Watch Out Ecuador, the U.S. Is Gonna Get You Now!

Once again, tiny Ecuador is stepping up to the plate to defend human rights- indeed the rights of most people on this planet, who are entitled to information about what is being done to them.

First they granted asylum to victim of U.S. persecution Julian Assange (currently trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy in London thanks to the threats of U.S.-stooge nation “Great” Britain to arrest him if he dares step outside). Assange's “crime” was helping to reveal dirty U.S. secrets (aka "classified information") to the world via WikiLeaks. (WikiLeaks itself came under attack by U.S. corporations such as Visa, Mastercard, and Pay”pal,” which blocked donations to the website.)

Now Edward Snowden, the self-sacrificing ex-National Security Agency contractor who revealed to the world parts of the massive and pernicious U.S. spying on its own citizens, is apparently on his way to Ecuador via Russia. WikiLeaks helped arrange things for the confused Snowden, who thought he'd be safe in Hong Kong, which isn't even a signatory to the international convention on asylum. (Another reason for the U.S. to hate WikiLeaks and thirst for revenge on Julian Assange.)

Ecuador can expect the standard U.S. treatment for third world countries, especially ones in “it's” hemisphere (which it calls “our hemisphere,” as in “we own it”) that step out of line. President Correa of Ecuador has been demonized by the U.S. propaganda system from day one because he's a leftist. (Snowden better hope rightists never take over Ecuador again if he plans on staying there long!) The U.S. has a 54 year long grudge against Cuba, for example, for seizing U.S. mobsters' casinos.

The U.S. is already hurling abuse at Hong Kong and Russia for failing to knuckle under to imperious U.S. diktat. The U.S. demanded that Hong Kong arrest and hand over Snowden, even though it was perfectly legal for Snowden to leave the city. This lawless U.S. demand was refused, which prompted the U.S. to tongue-lash Hong Kong. (The U.S., after all, is used to kidnapping people and flying them around the world to secret torture prisons.) [1]

U.S. Secretary of “State” (maybe that should be called the Department of Global Domination from now on) John Kerry told loathsome NBC “News,” “We continue to hope that the Russians will do the right thing. We think it’s very important in terms of our relationship. We think it’s very important in terms of rule of law. We have returned seven criminals that they requested for extradition over the last two years. So we really hope that the right choice will be made here.” (Wow! Seven whole petty criminals handed over in two years! That's like, three and a half per year, on average. Now that's cooperation, U.S.! Bravo! The Russians owe you, big time!)

This from the nation that seized Russian arms dealer Victor Bout in Thailand and threw him into a U.S. prison. The Russians complained mightily about that, to no avail. So now the U.S. demands a favor, as its lawful right, from Russia. Gall, thy name is U.S.A. [2]

Since the US. can be expected to abuse Snowden if they get him in their clutches, under international law no nation should hand him over to the U.S. The U.S. is known for harsh abuse of political prisoners, as their treatment of Bradley Manning just reminded us, and the Obama regime's current refusal to release the dying Lynne Stewart from prison on compassionate release, as the warden of her prison recommended six weeks ago. [See “U.S. Government-Obama Regime Murdering Lynne Stewart in Slow Motion.”]

It's past time for more nations to ban together to stand up to the power of the U.S. superbully. It is really unhealthy for all of humanity (that's us, including Americans, who are too stupid to realize their proper identification is with the human race, not a vicious empire they happen to live in) to have one nation so overwhelmingly powerful. A healthier state of the world would be a more even distribution of power between different nations (and peoples). No good can come from a musclebound thug nation domineering the planet. (This does not imply that all other nations are virtuous. Indeed most are awful. But a balance of awfulness between rivals would be an improvement. No credence should be granted to the bogus U.S. propaganda claim that it defends freedom and democracy. Even a cursory review of history- i.e. actual facts- refutes that.)

Kerry has also just joined the chorus calling Snowden a “traitor.” That's the epithet du jour the U.S. government and media elites have rolled out to rain down on Snowden's head.

Kerry is a creepy, dull, assiduously ambitious ladder-climber who has managed, thanks in part to marrying into the Heinz food fortune, to climb high up in the political hierarchy, worming his way into ranking membership in the nomenklatura. Ironically he's a guy who's been on the receiving end of that “traitor” epithet- from which he's learned nothing, apparently, except that he should cozy up to smearers by being one.

First off, if “America” is the people of America, than Snowden is a hero for trying to tell them what is being done to them. He is like Paul Revere, sounding the alarm. (See his video interviews with the Guardian at guardian.co.uk.) But obviously that isn't the rulers' definition of America. Their definition is the state, the permanent political power structure consisting of themselves. Snowden doesn't owe this oppressive state any loyalty, contrary to what anyone, including Snowden himself, may believe.

We're all born somewhere. We come into a world where the land is divided up between political entities called nation-states. We get no choice where we are born, and can only gain the “right” to live in the geographical territory claimed by another nation-state with great difficulty (unless you're rich). We have NO intrinsic obligation to a nation-state just because we were born on this planet and these power entities claim all the territory. (And parts of the seas to boot!)

Furthermore, the evildoers of the U.S. political establishment and their massive secret police state are the enemies of humanity and insofar as they strip the American people of all their basic rights (to privacy and, increasingly, to protest, which is what the massive surveillance is designed to quash- Karl Rove of all people just let that cat out of the bag when he alluded to future mass unrest stemming from the planned gutting of Social Security by these mega-looters) they are the real traitors- if by America you mean the people. But as I said, that's not what the power elites mean by “America.”

No one owes any nation-state loyalty, and certainly not an imperialist one like the U.S., an evil empire founded on the twin pillars of genocide and slavery which likes to strut the world bullying others to submit to its will while it spews the most sickening self-aggrandizing propaganda about how all it's doing is spreading freedom and democracy to all corners of the globe, like some veritable Johnny Appleseed of human liberation!

The great Frederick Douglass called out the U.S. on its deranged, self-adulating rhetoric back in 1852, and it turns out to be absolutely as true today:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.“

Worship such a nation? “Owe” it loyalty? Bullshit.

So remember, wherever you live: Your only duty is to the human race.

1] See, for example, the horrible thing the U.S. did to Lakhdar Boumediene, a Red Crescent worker with children and a citizen of Bosnia, who was kidnapped from there by the CIA and its local accomplices after the Bosnian Supreme Court ordered him freed, and held in the Guantanamo Bay torture prison for seven and a half years.

Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry, which also shows how dangerous it is to have the NSA do data-mining to find “terrorist links.” If you happen to be acquainted with someone else who makes too many (in the eyes of the U.S.) phone calls to the “wrong” countries (even if they're “allied” ones like Pakistan and Afghanistan) and you can be locked up and tortured for years.

“In early October 2001, less than a month after al Qaeda's attack on September 11, 2001 in the United States, intelligence analysts in the United States Embassy in Sarajevo became concerned that an increase in chatter was a clue that al Qaeda was planning an attack on the embassy. At their request, Bosnia arrested Bensayah Belkacem, the man they believed had made dozens of phone calls to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and five acquaintances of his, including Boumediene. All six were Algerian-born residents of Bosnia, and five were Bosnian citizens; one had permanent residency status. They all worked for charities and non-profits.

"In January 2002, the Supreme Court of Bosnia ruled that there was no evidence to hold the six men, ordered the charges dropped and the men released. American forces, including troops who were part of a 3,000-man American peace-keeping contingent in Bosnia, were waiting for the six men upon their release from Bosnian custody. They immediately seized the six and transported them to Guantánamo Bay detention camp on a US Navy base on Cuba. They were detained and interrogated without being charged.”

So in June of 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court got around to ruling that the 6 prisoners in the Boumedienne suit (outside lawyers had to bring a case to court- remember, the U.S. government had no case against its “terrorist” victims) had a right to habeas corpus, which means they could challenge their imprisonment. Just to get the “right” to challenge their imprisonment took that long! And even that was a squeaker: the Court ruling was 5-4. The U.S. dumped him in France after 11 more months of torture. He's been unemployed ever since, and is no doubt deeply damaged by the vicious torment inflicted on him. Of course he was separated from his family, and there are no visitation or telephone “privileges” for “the worst of the worst,” and almost no mail from families allowed.

I recommend reading the rest of the article here.

2] The Bout case was a particularly brazen example of the U.S. crowning itself boss of the world and imposing its own “law” on the entire planet. It sent DEA agents to Thailand, pretending to be arms buyers for FARC (Colombian) guerrillas, and recorded Bout going along with a fantasy-scheme to sell weapons to “FARC” (the DEA pretending to be FARC) to “kill Americans.” (I.e. the American Special Forces and CIA thugs in Colombia who are helping the Colombian government try and crush the guerrillas.) Thus the U.S. manufactured the “crime” of “providing material support to terrorism” (i.e. DEA agents masquerading as FARC) and “conspiring to kill Americans” (the “conspiracy” being the conversation with the DEA agent about the make-believe arms deal). Notice that self-defense by FARC from U.S. attack in Colombia is “terrorism” against the U.S. (Well, the Nazis called the resistance fighters in the countries they occupied “terrorists.” I guess that's just one more thing the U.S. learned from the Nazis, along with all the great Gestapo torture methods the CIA studied after World War II.)

Remember, all this took place in Thailand. And the DEA is the Drug Enforcement Administration. What, a normal person might wonder, is a bunch of U.S. narcs doing in Thailand entrapping a Russian arms dealer into a bogus arms deal pretending they're from the FARC? Good question. It's not a question that the U.S. Government or media ever answered- or in the case of the media, even asked.

"He broke our laws," is the only answer you ever get. I see.

"And he's a bad man." (The U.S. media made a big deal harping on that. I can think of some bad men the U.S. media glorifies, but we'll skip that for now.)

Victor Bout is not a savory character, to be sure. (Which didn't stop the U.S. from using his services in the past before they turned on him. Shades of Noriega!) Nor is the U.S.-favored arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi particularly admirable, for one. Don't see the U.S. throwing him in prison, for example.

So now the U.S. is demanding that Russia hand over an American whistle-blower. What arrogance. Apparently the U.S. rulers are too blinded by their power to be able to imagine another nation's point of view. If I were Putin, I'd tell the U.S. to go pound salt.

And insofar as one thing Snowden did was to provide a timely reminder to the Russians and the Chinese how much the NSA is spying on them too, I can't imagine why they'd want to do the U.S. the favor of handing Snowden over to their tender mercies.

To parse Kerry's self-righteous blather: As always, “the right thing” is what the U.S. wants. And “rule of law” means “global rule of U.S. law, as interpreted by the U.S. government.” And those interpretations are infinitely flexible.