Self-declared deep throat Edward Snowden should only feel as obliged to cheep about oppression in his future curbed world, as he did in his past free world.
The former federal worker has been on the run since spring for spilling the beans about top-secret American and British surveillance programs, holing up in human-rights-aloof China and Russia to evade charges of theft, and unauthorized and willful communication of government property.
But karma is king. And Snowden’s crusade to admonish Uncle Sam is evaporating faster than a Popsicle on a volcano.
His appeals for asylum have been rebuffed by his preferred countries, who don’t want sour relations with the U.S. over a milquetoast stoolie.
“I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” Snowden blustered to the Guardian newspaper while airing sensitive information about our national interests that could endanger Americans, hearten our enemies, and compromise our international allegiances.
The blabbermouth discovered, likely much to his dismay, that no sound country was willing to touch him with a barge pole, leaving him scrounging the bottom of the barrel of world nations for a lair in which to rest his two-timing head.
Welcome mats, at last check, were forthcoming from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, whose leaders can’t wait to shield an American traitor.
Snowden will no doubt find lots to grass about in that democracy-choking triumvirate — if he’s got the cojones.
He can rest assured it won’t be easy to trill like a canary in Venezuela, where dirty-laundry whistle-blowers are hauled off to prison on trumped up charges. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, barely in office three months, is already limiting the rights of Venezuelans to speak freely and protest peacefully.
Snowden can also forget about tattling on Nicaragua, another cesspit of skullduggery, where billboards beam the smiling face of President Daniel Ortega, as an omnipresent threat to spirited Nicaraguans.
The former Marxist guerrilla leader’s control runs all the way up to the justice system. A lower court judge shelved sexual abuse complaints against Ortega, claiming he couldn’t be prosecuted because he was a politician. Ortega also bonded, during a 2007 visit to Iran, with anti-western crackpot President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At the time, Ortega said proudly, “The revolutions of Iran and Nicaragua are almost twin revolutions, since both revolutions are about justice, liberty, self-determination, and the struggle against imperialism.”
Ditto for Bolivia — another hotbed of human rights violations, where free speech, women’s rights, and those of the indigenous population are quelled mercilessly.
Snowden is about to discover that the abounding, false sense of security about the harsh realities of life outside the freedom fishbowl is one downside of growing up in the land of liberty, as a privileged and petulant echo boomer. The other is that the grass is not greener on the other side. Especially if you ditch the planet’s most broad-minded country for one of its more intolerant ones.
But that’s Ed Snowden’s problem now.
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Read Shavana Abruzzo's column every Friday on BrooklynDaily.com. E-mail here at sabruzzo@cnglocal.com.
