Former Booz Allen Hamilton employee and wanted fugitive Edward Snowden was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last month, shortly after having his asylum extended by pro-peace advocates in the Russian government. Guardian reporter Luke Harding has written a book about Snowden. We won’t read it, because The Washington Free Beacon has long considered itself an anti-traitor website. But we would very much like to interview Snowden. Here are five questions for him:
1. What’s it like living in a conservative utopia?
As World War II skeptic Pat Buchanan has observed, Russian president Vladimir Putin may be on to something when he attacks the "cultural and ideological imperialism" of the West and stands up for "traditional values" by criminalizing homosexual "propaganda."
Putin’s unapologetic, bare-chested nationalism is a perfect example of the expansionist, lead-from-the-front approach to geopolitical affairs that American conservatives have longed for since the Reagan administration. And conservatives who have rightly criticized U.S. lawmakers for not doing more to increase the wealth disparity in this country would be right at home in Russia, where 110 politically connected oligarchs control more than a third of the wealth. Eat your hearts out, Koch brothers.
2. Which Russian city has the best gay scene?
Moscow?
Or St. Petersburg?
3. Who is your favorite investigative reporter working in Russia?
Is it Akhmednabi Akhmednabiyev, deputy editor of Novoye Delo? No, wait. He was shot dead outside his home in Dagestan last year.
What about VGTRK news anchor Kazbek Gekkiyev? Oops, sorry. The 28-year-old was shot in the head three times.
Maybe you’re a fan of Gadzhimurad Kamalov? While he was alive? The founder of the independent weekly Chernovik died after a masked assailant fired 14 gunshots outside his office in an apparent ambush.
Natalya Estemirova? Now we're just playing with you. Natalya was found shot to death in 2009 after four men abducted her outside her apartment in Chechnya. She was the fifth journalist working for the independent Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta to be killed since 2000.
Take your time, Ed.
4. Are Russian women, on average, more or less flexible than the girlfriend you abandoned?
Because she seems pretty damn flexible:
On the other hand, so does Olympic figure-skating gold medalist Adelina Sotnikova:
5. As a committed advocate of individual liberty and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, you must be outraged by the state-sponsored violence in Ukraine, where protestors were gunned down with sniper rifles at the orders of a corrupt, authoritarian regime that was planning a full-scale military crackdown on its own people. It also must have angered you to no end when journalists such as Tetyana Chornovil were brutally beaten by government thugs, or when files containing photographs and personal information about other journalists and pro-democracy activists were discovered at Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovich’s abandoned estate; you must want to scream from the top of Mount Elbrus, but you can’t, because Mount Elbrus is in Russia, and so are you, and given how gracious and hospitable the government has been, it would be ungentlemanly to criticize its support for the crackdown in Kiev, or get bent out of shape over a little harmless saber rattling. You might be worried Ron Paul would never forgive your silence.
What’s that like?