After being forced to leave Nazi lead Germany and being declared stateless, my parents found asylum in Bolivia wherefrom they moved to Brazil.

In 1964, the US supported a violent military coup against the democratically elected president  João Goulart and shortly before, my parents again felt the pressure again to leave, in this case from Brazil.

Declassified transcripts of communications between our then US ambassador Lincoln Gordon and President Johnson have revealed that Johnson had authorized and ordered military support for the Brazilian military coup plotters.   For 20 years thereafter, the Brazilian people were submitted to brutal authoritarian suppression characterized by incarceration without the due process and torture.   Later in 1965, President Johnson gave the order to invade the Dominican Republic to this time assist in the overthrow of another populist and democratically elected leader, namely President Juan Bosh.   Numerous other fascist type governments were supported by the US, particularly in Latin America since 1903 and numerous democracies were crushed with US support, such as the Chilean one on September  11 of 1973, the Arbenz one in Guatemala, more recently Zelaya in Honduras, as well as democratic governments elsewhere such as the Sukarno one in Indonesia where literally millions were killed after being falsely tagged as “communists” by the US supported dictator Suharto (the film “The Art of Killing” dramatically attests to that atrocity),  the Mossadegh government in Iran, to name a few.

Had the US provided a ample forum and protection for whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, now Edward Snowden, and many others, to alert and educate the public about this misuse of military powers by our leaders, these atrocious anti-democratic events would not have occurred and we would be heralded by the world as an inspiring genuine and persuasive democracy which leads, as President Clinton once put it, ” by the power of example and not by the example of power “.

BTW, Jesselyn Radack, of the Government Accountability Project (GAP), and the former Ethics Attorney at the U.S. Deparment of Justice, and the present National Security and Human Rights Director of GAP, is an ardent supporter of transparency and accountability and declares that now that he is a whistleblower he considers it a badge which he wears with honor and pride.

Unfortunately history is repeating itself again, and now in the volatile Middle East where again, our President refuses to characterize military coup as a coup in order to continue to funnel military aid to the Egypt after the military has crushed the only democratic experience Egyptians have ever had.  Israel which under the present leadership violates international law in its occupation of Palestine and its mockery of peace talks by simultaneously sabotaging them while wishing to appear to be engaged in them, and Egypt, receive more US aid than the rest of the world combined.

It is a welcomed irony that now that thanks to the Edward Snowden revelations, a national conversation is beginning to evolve to reign in the encroachment on our right to protest the misuse of secrecy, the abuse of those tortured or renditioned to be tortured, the abuse of the use of drones for assassinations which involve the killing of innocent people, and the use of Cuban occupied territory as a concentration camp for prisoners, a majority of which have never been charged and remain in detention more than a decade after the 9/11 tragedy.

Ideally, President Obama should welcome Edward Snowden home, and decorate him for his principled stand and contribution to a strengthening of our failing democracy which is in dire need for reforms in vast sectors of our only limitedly representative governance nowadays.