was happening as it was happening. I was there for three weeks and there were two suicides during that time. It never made the papers for the obvious reasons, but the people who told me of this were well trusted. You take from that whatever you want.

And I know you didn't see no suicide pilot commit suicide, though you did write it so a less observed reader would think you had. So all you know about these soviet pilot suicides is what you read in the news.

Then I might gently recommend you take a 6th-grade remedial reading comprehension class because I nowhere stated, nor did I in any way imply that I saw anyone commit the acts in question.

May I introduce you to my Bit Bucket?

Have a nice day.

 

[osan]

If Russian women look anything like the trio of Ukranian women I met traveling through China, OMG, wow just wow.

My daughter's mother was Ukranian. I could show you photos, but it would only make you weep, knowing you missed the incarnation of perfection on earth. Sadly, she was also crazy as it gets, which is why she was dead at 45.

They were super friendly, I was somewhat ignoring them while talking to a buddy nearby because I didn't want to be one of those gross gawker type guys staring at what I thought at least 1 may have been a model of some kind. As I'm walking away to say goodbye to my buddy, one of them says, "Excuse me. Hi! " Woah!? I think I was coming off a little rude standing next to someone and not saying hi. Ended up having a pretty cool conversation for an hour, they were just regular gals, mostly they kept trying to teach me to say, "Fuck you Putin" in Russian. Only negative is they were smoking like chimney stacks. Yuck.

Jesus, what a maroon... here's a $million hint for next time: give them something else to smoke.

 

[pcosmar]

No. States are spawn of Satan.

True,, but I was speaking in regard to organization.

The "state" is nebulous. It has no mind,, no thought and no ideology.. it is subject to those that run it.

As the state is always expanding,and growing,, it is naturally capitalistic.

Russia, China,, are capitalistic,, not communist.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Both a bit off, IMO.

States do not exist separately from human thought, and thought is the only reality they ever display. Wave wand, people disappear... and where, point to it, is the "state"?

As for "state" being neutral, I suppose in a somewhat strained metaphysical sense that is indeed so, but in terms closer to actual life, I would say it is not because people are rarely neutral in the sense I take you to mean.

"State" is indeed an abstract and rather arbitrary concept. Etienne de la Boetie said, [h=1]“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.” [/h]
I think Murray's explanation of the State is about as good as it gets:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/our-greatest-earthly-enemy/

What the State Is​

Man is born naked into the world, and needing to use his mind to learn how to take the resources given him by nature, and to transform them (for example, by investment in “capital”) into shapes and forms and places where the resources can be used for the satisfaction of his wants and the advancement of his standard of living. The only way by which man can do this is by the use of his mind and energy to transform resources (“production”) and to exchange these products for products created by others. Man has found that, through the process of voluntary, mutual exchange, the productivity and hence the living standards of all participants in exchange may increase enormously. The only “natural” course for man to survive and to attain wealth, therefore, is by using his mind and energy to engage in the production-and-exchange process. He does this, first, by finding natural resources, and then by transforming them (by “mixing his labor” with them, as Locke puts it), to make them his individual property, and then by exchanging this property for the similarly obtained property of others. The social path dictated by the requirements of man’s nature, therefore, is the path of “property rights” and the “free market” of gift or exchange of such rights. Through this path, men have learned how to avoid the “jungle” methods of fighting over scarce resources so that A can only acquire them at the expense of B and, instead, to multiply those resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange.
The great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth; one, the above way of production and exchange, he called the “economic means.” The other way is simpler in that it does not require productivity; it is the way of seizure of another’s goods or services by the use of force and violence. This is the method of one-sided confiscation, of theft of the property of others. This is the method which Oppenheimer termed “the political means” to wealth. It should be clear that the peaceful use of reason and energy in production is the “natural” path for man: the means for his survival and prosperity on this earth. It should be equally clear that the coercive, exploitative means is contrary to natural law; it is parasitic, for instead of adding to production, it subtracts from it. The “political means” siphons production off to a parasitic and destructive individual or group; and this siphoning not only subtracts from the number producing, but also lowers the producer’s incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence. In the long run, the robber destroys his own subsistence by dwindling or eliminating the source of his own supply. But not only that; even in the short run, the predator is acting contrary to his own true nature as a man.
We are now in a position to answer more fully the question: what is the State? The State, in the words of Oppenheimer, is the “organization of the political means”; it is the systematization of the predatory process over a given territory.[4] For crime, at best, is sporadic and uncertain; the parasitism is ephemeral, and the coercive, parasitic lifeline may be cut off at any time by the resistance of the victims. The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively “peaceful” the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society.[5] Since production must always precede predation, the free market is anterior to the State. The State has never been created by a “social contract”; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation. The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe pausing in its time-honored method of looting and murdering a conquered tribe, to realize that the time-span of plunder would be longer and more secure, and the situation more pleasant, if the conquered tribe were allowed to live and produce, with the conquerors settling among them as rulers exacting a steady annual tribute.[6] One method of the birth of a State may be illustrated as follows: in the hills of southern “Ruritania,” a bandit group manages to obtain physical control over the territory, and finally the bandit chieftain proclaims himself “King of the sovereign and independent government of South Ruritania”; and, if he and his men have the force to maintain this rule for a while, lo and behold! a new State has joined the “family of nations,” and the former bandit leaders have been transformed into the lawful nobility of the realm.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

At the time that ad was produced, the SU was PRECISELY like the depiction. I've been in those countries - Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia. Hungary was by a vast margin the best of them. Romania was a fookin' wasteland... still is for the most part in many ways (I believe it is rated as the poorest nation in Europe) and the Ukraine made Romania look like a prosperous place. Everywhere you went the air was pure stench from the industrial pollution. Water was tinged brown and, to my palate, undrinkable... probably with good cause. People wore the same 4-5 different styles of clothing. One of the things I remembered from when I was a child were the shoes. They were all the same - this was largely true even in Hungary, whose markets were far and away better developed than those in the SU.

Last time I was visiting grandma in a Hungary that was still in the bloc, ca. '88 or '89, they were having about 3-4 suicides per month of Soviet air force pilots. They came to Hungary on 2-year billets and basically when they arrived, they needed about a month to crank their jaws off the floor because the wealth of that meager nation was so vast in comparison with any place in the SU that were simply in utter shock. Several weeks before they were due to return to the mammy-land, the pattern was to kill their spouses, then their children, and then themselves. THAT is how dreadful a prospect it was to return to the bread lines. And I'd seen it all with my own eyes. If you had to live in that place at that time, you might also consider eating a bullet.

It's not like that now, of course, but the central government is still a mafia-KGB command bloc and many people suffer, though nothing like in the old days, that is for sure. Whether it is worse than the USA, I would bet that it depends on the specific aspect of life to which one is referring. I'd bet it is indeed better in some ways, but that is only because they have not caught up to the USA yet in terms of tuning the police state apparatus. They may have not interest in doing so... only time will tell, I suppose.

That's amazing. I certainly wouldn't think of Hungary as a good place. I don't know if that's really what you meant to say, but that's kind of how I read it. In any case, I think the take-away message here is that government destroys everything it touches. The SU and other Eastern European Countries are just prime examples of that.

 

[jmdrake]

He should have gone to Iceland from the start...they let in pretty much anybody...

But do they also let in the CIA rendition goon squads?

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I think Murray's explanation of the State is about as good as it gets:

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Romania was a wasteland... still is for the most part in many ways (I believe it is rated as the poorest nation in Europe)

Nope. The poorest nation in the EU is Bulgaria. The poorest in Europe overall is Moldova.

 

[Demigod]

No. States are spawn of Satan.

If only ,Lucifer was a hero who would not kneel before no one,a true libertarian.


SU was not the poorest communist country by a long shot.The poorest European communist country was Albania and they were in no way even close to any of the others.From the Warsaw pact Romania and Bulgaria were the poorest but this was mostly because the SU was taking most that they produced.Yugoslavia generally had the highest standard but this was mostly because the west was giving out loans left and right and the leadership unlike the SU made the borders open early on so more than a million people left.That emigration sent back a lot of money especially foreign currency which was always in high demand because the central bank was printing like crazy.Also it stabilized the country workforce,if they had not opened the borders there would have been a revolution even before 1980.

My ladder would be Yugoslavia>Hungary/Czesh/SU>>Poland/Bulgaria/Romania>>>>>>>>>>>Albania.It has to be taken into account that the difference between regions in communist countries was staggering in some cases.Entire regions would be saddled with high-intensity manual labor and heavy pollution forever ,while some hand picked regions had all the money flow into them.

 

[jmdrake]

If only ,Lucifer was a hero who would not kneel before no one,a true libertarian.

Using that metric, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Kim Jung Il are/were true libertarians.

 

[surf]

They did.


I must have missed the vote for official declaration of objective heroism. When did that happen?

is this what you're referring to?

Switzerland would grant Edward Snowden asylum if he revealed the extent of espionage activities by the US government, recommendations by the Swiss Attorney General reportedly conclude.

According to Swiss newspaper Sonntags Zeitung, an official has said that Mr Snowden should be guaranteed safe entry and residency in the country, in return for his knowledge on America’s intelligence activities.

in case you weren't able to interpret my original comment on heroic Edward and the importance of your acknowledgment of this, let me keep it simple for you.... I don't really give much credence to opinions of folks with disdain for freedom.

 

[osan]

That's amazing. I certainly wouldn't think of Hungary as a good place. I don't know if that's really what you meant to say, but that's kind of how I read it. In any case, I think the take-away message here is that government destroys everything it touches. The SU and other Eastern European Countries are just prime examples of that.

Hungary was dangerous in the ways the SU was in terms of how one publicly comported his politics, but to a FAR lesser degree. Their markets were mostly free (laissez faire). There was the central planning thing, especially on major capital projects such as the building of a Soviet-style industrial city in NE Hungary, close to Miskolc... damn if I cannot recall the name... but it was something truly pathetic like "Stalin City" or "Lenin City", since renamed, IIRC. Went through it once and my GOD what a dreary place... reminded me of the Ukraine, though not within a parsec of being as bad... but the general atmosphere of leaden, hopeless, life-turned-to-mere-existence-for-the-benefit-of-the-state was definitely there, what with all the poured, grey concrete highrise bloc houses. Makes me depressed just recalling it.

As Soviet bloc nations went, it was by far the best in terms of economics. You could get almost anything, whereas in the SU proper, the most basic commodities of life were often unavailable. The Soviets left Hungary alone, methinks so long as they did not advertise their heresies to the world. I suspect in the wake of Czechoslovakia the little douchebag commies didn't want to find themselves having to quell a general insurrection over about half of Europe.

In terms of social freedom, it was also by far the best. People spoke mostly freely, even to criticize the central government and the Soviets, though some care had to be exercised. As I said, it was almost a laissez-faire tyranny, if that makes any sense. You immediately noticed the difference in places like Romania where people would not dare say the things the Hungarians said. not sure why they got away with it, short of my above meager speculation.

No, I would not want to have had to live there for more than the few months I spent every year as a child. Loved my grandma, but missed being home. 'MURKA! dammit!

But as bloc nations went, it really was not all that bad. Had I been forced to live in Ukraine, I'd probably have offed myself as well. I really don't know how to characterize it without it sounding like exaggerations. All I can say is I would never choose to live in such a place... living in nothing but liquid fear and endless want for the basics. No thanks. The Soviets truly were idiots, IMO.

 

[Mani]

My daughter's mother was Ukranian. I could show you photos, but it would only make you weep, knowing you missed the incarnation of perfection on earth. Sadly, she was also crazy as it gets, which is why she was dead at 45.

I absolutely believe you from the small sampling I saw.

Jesus, what a maroon... here's a $million hint for next time: give them something else to smoke.

No way. I'm so glad I left when I did. There were 3 of them, 2 very attractive and 1 like I said I initially thought was some kind of model. The model looking one and the other attractive one ended up having guys to chat with and all my friends who were with me disappeared. The ladies all wanted grab something to eat, and I was making it a perfect match 3 on 3. I got the hell out of there!! Said, enjoy your dinner! No way. I don't like that kind of temptation. Mamma Mia. Here I go again....My My how can I resist you? ...started playing in my head and I ran.

 

[HOLLYWOOD]

If Russian women look anything like the trio of Ukranian women I met traveling through China, OMG, wow just wow.

Crimea's new Top Prosecutor defected from the Uki Klan in Kiev, A.G. Natalia Poklonskaya



There's Talent too!

 

[UWDude]

I was there for three weeks and there were two suicides during that time. It never made the papers for the obvious reasons, but the people who told me of this were well trusted.

Wait, you said, "3 or 4 a month were committing suicide", now you say you heard about it from a "trusted source", (so this means you trusted them, but that doesn't mean they knew the truth). Now you have backed down to "two committed suicide in three weeks". Not only that, your trusted sources must have had access to the suicide notes, because you yourself admitted, "it never made the papers", yet earlier you claimed they committed suicide "because they could not stand the thought of going back to the bread lines".

PWND BITCH

Then I might gently recommend you take a 6th-grade remedial reading comprehension class because I nowhere stated, nor did I in any way imply that I saw anyone commit the acts in question.

Oh I know you didn't. I also know you didn't even HEAR about 3 - 4 pilots committing suicide a month. You made that shit up by extrapolating it from the rumor of two committing suicide the three weeks you were there.

Just because you were there, does not in any way make you an expert on Soviet Pilot suicide rates.

Not only did you present an anecdote, at best, (but more likely a baseless rumor) as fact, you exaggerated it to make it more salacious, and then claimed to have seen it all with your own eyes. Your writing style is that of a deceiver.

I don't care the least whether you believe me because you have made manifest a character unworthy of my most minimal esteem.

A liar, rumormonger, and exaggerator thinks me unworthy of his esteem. I care not.