Comment by SimHacker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SimHacker | Hacker News Reader

What If Snowden Was on Board the Bolivian President's Jet?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/violeta-ayala/what-if-snowden-...

"I would like people to know that today the U.S. hosts some of Bolivia's largest criminals. One such person is the former president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, and two of his ministers who are wanted in Bolivia, not for information leaks, but to face charges for the killing of 60 people who were protesting against his government's policies to sell Bolivia's resources to U.S. corporations. Sanchez de Lozada escaped Bolivia in a jet in 2003 and to this day the U.S. refuses to accept Bolivia's extradition request for him."

Glenn Greenwald covered this almost a year ago:

America's refusal to extradite Bolivia's ex-president to face genocide charges: Obama justice officials have all but granted asylum to Sánchez de Lozada – a puppet who payrolled key Democratic advisers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/09/america-...

How prescient of Greenwald: "Relatedly, we find the prevailing sentiment that asylum is something that is only to be granted by the US and its western allies against unfriendly governments. The notion that one may need asylum from the US or the west – or that small Latin American countries unfavorable to the US can grant it rather than have it granted against them – is offensive and perverse to all good and decent western citizens, who know that political persecution is something that happens only far away from them." -Glenn Greenwald, 9 September 2012.

<rant> It is precisely this hypocrisy that has rankled more and more as the years roll by. Sure other countries do horrible stuff but nobody else claims to be such a bastion of freedom and democracy. As one learns about the sordid interventionist past of the USA one then realizes that the superficial rhetoric is at variance with past actions.

These double standards reek of the colonial mindset that is meant to be well behind us. I follow a couple of blogs and it is this they return to time and again. The double standards. The hypocrisy. Imagine if the USA didn't make such claims then when the whole NSA/Snowden thing broke people would just say, "oh well, that's just par for course then".

So can we just drop the whole freedom and democracy rhetoric now? Can we drop the pretense? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and all that. Measure for measure the USA is one of the more hostile and anti-democratic regimes globally. </rant>

Also, can I have my privacy back please?

I think you need to follow a few more blogs.

If it weren't for the rhetoric, guys like Snowden would never have been indoctrinated with the ideas of freedom and democracy, the very ideas that caused him to act. So no, I do not want to drop the rhetoric.

In the words of Steven Rambam - "privacy is dead, get over it!"

It would be foolish to assume that our gov't will be fixing any of this any time soon. It would also be foolish to discard the one advantage the citizens have - a general awareness that freedom is something they cherish. That they don't understand what freedom is, exactly, is another issue.

But never fear - physics is stronger than US law, and we can create tools that allow those with the awareness of the importance of freedom and the ability to seek them out (another issue you can help with) to not be impeded by those pervasive forces.

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