Saturday, November 02, 2013

Germany Considers Letting Snowden Testify

I am beginning to believe that the Guardian Observer is one of the last bastions of journalistic integrity in the Western World. They stood with Glenn Greenwald, they are publishing the facts regarding the Edward Snowden NSA Revelations in spite of being labeled traitors by the Conservative British Government and threatened with prosecution. They are morally and legally correct and when the chips fall, the rest of the world will be giving them the thanks they deserve for the firm and defiant course they are pursuing. I live in Europe and the difference between what you see in the American Press and what we see here is remarkably different. Even the supposedly liberal NYTimes is very guarded in their reportage of the international implications of what has been revealed by Snowden. Here is a piece from today's Times tiptoeing around the German reaction and it's uncomfortable after effects. In reality, if you read the German, French and Italian Press, this is being referred to as DataGate. I just spent a week in Italy and the NSA spying on the Italian government is the biggest story in the Italian Press. American on the whole do not seem to care or even understand the implications of one nation setting itself up as the monitor of the entire planet. I think this piece from the Observer is very good in concisely explaining what this is all about, in case you are having trouble grasping the implications. More over, in the Times piece that glosses over the damage done to American/Germ,an relations, they neglect to mention that Germany is now considering granting Snowden diplomatic protection to come to Germany to testify in their hearings on Datagate! You can read about that here. This was from yesterdays Guardian, but the reality has only become more concrete since then.
I snatched this video from CNN in which Glenn Greenwald responds to Dick Cheney's accuasation of Snowden as a traitor. I think this goes to the "heart" of the American hypocrisy regarding what Snowden has done and his historic and heroic stature. The traitors of today are the Heroes of tomorrow.
There is a certain irony to hearing former Vice President Richard B “Dick” Cheney, from whose White House office the name and employment of the CIA agent Valerie Plame was leaked to multiple press outlets, call Edward Snowden a “traitor” for leaking classified information and exposing “intelligence sources and methods.” I thought that made people like Scooter Libby heroes, Dick?
And why does our Liberal Media (you, Anderson Cooper!) continue to act as if Director of National Intelligence James Clapper isn’t always lying? Why are Clapper’s words to Congressional committees considered truthful? He lies to Congress. We know this. He admitted it. Whyever do they have Clapper back? To lie to them some more?
Why won’t someone on one of these committees ask Clapper if he is telling the truth now, and how the committee members are supposed to know when he’s lying and when he’s not?
Finally, isn’t it sad that Glenn Greenwald’s truth-telling about Dick Cheney’s actions, motives, and purposes is considered exceptional in America? Shouldn’t everyone talk about Dick Cheney this way, especially the people on whose programs he appears to promote his book of fiction about his “heart?” 

1 comment:

bj said...

"The traitors of today are the Heroes of tomorrow." Truer words that resonate in distant memories of my youth, and have no relevance to the traitor R. B. Cheney.
Another excellent post, Microdot!