Speaking of making assumptions without fully reading stuff, where are you getting the idea that Paul Whelan’s charges are drug-related? He was convicted of espionage, not marijuana possession.
There have been discussions in the Washington Post over the last two days that Marc Fogel, who took what he stated was ‘medical marijuana’ into Russia and now is in a Russian prison would be included in the potential swap, and I was including him (not by name) in my original post. Reading this evening, it seems unlikely that he’ll be included.
I had thought Whelan was charged w/ espionage, but I thought I had heard about the similar “but my pot is legal back home” BS WRT another male US who might be involved in a swap.
You seem to be a bit confused about who you’re talking about:
And I corrected it.
I’ll do so again:
Brittney - in Russian custody due to pot
Paul - in Russian custody due for spying
Marc - in Russian custody due to pot
My main concern is what the USATODAY discussed in an article today:
"Swapping prisoners and offering concessions – to terrorist organizations or dangerous nations – is possibly highly problematic, said Rob Saale, a former FBI hostage negotiator.
“Yeah, you get her or a couple of people out now,” Saale told USA TODAY recently. “But down the road, it sends a message to other countries that if you want something from the U.S. government you just take some Americans, trump up some charges.”"
I understand that arguing that Brittney should bear some responsibility for her plight is largely an uphill battle here on this site. But American’s thinking that because they ignore an American law they don’t like, that they should be able to ignore a Russian law they don’t like is all kinds of crazy.
If you are I were traveling together to Russia, and I had some pot, would you really say “I’m fine with your pot in my suitcase. It should be legal everywhere, I’m sure the Russians will be cool too!” Would you?
Even here, I’m surprised it’s defended as much as it is.
Actually, I do agree with you - she should. But for such a small amount, I think the consequences shouldn’t be severe. Russians putting her in jail for a week; then she comes back to the US, where the State Department cancels her passport for two years (to teach her that she might have forced them into the sort of pickle that actually happened IRL). That sounds about right to me.
She is charged with a crime she didn’t commit – possession of 100g of marijuana. Does the fact that she did commit a lesser offense mean she relinquishes her right to help from the State Dept?
If she was charged with the crime she committed, she would be out with a fine and this wouldn’t be a story.
The strange part, to me, is how Americans today (Thanks Trump!) are so willing to believe what the Russian government tells them. Sure she might be guilty of something, but an American’s guilty plea in Russia should be viewed with skepticism as the default reaction by other Americans until something is proven to them. That’s obviously not the case anymore.
Wait? For real? She had two cartridges. Even the large carts are 1 gram (they usually sell as half gram carts).
I thought the issue was just the Russia had draconian drug laws. Per your claim, they are instead boosting the charges beyond the actual facts.
I don’t doubt you, but that certainly changes the response, I’d think, compared to a situation where she did actually violate the law she’s accused of breaking.
She gets a free pass from the American media because she’s black, female, gay, and a professional athlete.
None of those give you a free pass when you go to a foreign country. You follow THEIR laws, not ours. Those of you who have engaged in extensive international travel, which I have not, can comment on that further.
…the charge of “conspiracy to kill Americans” is a stretch, the original request to extradite him from Thailand to the US was denied " citing the political, not criminal, nature of the case, the Russians argued " that if the same standards were applied to everyone, all American gun shop owners “who are sending arms and ending up killing Americans” would be in prison."
It’s all a game. I wouldn’t be losing much sleep over this deal. They take one of yours, you take one of theirs. They hold them as bargaining chips until the day they are needed. It’s how it’s always been done.
The only reason people are complaining about why there is no “critical discussion” is because she’s black, female, gay, and a professional athlete.
From what I can asertain all of the “facts” in this case come from Russian sources and that the timing of this issue coincided along the same timeline as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why would anyone believe that any of this is true and not another Russian tactic in an actual war agaisnt the western democracies? Her confession given under distress? Why do we even give these thugs the benifit of the doubt?
So what if her doctor recommend she take marijuana for pain relief? That doesn’t mean the Russians didn’t plant drugs on her. Everything she has said and everything we have heard is what Russia wants us to hear and know. Including her admission of accidentally bringing it with her. They control the script.
And why are some people so quick to suggest she deserved this? What happened to supporting our side? The American side first. America first isn’t just a slogan, we have to practice it. Is it just because Biden is standing up for a fellow American that people have to take the opposite (Russian) view?
Bolding mine. For what it’s worth, I knew neither of the bolded bits until you just told me.
When my niece was an exchange student to Indonesia in 2018, she and all the other kids in the program (who were headed to about 10 different countries), they all had to attend “orientation” for 2 days before they departed, and as a friend of mine put it, the orientation basically consisted of “Don’t act stupid in a foreign country.”
One thing I definitely remember from her blog was when her host family in Jakarta visited the capitol complex, and they drove by their equivalent of the Washington Monument but they couldn’t visit because a demonstration was going on, and attending any kind of protest was not allowed. Yeah, attending a protest in Indonesia, or any of the other countries in the program (Tajikistan was her second choice!) is generally NOT going to be like attending a protest here in the American Midwest.
(As an aside, she asked if the smog, which she had never seen before, was due to being near the Equator. Nope, it’s due in large part to having 25 million people living in an area the size of Des Moines.)
Do you have a cite that this was Griner’s position, or are you talking about yet another person that you haven’t named in the thread? Because as I already said, her position is that it was unintentional and she never would have knowingly done it. You seem to be taking some mind-reading liberties here because you really want to trash her for some reason.
There are a lot of situations where
- there is a known danger, and there are some known ways to mitigate or avoid it, but at the same time,
- succumbing to the danger doesn’t mean you deserve the full extent of the consequences.
Travel. Sex. Dating a man (one of the surest ways for a woman to get murdered!) Using drugs. Driving a car. It’s hard to think of situations that aren’t like that, actually, except for situations where you DO deserve what might happen to you–hurting someone else, for example.
There are those who are always inclined to help the victims of misfortune, even if the victims contributed with their own carelessness or unwise choices. There are those who are more focused on the big picture, long-term, second-order consequences, which might require some consideration of to what extent the victim bears responsibility for the risks they took. But then there are always those who, for whatever reason, really want to see the victims twist in the wind. Maybe the world is less scary if you tell yourself they are fundamentally unlike you, and therefore you’re not at risk of a similar fate. Maybe you’re not fully convinced of your safety, and you’re angry with them for reminding you of your vulnerability. But you shouldn’t expect civilized folk to join you with their pitchforks in condemning someone who’s already suffering far worse than they deserve.
Every media outlet I’ve seen has reported that she’s in custody because she brought 2 grams of hash oil into Russia. They’ve repeated the official Russian government line with zero pushback, without questioning it once. “She is in jail in Russia because she brought drugs in.”
What do you people believe that the media is doing wrong here? What are they supposed to be doing or saying? “She brought pot into the country AND THAT’S REALLY BAD, MY GOD SHE’S SUCH A TERRIBLE PERSON, THIS IS HER FAULT AND SHE SHOULD ROT THERE.”
Please lay it out for me, I need to understand what you think it means that the media has given her a free pass.
When a dictatorship like Russia forces an arrestee to confess to trumped-up charges, it chooses a serious crime.
Dictatorships don’t typically force someone to falsely confess to carrying the barely detectable residue of a drug that was prescribed to them for pain by a doctor abroad. Because all that would do is make the defendant look sympathetic.
FWIW, this opinion is based in part on archival research, studying the files of political prisoners arrested by the KGB.
“this corrupt dictatorship routinely falsifies criminal charges, but this isn’t one of them! Not usually anyway!”
That may be a truthful statement, but for purposes of deciding whether a US citizen should be held indefinitely in a hostile dictatorship, nobody should seriously weigh it even for a second.
Well Marc Fogel was convicted in Russia in August of 2021 for having medical marijuana. His wife is frustrated that his name isn’t in the news, and the Biden administration didn’t include him in the swap agreement, not did they even mention him by name in the Administration’s press release.
He’s neither black, nor female, nor gay or a professional athlete. I think you’re correct in that all that matters to a left-leaning Administration. And without those caveats, her case wouldn’t be front and center.
From the Washington post:
"This American teacher also sits in a Russian jail, worried nobody cares. Arrested last summer after arriving in Moscow with medical marijuana in his luggage, Marc Fogel has a case that parallels the ordeal of WNBA star Brittney Griner. But his plight has mostly gone unnoticed.
Having said that, a right leaning Administration would have it’s own emphasis that we might take issue with.
My main concern remains that we have citizens who flout foreign laws with little to no public pushback, and then we expect our government to pick up the pieces,