First it was Verizon in my computer, now the National Security Agency is not only on my phone but millions of other Americans and millions of citizens around world and their governments, including allies as well as enemies or potential enemies, which includes almost everyone in the globally paranoid state-world of the U.S.A.
The mass of metadata was scooped up originally without the knowledge of the people of America and the world. It took 30-year-old Edward Snowden to blow the whistle on the orgy of NSA data-mining, including emails. Snowden left his $122,000 year job at Booz, Allen and Hamilton, feeling he had a responsibility to expose this humongous crime against our constitutional rights, although the president, a constitutional lawyer, didn’t share his views and rushed to judgment to condemn Snowden.
Of course, James Clapper wasn’t clapping; as one of the top officials of the NSA he denied it all. Now some 26 U.S. senators have their dander up and are asking for the truth about what the hell is going on here.
In a statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow on Monday, July 1, 21:40 UTC, he says,
“One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
“On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic ‘wheeling and dealing’ over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
“This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
“For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody; the right to seek asylum.
“In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised—and it should be.
“I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.
Flight to seek asylum
Edward Snowden is marooned in the Moscow airport, perhaps without any clean pants or underwear; he flew there on the run without checking bags. On June 21, Snowden received an encrypted email from someone claiming to be a government representative, The Wall Street Journal’s Te-Ping Chen and Ken Brown report, and the person urged him to leave Hong Kong, assuring him that he’d be able to clear immigration. On June 22, Snowden saw news reports that he’d been charged under the Espionage Act, and started looking for flights—sure he couldn’t fly on an American airline, but not sure where he wanted to end up. On June 23, he headed to the airport and caught a flight to Moscow with no luggage to check. His decision to leave Hong Kong for Moscow is not looking like a good bet. He’s now stuck in the airport transit zone, where past asylum-seekers have been stuck for as much as nine months.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a news conference on Monday that if Snowden wants to get asylum in Russia, he must stop leaking American secrets, the Associated Press reports. Reuters reports Snowden applied for political asylum in Russia on Sunday; Russia Today says the Russian Federal Migration service has denied that. So, regrettably it seems, Putin is playing both sides against the middle.
In Monday’s statement, Snowden said, “’While the public has cried out support of my shining a light on this secret system of injustice, the Government of the United States of America responded with an extrajudicial man-hunt costing me, my family, my freedom to travel, and my right to live peacefully without fear of illegal aggression.’
The U.S. government revoked Snowden’s passport after he left Hong Kong. Ecuador issued him a special travel document, but it’s been revoked—reportedly because the Ecuadorean government got annoyed with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s showboating. (Snowden asked for WikiLeaks’ help on June 12.) Now Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa says Snowden’s fate is up to Russia—the country that can’t decide whether to give him asylum until he arrives at one of its embassies.
But first, he’d have to get through Russian immigration control, which he can’t do without a passport or travel papers. “He’s in the international area of the Moscow airport, but basically under the care of the Russian authorities,” Correa told The New York Times‘ William Neuman. “Strictly speaking, the case is not in our hands.” But the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a radio broadcast Sunday that Snowden’s case “is not one on the Kremlin’s agenda.” Snowden’s asked 15 countries for asylum, a Russian foreign ministry official told the Los Angeles Times‘ Sergei L. Loiko.
The mixed signals from Ecuador might be because it’s having second thoughts, the Associated Press’s Michael Weissenstein reports. Santiago Basabe, a political science professor at the Latin American School of Social Sciences in Quito, explains that Ecuador “started pulling back, and they’ll never tell us why, but I think the alarm bells started to go off from people very close to the government, maybe Ecuador’s ambassador in Washington warned them about the consequences of asylum for Snowden.”
That’s left Snowden desperate. “It was a desperate measure on his part after Ecuador disavowed his political protection credentials,” an anonymous Russian foreign ministry official told the Los Angeles Times. ”In the document Snowden reiterated once again that he is not a traitor and explained his actions only by a desire to open the world’s eyes on the flagrant violations by U.S. special services not only of American citizens but also citizens of European Union including their NATO allies.” And that wasn’t enough to instill Ecuador’s confidence in him. It sounds like Correa is losing his nerve.
WikiLeaks released a statement Tuesday, saying that they’d helped Snowden apply for asylum in 21 countries. They are: Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, and Venezuela.
Bottom line
Well folks, so much for Independence Day, July 4th, the celebration of the Declaration of Independence. Our transformation into power’s slaves is practically complete. In fact, why do we celebrate the holiday at all, when we turn a patriot like Edward Snowden into a man without a country? Is it all about four days off, eating a couple of hotdogs, some potato salad, drinking a few beers, burping, waiting for the firecrackers, and dodging the killer traffic coming home?
Jesus, we’ve got the whole world bending to surveillance—and loving its safety—which is not safe at all. We’re not the U.S.A. We’re the W.U.S.S.A. So let’s take down the flags and wave our underpants, the ones with little hearts on them from Ralph Lauren. Anyhow, it’s a sad tale, and good luck explaining it to your kids, not to mention your wife or daughter-in-law. Pass the Alka Seltzer. I’m getting major agita over the political pissants running the movie of this world. Hang in Eddie, hang in and hang tough!
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
The evolution of the Snowden affair is another of those spectacles when institutional panic within our oligarchy lets slip its mask of legalistic pretenses and paternal benevolence and “reveals…the gangster nature of the state” (Parenti). Happy Independence Day, everyone! Our Constitution is ignored, our electoral system is a totally transparent fraud, our media is mindless trash, our union movement is crushed, our politics an inane Punch and Judy show, we have a gulag of millions held under the worst conditions in the industrialized world, and most of our taxes are spent on an out-of-control military complex that brings disorder, destruction, torture, and murder to every corner of the earth. USA! USA! USA! Boston Strong!