Monday, July 8, 2013

Snowden the Useful Idiot

Edward Snowden, the disloyal and leaky IT guy is probably just an idiot who didn't even understand 1/10th of what he thought he was leaking.  Yes, the NSA probably knows who you are calling and the duration of your calls.  That is as alarming as the US Postal Service knowing the addressee of your letters and how much your letters weigh.  Big deal!!  Yet he is turning out to be a very useful idiot in the hands of anti-American countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba.  No doubt they see this guy as a useful propaganda tool in the Americas to further their perennial bashing of their perennial villian, the Estados Unidos.

In those countries he may even be offered a job doing cyber war against the US, although he may be hard put to the test on the DOS machines that are probably state of the art in those countries.  However, he probably knows how to install new versions of Microsoft Word and will probably be hailed as a genius.  I wonder if they will let him near their "real" computers, given his reputation as a leaker.  He may just discover that he didn't have it so bad in the old US of A.  And at least his family will be able to visit him there -- while his new masters eavesdrop of his conversations with them.  I wonder if he'll protest that.  Well, not too loudly perhaps!

The real test comes when he has to show loyalty to his new masters.   If he has a change of heart and decides to return to the US, will they let him?  Cuba might not.  Getting into Cuba is one thing, getting out is quite another.  I suspect that Cuba is not high on his list of candidate asylum hosts.

They don't take too kindly to disloyal folks in those countries.  Still, he may be very useful to them and he may enjoy some minor celebrity status.  However, I suspect that before too long, they will realize that he can't really contribute much to their struggling economies, that he is just another mouth for the state to feed.
But, as a propaganda tool, he may well turn out to be a useful idiot, one who can reinforce their masses in their ignorance to keep thinking of the US as the devil.  That will help them stay in power, which is probably all they want anyway.

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