Our Man in Moscow

So who is the guy?

Edward Snowden has spent 32 days inside a Moscow airport; a Russian news agency reports that Snowden's request for asylum is in process, and that he may spend up to a year in temporary asylum in the country.

The question has been all along: what’s motivating this guy? What makes him tick? Why did he choose to do what he did, and how well planned was it?

One website has part of the answer—maybe. According to addictinginfo.org, Snowden is a gun-loving, pro-NRA, libertarian dickhead. Think I’m wrong? Catch this alleged exchange from a techie chat room, Ars Technica.

SNOWDEN: save money? cut this social security bullshit

User11: hahahayes

User18: Yeah! Fuck old people!

User11: social security is bullshit

User11: let’s just toss old people out in the street

User18: Old people could move in with [User11].

User11: NOOO

User11: they smell funny

SNOWDEN: Somehow, our society managed to make it hundreds of years without social security just fine

SNOWDEN: you fucking retards

SNOWDEN: Magically the world changed after the new deal, and old people became made of glass

SNOWDEN: yeah, that makes sense

User11: wow

User11: you are just so fucking stupid

SNOWDEN: yeah, [User11]. and you’re quite a gem

User19: and magically, life expectancy has doubled in the last 100 years.funny how that works.

SNOWDEN: [User19], you don’t think modern medicine has something to do with that? no? it’s social security? wow. I guess I missed that.

User11: hurr wait a second, life expectancy has shot up in recent times along with the dissolution of the communal family unit in exchange for the nuclear family

User11: gee i guess we might need to create a safety net for the sudden glut of helpless elderly????

SNOWDEN: they wouldn’t be fucking helpless if you weren’t sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day

User11: you are so goddamned stupd*pid

User11: PUT OLD PEOPLE TO WORK IN THE FIELDS

SNOWDEN: my grandmother is eighty fucking three this year, and you know what? she still supports herself working as a goddamned hairdresser

Right—and here he is on guns:

User: the restrictions were made to appease the conservatives to get another bill passed. fucking cons.

SNOWDEN: See, that’s why I’m goddamned glad for the second amendment. Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished.

From the website, it appears that Snowden had no problem spying on people during the Bush administration: he lambastes The New York Times for revealing the existence of the phone metadata collection in 2006, and thinks the whistleblower should be shot in the balls. But he changes his tune when Obama is elected.

Throughout it all, Snowden has seemed just this side of paranoid and delusional. There is the persistent story that the United States will find a way to off him; to avert that, he has given top secret, highly damaging documents to various people, who will reveal causing enormous damage after Snowden’s murder.

As well, Snowden seems to be winging it completely. He takes hard drives with all his information into China; one expert said that the best practice is to take nothing into China except a clean, empty hard drive. Why? Because anything can be copied—and likely will be—while you’re out for a Coke and a burger.

And speaking of China—OK, Hong Kong—Snowden arrived, stayed in a fancy hotel, and then was running out of money. Hunh? Couldn’t he have stayed somewhere else? And why Hong Kong, since China does have an extradition policy with the US?

Look, if I were Snowden, I might have done this: look for a country that has no extradition to the US, but does have a decent way of life, and a good record on civil liberties. Load up as much cash as I could, buy a ticket, fly to the country, immediately request amnesty, and sit tight while I did so. Once I’m in, I’d start talking.

Oh, and speaking of civil liberties—I went onto Amnesty International’s website, just to check out the Russian Federation’s track record on human rights; the site reminded me that the Federation had just passed, by something like 441 to 0, a draconian bill against gay people. In Russia, you can’t even talk gay issues without getting thrown in the jug.

So this guy—who apparently thinks he is John Galt—ends up in Russia, and is considering places like Cuba, Venezuela, or Bolivia? I read the Times today, reporting from Havana, and guess what? None of their sources would give their last name. These countries make the United States look like a bastion of liberty.

So now Snowden is in Russia, looking for a job. Guess what? He’s got one. He’ll be “working” for the Russian intelligence agency, who will expect him to deliver. And no—no programming but all the information he has about the NSA. And if he doesn’t?

Don’t think it’ll be a pink slip.

Somehow, this guy has ended up in deep shit. I applaud him for speaking out, but how could a bright guy botch it so badly?

An Effin' Hero

How much money was there in the room?

Well, every guest was coughing up $50,000 a plate, and there were—from what you can see in the video—at least twenty people in the room. And if there were thirty, or forty?

Right—so Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, was going to walk away from the fundraiser with a million or two bucks in his pocket. And that night he decides to let his guard down—he’s among friends, after all, people who think like him, dress like him and act like him. You know, guys you see on the golf course.

The bartender, of course, or the waitresses or the other people that serve and cook and clean—well, they can be ignored because they don’t have the 50,000 bucks that the rest of us do to spend on a dinner and to meet the next president of the United States, and press the flesh, and get the picture taken. The bartender, the wait staff—they don’t count.

Well, it was a fatal mistake for Mitt Romney. Because the bartender, a husky late-thirties middle class guy from Boston named Scott Prouty, had brought a camera in, and was videotaping the whole thing.

What Mitt said created a firestorm. Mitt wasn’t going concern himself with the 47% of Americans who are always going to vote for Obama because there’s no way to get their votes. They’re victims who think they’re entitled to food and clothes and health care. And on the word “entitled” Mitt’s voice jumps a third (in musical terms) and resonates with all the petulance, the entitlement, the astonished horror of a socialite confronted with a maid asking for a raise.

Especially because those victims, those leeches, don’t know how the rest of the world works, but Mitt does. He’s been to China to see the factory with the attached dormitories, and he’s even been inside one of the dormitories to see the one bathroom for ten rooms, and each bedroom has twelve girls in it, and they’re all saving money, those girls, hoping to get married. Here, he breaks off, and asks his audience—“well, you’ve all seen it, haven’t you?”

Murmurs of assent.

And what about that gate, with the barbed wire fence? How can they imprison those girls?

A good story-teller, he puts in the conflict, the moral uncertainty.

Ahh, but the gate isn’t to keep the girls in, but to keep other girls, girls with no jobs, from trying to sneak in and start to work, hoping to get paid.

This, of course, is familiar ground for liberals. We decry Nike for producing tennis shoes half a world away for $2.75 and then selling them to us at the mall for 85 bucks. Nike, in turn, releases a photo of hundreds of Indonesians thronging in front of a new factory, eager to make 60 cents an hour in a country where the norm is 20 cents.

My answer to this argument?

Buy your shoes at Marshalls. And try not to buy until you really need something—we can’t keep consuming like this.

Well, Mitt had been over there looking at a company then called Global Tech, which made small appliances, and sought customers who were looking to outsource their production.

OK, it’s been two years now since Wal-Mart decided to send me on my way, so I was a little rusty. But what that means, I recalled, is that the Sunbeam toaster you hold in your hands at Wal-Mart is no longer made in Georgia, or wherever it domestically was. Now it’s made in China. But what do you care, because it’s cheap and that’s great because the only job you can get is a waitress / a maid / child care because there are no manufacturing jobs because they’re all over in China and so you’re broke so you gotta buy the product.

That’s our world, now—see?

Well, not everybody’s world, of course. Mitt, when he was CEO of Bain—and also that little holding company in the tax haven of Bermuda, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors LTD—owned over 10% of Global Tech. And when you put that money down, you’ll want to go over and see how things are run, right?

So Mitt’s gone over to see the company, and to see how the rest of the world works—how Chinese girls will work 10 hours a day for a pittance while Mitt’s own countrymen, well, just about half of them are victims who think the world, or at least the United States government, owes them a living! Hah!

The guy behind the bar doesn’t see it that way. He grew up in Boston, he knows about the rich, the guys with the prep school that leads into Harvard that leads everywhere. He sees a rich guy who decides he wants to be president, so we all better stand back and let him.

And he has it on tape. So is he gonna erase the tape, or put it out there? And if it’s out there, he’d better get ready for some serious flak, because the Republican right is not gonna forgive him.

He checks out the Chinese angle, and comes across David Corn’s article on Global Tech in Mother Jones Magazine. Prouty realizes—Mitt has been lying all throughout the campaign, demanding a retraction from the Washington Post when they said that Bain had bought equity of firms that were devoted to outsourcing production.

Prouty starts losing sleep—hey, why should he stick his neck out, run the risk of losing his job or getting slapped with a law suit, or just having right wing crazies track him down and make his life miserable.

Well, he looks into the mirror one night, and doesn’t like the guy peering back at him. “You’re a coward,” he says, and then goes off resignedly to bed. Between coward and hero there’s an intermediate persona—the reluctant hero.

He contacts Corn, who properly checks it out and at last tells him, he can’t go forward with the story without knowing Prouty’s name. Silence on the line, and then Prouty reveals himself.

As he revealed himself two nights ago, when the rest of the world was looking at a new pope. And sure enough, even as he was speaking, people had found out where he lived, they were milling in front of the house. Prouty has received threats, and has set up a defense fund—he’s had to consult several lawyers.

Hey, let him tell the story, as reported in a Mother Jones article “Scott Prouty 47% Legal Assistance Fund….

After going public, I've received a flood of physical and legal threats in emails and tweets. People have found my address and have shown up at my door. It's possible I may have to move. And I've had to contact several lawyers and have incurred legal expenses. I might incur more going forward. I always knew that if I talked about this, I could become a target, and I don't want to be melodramatic, but some of the threats I've received do cause me to be concerned for my safety and that of my loved ones.

I appreciate all the support I've received from the beginning—and especially now. Many people have asked how they could help. This is one way. I've also said in interviews that if they would like to show their support they can send donations to the ASPCA and the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights. These are both groups that I care about.

I'm hoping that I don't need to spend a lot of money on lawyers and security. If people are generous and there are any funds left over after these costs are covered, I would use the remaining money to pay for going back to school. I've been bartending for eight years and I'd like to move forward with a job that lets me help others. If I end up not using these funds for education, I will donate them to the SPCA and IGLHR.

Ummm—Scott?

Scott, honey, you need to face something. You cannot be giving this message about the ASPCA and the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights.

The right wing crazies are gonna go after you. The guy who organized the fundrasier, according to Mother Jones, is a billionaire who can easily afford the lawyers’ fees that will have you twisting in the wind for years to come. You’re gonna have to come out with a message—simple, clean and direct. Here it is:

They’re after me. They know I helped keep their rich kid out of the White House and they’re furious. And I don’t have any money—what bartender does? So dig into your pockets because the fight didn’t stop, it’s still going on. I need your help.

I know, Scott, you don’t want to say it. You’d rather not say it, but you will, Scott, you will, because you know what, Scott?

You’re a fuckin’ hero.