Russia Today Airs Fake Footage of Rebels Using Sarin Gas in Syria

[Maedhros]

75. I believe you are referring to this statement by Snowden:

http://wikileaks.org/Statement-by-Edward-Snowden-to.html

In it, he does not claim that Russia has "better human rights" than "home" - not in the across-the-board capacity that you are falsely asserting. Here are excerpts from his statement:

(The NSA surveillance program) is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

Here Snowden is calling out the reason why he decided to become a whistleblower and bring this issue to the press. In the context of secret courts, secret laws and secret policies, he is correctly noting that this behavior by his goverment is considered a violation of citizens' rights by both the government's own Constitution and international law.

The portion of the statement that I believe you are misconstruing is here:

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

Snowden is saying, no more and no less, that the countries that are defying American calls for his extradition and that are willing to provide political asylum - on this issue regarding whistleblowing and unconstitutional surveillance alone - are standing against the forces that perpetrated the violation of Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It is not correct to extend Snowden's endorsement on this issue to cover all other actions of the countries named. Snowden made no claims for supposed Russian superiority in the matter of GLBTQ rights, for example. To do so is to exaggerate simply for the effect of casting Snowden in a bad light and to make it appear that he approves of abhorrent policies on which he made no statement at all.

Your statement

There have been a lot of positive support for Putin, for Russia in general, since the Snowden episode. Even knowing that Putin has made gay people in russia fear for themselves, the cheering still went on that Putin is cooler than Obama, and Russia is da bomb for freedoms.

is a gross exaggeration as well. To agree with Putin's decision to grant asylum to Snowden, or to agree with his op-ed regarding American Exceptionalism (an issue pointed out numerous times here on DU in the past) is by no stretch equivalent to "positive support" for Putin in general - indeed, nearly all of the comments on the op-ed were prefaced with statements that Putin is overall a despicable leader. Any "cheering" was for the notion that American Exceptionalism is bad, not that Putin is good. I suspect that you know this, but are trying to score points by casting your opponents in a bad light.