How Stupid Are They?
Yves Smith thinks that Obama is starting to lose it over Snowden, and, alas, I cannot disagree with her reasoning.
If you looked in a dictionary for “macho” you would see a picture of Vladimir Putin. He is constantly running around with his shirt off to kill or destroy something accompanied by the “FSB Lumberjack Chorus” and a film production company. The closest we come to this show is Sarah Palin. Zero has been trying to push him into doing something which is triggering testosterone poisoning all around. Evo Morales was on his way home from a meeting in Russia when the US messed with his flight clearance, and Putin would have taken that personally.
Russia doesn’t really need the US and relations were already going downhill before Snowden because of Central Asia, Iran, and Syria. Trying to push Russia into doing anything was really stupid.
I assume that Snowden will be using his new freedom of movement to visit embassies and get his asylum applications squared away. If he gets travel documents, he can leave Russia, but it probably will not be via Moscow.
The US says that the Obama-Putin summit is still on, but I think they might want to check with Vladimir, because he may decide not to talk to Zero.
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It’s still on, but the way it will work out is that there will be a meeting schedule published, and Obama will show up for it on time. Two hours later, Putin will arrive, say hello, exchange smalltalk for a few minutes, Putin will mention that he’s late because he got a call from his hairdresser that he needed to handle first, and then Putin’s cell phone will ring. Putin will answer it. His side of the conversation will be something along the lines of “yes dear” “Sure I’ll pick up a loaf of bread on the way home” “You shouldn’t put up with such incompetence, you should hire a new cleaning woman” and so forth. Then he’ll look up at Obama and say, “Sorry, this phone call is more important than our meeting” and walk out of the room and never come back.
Or something along those lines, anyhow :).
I doubt Putin cares one whit for Snowden. Whistleblowers and secrets leakers are not his favorite people (except to jail and/or kill, but that’s another story). But like you say, Obama trying to push Putin around is a bad, bad, BAD idea… testosterone poisoning, indeed! At this point Putin pretty much *had* to grant Snowden a 1 year visa, because Obama had put him a position where if he actually granted Obama’s request, Putin would look like a wuss — and that’s something that cannot be allowed for the ruler of Russia. Period.
We know that Putin wouldn’t cross the room to help Edward Snowden, and if the US had kept it low-level and low-keyed, something could have been worked out. But, no, they escalated it and started making demands, which told the Russians that this was really important, so they wanted to see what was on offer from the US, which is why Snowden hasn’t been let out. The US didn’t come up with anything the Russians wanted, and kept making demands, so the Russians are letting him out of the airport to go to embassies and leave Russia.
They painted Mr Macho into a corner, so there was no way he was going to do what the US wanted.
They have done the same thing by screwing with Evo Morales’s aircraft, and the South Americans are all pissed at the US, so that’s probably where Snowden will go.
American tourists better start figuring out how to act Canadian again, because we are headed back to the days of the Hedgemony, if we ever left them.
“Putin … is constantly running around with his shirt off to kill or destroy something … The closest we come to this show is Sarah Palin.”
Bryan,
Do you realize that my poor brain now carries an image of a topless Sarah Palin hunting baby seals? Have you no shame?
😉
Jim
Sorry about that, Jim.
If you didn’t know, she had a show on a cable channel that featured her shooting caribou, among other things. Caribou, reindeer, are a herd animal that is ‘hunted’ by listening to the radio and finding out where they are crossing a road. You then drive out, shoot one, and drive back to your place to finish dressing it out. There is no ‘hunting’ involved, and they are only dangerous if you stand in front of the herd and don’t move out of the way.
I read about a mess she and her production crew got into while film near someone’s property. Alaskan newspapers covered it, and that’s why I thought of her when remembering all of the stunts that Putin has been involved in over the years.