Ruled by crooks, governed by liars

1 Sep

When Glenn Greenwald has something to say, I sit up and listen. Remember him? Litigation lawyer and journalist, he left the Guardian to co-found The Intercept but, unlike his colleague Naomi Klein, quit when the latter began subordinating truth to getting ‘lesser evil’ Biden into the Oval Office instead of ‘greater evil’  Trump.

In respect of Julian Assange, here’s wiki on Greenwald’s response to the false allegations by Luke Harding – former ally of Julian, and Putin hater in chief at the Guardian. Says wiki:

Greenwald said The Guardian “has such a pervasive and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards to malign him.”

But Glenn has been attentive to the plight of another whistle-blower, Edward Snowden. Here’s what he posted yesterday, August 31, on his website:

Ben Rhodes’ Book Proves Obama Officials’ Lies, and His Own, About Edward Snowden and Russia

It is hard to overstate the sociopathy of US national security officials: their casual willingness to blatantly lie about the gravest matters is limitless.

Ever since Edward Snowden received asylum from Russia in 2013, Obama officials have repeatedly maligned his motives and patriotism by citing his “choice” to take up residence there. It has long been clear that this narrative was a lie: Snowden, after meeting with journalists in Hong Kong, intended only to transit through Moscow and then Havana on his way to seek asylum in Latin America. He was purposely prevented from leaving Russia — trapped in the Moscow airport — by the very Obama officials who then cynically weaponized his presence there to imply he was a civil-liberties hypocrite for “choosing” to live in such a repressive country or, even worse, a Kremlin agent or Russian spy.

But now we have absolute, definitive proof that Snowden never intended to stay in Russia but was deliberately prevented from leaving by the same Obama officials who exploited the predicament which they created. The proof was supplied unintentionally in the memoir of one of Obama’s senior national security advisers, Ben Rhodes, entitled The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. It is hard to overstate how dispositively Rhodes’ own book proves that Obama officials generally, and Rhodes specifically, lied blatantly and cavalierly to the public about what happened: a level of sustained and conscious lying that can be explained only by sociopathy.

(If you had to look up ‘dispositively’ you’re not the only one. Still not sure I get it.)

The memoir of Rhodes, now appropriately an MSNBC contributor, is an incredibly self-serving homage to himself that repeatedly attempts to demonstrate his own importance and accomplishments. The passage about Rhodes’ conduct regarding Snowden is very much aligned with those goals. While repeatedly emphasizing how traumatic the Snowden revelations were for the Obama administrations, Rhodes boasts of the crucial role he played in preventing Snowden from leaving Russia as the NSA whistleblower was desperately attempting to do so — exactly the opposite of what people like Rhodes and Hillary Clinton were telling the public about Snowden.

It is really beyond words how willing these people are to lie …

Read in full … 

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