I served for years, almost no one was claiming the exact amount of your cash tips. Credit card tips would automatically be tallied but cash tips are effectively under the table.
Snowden has been a Russian mouthpiece since he fled and shouldn't be trusted. That said, he did what most of us wouldn't and is just doing what you have to do to survive.
With all that said, this appears to be the correct take based on what information we have today.
Exactly. This fact probably sickens him greatly, but it's the reality. He chose Russia over prison. He didn't get freedom with that deal, just a much nicer life (hopefully).
He said he'd do that if given the opportunity to present his case in the court of law. That is not an option the US Intelligence Community would allow.
The US intelligence community does not govern criminal prosecutions of US citizens. That's the job of the FBI, Department of Justice, and the courts.
This is real life we're talking about here, not a Hollywood thriller. The only thing that might ensue after he got arrested on return would be the mother of all interagency pissing contests. Which are not anything new to the Federal government; they happen all the time.
You should read Daniel Ellsberg's account of his whistleblowing prosecution back in the Vietnam era and his analysis of how much worse things would be for Snowden should he be fool enough to return before major, major changes are made to the Espionage Act: <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/30/daniel...>
Russia was a very different country in 2013. He was deeply convinced he was doing the right thing, so I totally understand why he doesn't want to face US prosecution. It all comes down to the moral quandary if his whistleblowing was ethical or unethical.
Russia was NOT a very different country. Sorry, but no.
I remember Putin's rise to power - I was 13 at the time. Now I'm 37 and basically a refugee (made a few stupid decisions, now who knows what happen if I decide to go see my parents). Putin's Russia turned into a brutally authoritarian country around 2011 when there were widespread protests condemning heavily falsified municipal elections.
In 2012, we were almost certain that Putin's days are over... in 2018 I remember myself standing in scalding Moscow sun at the Sakharov square at a protest against Telegram being blocked, wearing a Tor T-shirt and handing over flyers and materials telling people how to evade government blocks on the net.
Now, I just don't care. I feel deeply betrayed by my own country and sometimes I wish Russia was nuked out of existence. And yet, this is the country where my parents live, and many of my friends who couldn't leave.
This all is hell on Earth for me -- I have many Ukrainian and Russian friends -- we try to help each other, but currently I'm losing all hope at at least somewhat sane resolution of it all. My friends are equally desperate - many turned refugees and asylum seekers, many without work or language knowledge in foreign countries...
Sometimes I just wish life on Earth never existed at all.
I think a good baseline is just include indexes for foreign key relationships and then adjust from there.
Also, if anyone reading this is using SQL Sever, do not use the recommended missing indexes it provides. They have a whole host of issues, including the ordering of columns and straight up recommend completely unnecessary indexes.
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