For a better part of the 20th century, the American government has tried its best to convince its people that socialist and communist governments are evil as they take away all the liberties of their people, keep them under constant surveillance and prosecute aggressively anyone who tries to speak out against the surveillance and loss of liberties. Of late, it has become more than clear that the US government is doing exactly what the “commies” did in the 1900s.
For the last four decades, several people have tried to expose the US government’s policy of keeping people under illegal surveillance. From the Pentagon Papers leak in 1971 to the Bradley Manning’s Afghan War Logs leak through WikiLeaks, the US administration and its agencies have been left egg on their face for spying on its citizens and violating human rights across the world in the most intolerable ways. The latest in the series of global public embarrassment for the US government came in the form of the NSA Surveillance Disclosures of June 2013 by former NSA agent Edward Snowden. Snowden had sought asylum in Hong Kong and Iceland to escape prosecute by the US government on espionage charges though the whistleblower is reportedly headed for asylum in Ecuador.
Ecuador, of course, has become one of the key players in the WikiLeaks vs. the United States games after it granted asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and allowed him to stay in its embassy in London to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden where he faces charges about alleged sexual offenses.
The US already has a stormy relationship with Ecuador whose “anti-imperialist” leftist government is a part of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America AKA ALBA which also comprises of Latin American bigwigs and traditional US opponents Cuba and Venezuela. The lack of amity between the US and Ecuador, of course, is extremely good news for Snowden.
What’s even better for Snowden and WikiLeaks is the fact that Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has just secured a landslide victory in the recent elections which means that a better part of the country shares the same view of the US and that Snowden would be safe in the country.
The US government is rather anxious to get their hands on Snowden so they may prosecute him like they prosecuted Private Bradley Manning. However, thanks to his history changing act of bravado, Snowden has already managed to cause irreparable damage to the image of Uncle Sam.
