Where to now, St. Edward?

 Edward Snowden is reportedly waiting for his flight in Sheremetyevo-2, one of Moscow’s three international airports. Flight to – where exactly? Quito, Havana, Caracas? Last time I’ve heard about this on the radio he was reported talking to an Ecuadoran diplomat right there at the airport. A few hours earlier, Moscow media said it would be Caracas via Havana for him. Let’s just wait and see.

One thing I don’t want Russia to do is take him in for asylum; nor would I prefer Putin to give him over to Obama. Let him go someplace else and sort things out with his former employer and the humiliated GCHQ from there.

My beef with Snowden, as with Manning, is that they both chose to release not only information exposing abuse of Americans’ constitutional rights by their government, or a high and immediate risk of such abuse. They released materials that did great harm both to the still-free world and its helpers in the not so free world. Manning’s treatment at the hand of the US military has been disgusting of course, which makes him a martyr of a certain kind – a confessor perhaps would be a more appropriate word, referring to those Christian saints who suffered for their belief but were not put to death for them, although they may have died early from consequences of such suffering.

Perhaps Washington, Moscow and Beijing/Hong Kong have all agreed to let Snowden slip to Latin America to deny any degree of martyrdom to him.

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