This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Edward Snowden is on the run seeking asylum. First China, now Russia, on to Ecuador? A Cold War spy thriller after the Cold War went away.
The longer you live, the more you know that ‘after’ only means another twist is around the bend.
Imagine how the Chinese and Russian dissidents feel as Edward Snowden is hailed by the same police states that make their lives miserable.
How about dissidents in Ecuador? Human Rights Watch has a file on Ecuador http://www.hrw.org/americas/ecuador and has to this to say currently – and aptly:
“President Rafael Correa has undercut freedom of the press in Ecuador by subjecting journalists and media figures to public denunciation and retaliatory litigation. Judicial independence continues to suffer due to transitional mechanisms for judicial reform that have given the government and its supporters in Congress a powerful say in appointing and dismissing judges.”
Political dissidents have always found refuge in the strangest of places. It just goes to show that when you’re on the run you can be used by all sorts of folks for their own agendas. You can also use all sorts for your own agenda. Is there an ethical Golden Rule on being used and using?
Recently, one of my friendly non-Jewish correspondents suggested that I declare aliyah, become a citizen of Israel, take the benefits accorded me as a Jew under the Law of Return and then disappear into the occupied Palestinian hinterland and write from there. Whatever your take on the Law of Return it beats the suggestions my unfriendly Jewish correspondents usually offer. They think it would be better if I had died in the Holocaust.
The powers that be should wake up. In our computerized world where personal lives are open for public inspection, government’s internal lives are open for public inspection, too. It’s just a matter of time but even the time frame is changing. In a fast paced world, leaking secrets has to keep pace. It is.
Of course, beneath the veneer of a changing world old fashioned politics still applies. If you’ve noticed the new Palestinian Prime Minister – what’s his name? – tweeted twice and seems to be gone from his position. Or is he back tweeting again?
The world is an enigma of hope and despair, honesty and corruption. It’s all a tangle.
What should we think of corruption?
One way is to see corruption as life’s labyrinth – we spend our lives wading knee deep in corruption hoping to keep our head above it. We rarely accomplish our goal.
Another way is to recognize corruption as quicksand – we walk along with corruption all around us and then suddenly we step into it and we’re gone.
While we’re thinking of dissent, hypocrisy and corruption, word is that our Secretary of Pandering, John Kerry, is heading back to the Middle East. I don’t know if he tweets his various economic and political plans. Since it’s obvious that the cap on his career is empty I doubt he has much of a following anyway. Maybe it would be better if he resigned and the position was left vacant for a while. Or if we didn’t know if he had resigned, returned or simply called in on different days.
Staying focused on the topic at hand, I can’t wait for the uplifting Senate hearings on Samantha Power’s appointment to the United Nations.. The UN is the only place in the world where every nation is expected to lie about itself. She’ll fit right in.
Perhaps I’ll fly to Ecuador and stay there during Power’s confirmation hearings. But if Stop the Wall’s report, ‘Buying into Occupation: The Implications of Military Ties Between South America and Israel’ (http://stopthewall.org/downloads/pdf/buy-in2-occ.pdf) is correct, I’ll be heading straight into an Ecuadorian-Israeli military partnership zone. This as Ecuador takes the ‘high’ road of criticizing Israel’s policies toward Palestinians.
Needless to say, Stop the Wall doesn’t think too highly of Ecuador’s doubletalk.
When you are on the run, though, is there an ethical Golden Rule on the road you can and cannot take?
Instead of cut and paste from HRW on what they WANT you to think about Ecuador, please provide the proofs instead.
Marc Ellis, fact is, only ecuador stepped up to the task of giving refuge to julian Assange, and now – processing refugee papers for Snowden.
It’s good and well to take the high road on which country to take shelter in when the most powerful, most civilization disruptive country in the world is on your tail. Obviously, Snowden would have preferred Iceland or Norway, or some other fine European country (Switzerland? Luxemburg? Greece?) with long democratic traditions (which are, alas, being sacrificed as we speak, to the Austerians). But very few countries have the ability to stand up to the US. Yes, there’s Tonga, but they have rising sea levels to contend with, don’t they?
Besides, is any country perfect in terms of their human rights record?
I would rather Snowden was safe and sound in Ecuador, or even Venezuela, being helped by the likes of the oh-so-teinted russia/China agencies, as long as he manages to escape the clutches of the torture condoning, drone-wielding “targeted’ assassination all-seeing surveillance state. When you are a pauper your choices as to whose handouts you’ll take are rather limited.
But i do agree that the irony of the likes of Russia and china standing between civilization and armageddon (for e.g., Syria, Iran palestine and free-thinking people of the world) could not be greater. that Russia is now tasked with getting Snowden to safety is a statement not about the moral credentials of Russia but their absence in the US government. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.
Imagine how the Chinese and Russian dissidents feel as Edward Snowden is hailed by the same police states that make their lives miserable.
Isn’t that a bit far-fetched conclusion. Poor Chinese and Russian dissidents loose their self confidence when the local forces are “honoring” Snowden? Most Chinese, Russians, Europeans, Arabs etc, dissidents and the rest of us, see this Snowden affair only as a US “problem” and are to some amount amused watching the US reactions in hunting the one who revealed the immoral crimes and avoiding to see the problem.
The Chinese and Russians dissidents certainly know the shortcomings in their own societies, but now they are also forced to see, that USA is not better and in some aspects even worse. It is like the Pope would have been caught for acts of pedophilia, and Pope in this metaphor is not Snowden. The state which for decades has made massive amounts of “freedom, free market & democracy” propaganda, condemned numerous countries and governments and lectured about human rights to everybody who had to listen, is revealed and proven to be a real big brother society. What can USA say from now on: “Do behave as we command you to behave, not like we behave”. A moralist without moral is what is left.
Freedom and life trumps ethical quagmires any day. I’m sure Bradley Manning agrees with me.
I don’t care who Ecuador is in bed with as long as Ecuador helps keep Snowden as far away from the snare of U.S. injustice as possible. Snowden’s options are very limited. Why limit them more with “ethics”?
Snowden has dropped out of sight.
Reporters trying to tail him say he didn’t get on the plane this am in Russia.
So he and his helpers have laid a false bread crumb trail while he remains in Russia …or he has slipped out on another flight to somewhere after throwing his trackers off course ….or he has been snatched by the US ….or snatched by Russia.
OR… maybe he was never in Russia..no Russian officials saw him or talked to him, his request for asylum in Ecuador presented in Russia ‘by Wikileaks attorneys was done by Wiki in his behalf, not by Snowden himself…..Assange appears to be handling this freedom flight ……..since he’s had some experience evading the US maybe he has faked everyone out on Snowden’s whereabouts and Snowden is already wherever he was destined to go.
Summary
Here’s a summary of today’s (the 24th) key events so far:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/24/edward-snowden-booked-on-plane-from-moscow-to-havana-live-coverage#block-51c847ffe4b0a70e9c5e8ad2
• Edward Snowden’s whereabouts are currently unknown after he failed to get on an Aeroflot flight the Russian airline said he was booked on from Moscow to Havana. It has been assumed that he was heading via Cuba for Ecuador; Quito’s foreign minister Ricardo Patiño Aroca said yesterday the country had received an asylum application from him. But amid farcical scenes the plane full of journalists – and presumably representatives of various governments – took off for Cuba without him. One reporter tweeted a plaintive picture of Snowden’s empty chair.
• Patino said Snowden – the former NSA contractor whose leaks to the Guardian about US intelligence programmes have caused controversy around the world – had arrived in Russia and said his government was currently considering his asylum request. But he said Quito did not know where Snowden was at this moment – or where he was going next. Patino hinted that if Ecuador accepted Snowden’s request it would be on the grounds of privacy, freedom of speech, and human rights. The country already shelters Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at its embassy in London. Wikileaks was today forced to defend Ecuador’s questionable record on press freedom”